Angband 4.2.6 in Spanish

[hernaldog]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to let you know that I'm working on a very challenging project: translating Angband version 4.2.6 into Spanish.

This game deserves to be bilingual, as it's a classic of the Roguelike genre. I love it. I played Umoria for a year and then discovered this one, which is much nicer, with tiles, and I fell in love. I translated NES and SNES games back in the 2000s, and this project reminded me of how wonderful that hobby was, so I decided to take it on.

General translation is approximately 60% complete

Help Needed:
I'm taking this opportunity to ask for help. If you enjoy game translation and C programming, or if you simply want to help with final testing at a later stage, please email me at hernaldog@gmail.com.

-My humble progress here: https://github.com/hernaldog/angband...c-espa%C3%B1ol

I'll be posting updates here. Cheers!

Hernaldo Gonz?lez. Melipilla, Chile

(P.S.: Please excuse me if this post doesn't belong in this forum section. I couldn't find a more suitable one; feel free to move it to the correct section.)

Updates

- 21-02-2026: It is understood how to compile on Windows 11 and proof-of-concept tests are carried out.
- 21-02-2026: Translation of the first elements begins, such as news.txt or base C/H files.
- 20-03-2026: It is understood and translation starts for .txt files inside gamedata, .rst files, and tiles .prf files.
- 23-03-2026: To facilitate translation into Spanish, all prefixes in objects are removed. Example: previously “Un Pergamino”, “Una Manzana”; now only unit + object, like “You see 1 Wooden Torch”, “You have 3 Lanterns left”. This idea comes from other Roguelike games such as Shattered Pixel Dungeon, where objects have no prefixes.
- 27-03-2026: Editing of .txt files is achieved, a new tag is added in object.txt called "name_plural", and C files such as obj-init.c, object.h, obj-desc.c, z-textblock.c are modified to handle objects in Spanish that use plurals and differ greatly from English, like “Raci?n -> Raciones” or “Perdig?n -> Perdigones”.
- 28-03-2026: The method that prints colored characters is expanded from ASCII to UTF-8 in effects-info.c, method copy_to_textblock_with_coloring(), to support Spanish accents when inspecting an object.


--------- Mismo post en espanol ----------
(los acentos o tildes se sacaron de este post, parece que el foro solo tiene una normalizacion o encoding para caracteres en ingles)

Hola a todos. Queria comentarles que estoy trabajando en un proyecto muy desafiante: traducir Angband version 4.2.6 al espaol.

Este juego merece ser bilingue, ya que es un clasico del genero roguelike. Me encanta. Jugue a Umoria durante un ao y luego descubri este, que es mucho mejor, con su sistema de cuadricula, y me enamore. Traduje juegos de NES y SNES alla por los 2000, y este proyecto me recordo lo maravilloso que era ese hobby, asi que decidi jugarmela.

La traduccion general esta completa en un 60% aproximadamente

Necesito ayuda
Aprovecho esta oportunidad para pedir ayuda. Si te gusta la traduccion de videojuegos y la programacion en C, o si simplemente quieres ayudar con las pruebas finales mas adelante, escribeme a hernaldog@gmail.com.

-Mi humilde progreso aqui: https://github.com/hernaldog/angband...c-espa%C3%B1ol

Publicare las principales actualizaciones aqui. Saludos!

Actualizaciones

- 21-02-2026: Se entiende como compilar en Windows 11 y hacen pruebas de concepto.
- 21-02-2026: Se inicia traducci?n de primeros elementos como news.txt o archivos c/h base.
- 20-03-2026: Se entiende y empieza a traducir archivos txt dentro de gamedata, .rst y archivos de tiles .prf
- 23-03-2026: Para facilitar la traducci?n al espaol. Se cambian todos los prefijos en objetos, ejemplo "Un Pergamino", "Una Manzana" y solo deja la unidad + objeto, ejemplo "Ves 1 Antorcha de Madera", "Te quedan 3 Linternas".
Esta idea sale de otros juegos Roguelike como Shattered Pixel Dungeons donde no hay prefijos en objetos.
- 27-03-2026: Se logra editar los txt, se agrega tag nuevo en object.txt llamado "name_plural" y archivos c como obj-init.c, object.h, obj-desc.c, z-textblock.c para manejar objetos en Espaol que usan plural y que son muy diferentes al ingl?s, como "Raci?n-> Raciones" o "Perdig?n -> Perdigones".
- 28-03-2026: Se logra ampliar el m?todo que imprime caracteres a color de ASCII a UTF-8 en effects-info.c, m?todo copy_to_textblock_with_coloring(), esto para las tildes de lenguaje espaol cuando se inspecciona un objeto.

----------------

Some captures / Capturas de pantalla

[Nick]

This is wonderful, I have always thought this should be possible - but a lot of work. Some questions:
- Many of the data files, and some others like list-mon-message.h, have many text strings - are you just making Spanish versions of these files?
- Do you think it would be possible to organise the code so that all the text that needs translation is in such files, so that the translation job would become just translating those files (and adjusting the files that process them like obj-desc.c)?

[backwardsEric]

To avoid conflicts between changes for the translations and changes to other data in the data files, I would have a structure so that there is a file (or files, if one wants to break things up) with the strings for one localization. Something like monster.txt would still have "name" lines for each entry but those would just hold a code name that would be used to look up the localized name, description, plural, messages, .... The "desc", "plural", .... lines would either not be present in monster.txt or they would hold fallback text if there was not an appropriate localized string.

For grammatical gender, the current game uses monster race flags, "MALE" and "FEMALE", to specify the gender of monsters. That likely does not work if multiple localizations are supported (a given monster could have different genders in different localizations). Grammatical gender for monsters and objects should then be a separate, localizable, field which is then used in mon-desc.c and obj-desc.c to choose pronouns and articles (heaven forbid there's a language that requires verb conjugations to match the subject's gender - that would further complicate how Angband builds messages about objects or monsters).

[hernaldog]

This is wonderful, I have always thought this should be possible - but a lot of work. Some questions:
- Many of the data files, and some others like list-mon-message.h, have many text strings - are you just making Spanish versions of these files?
- Do you think it would be possible to organise the code so that all the text that needs translation is in such files, so that the translation job would become just translating those files (and adjusting the files that process them like obj-desc.c)?

I'll answer each point:
- For now, I'm in an experimental version, where I'm translating the files directly from English. Once I understand how everything works and have an "alpha" version, we'll need to study how to make a configurable system...

- I've worked on other projects where, from the beginning, we use "Resource" systems where each resource is a text file for a specific area or event... In this case, it's much more complex since all the text in the .c or .h source code is designed to be output in English. We'd have to create (or rewrite) a multi-language text output engine to support more languages. This is outside my skill set I'm not very good at C.