The entire text is a text version of the video below, which I also authored.

---

Considering that the game has an official the russian localization, which was originally developed by mail.ru for their version of the game, there shouldn't have been any problems with the Cyrillic alphabet, unlike many similar initiatives in other games. So, having figured out how to open the localization file, how to edit it, and how to activate the changes, I decided to try my hand at translating the game.

Especially since my English level was somewhere around B2, and given the in-game knowledge, it was quite enough to realize my plan. As said in another Rick and Morty meme, I was calming my brain down:

Come on, back and forth, i can do this for 20 hours...

And as you might have guessed... There is no such thing as "20 hours", because in the end I spent 10 times more time on it. Well, I think I'm done explaining everything you need to know, and now it's time to move on to describing the translation process.

But first things first.

Before you can actually do something like this, every worker must either have or create a document of this type - a design document. In my case, it's a simple table with a dozen sheets, each of which is responsible for a specific element.



The first email contains the localization file itself in its original format - just a two-column table with "keys" and "values". Of course, for the first ten hours I made some edits in the localization file itself, but I realized that this method was not very effective, and there was always a risk of losing progress if the power went out. So I continued in a convenient Google spreadsheet format. I'll talk about the process a little later.



The second sheet contains the most important features, namely the card skills. According to the game mechanics, they are divided into battle skills and the rest.

The first and fourth columns are "battle skills" - the latter contains only the translation, sorted in alphabetical order. This was necessary in several localization cells.

The second and third columns are "non-combat" skills. There is no particular division between the two - I just divided them in half so that they were all visible at once, and I didn't have to scroll down the sheet every time.

Under the battle skills, there are snippets of some keys - they relate to some story campaigns that I left for last. And also one word I want to replace some phrases with when I do the first full context check.



Translating anything from one language to another is always a challenge.

Of course, modern machine translation has made it much easier, but the problem is that, unlike humans, it does not know such a thing as context. That's why the first major problem in translating this game was my attitude to this very context.

Let me explain everything to you.

In fact, the translation component can be represented as a straight stick with technically accurate translation and rather loose translation at its ends.

The former is the most accurate translation of a phrase, word, or phraseology, and the latter is not quite accurate, but stylistically better than a "technical translation".



Ideally, i should find a certain golden mean between these two extremes.

Practice has shown that it "sneezed at your attempts to find the middle ground", because the very formulation of the question was wrong.

In fact, this «translation stick» is much longer - this is how it is.



Its real endings are an absurdly accurate translation that ignores certain technological aspects of the game, and a completely free translation, which we call "vasyanstvo" (васянство).

Vasansto is similar to dilettantism, amateurism

Of course, since I'm the only one working on the translation, the probability of going to the left end is quite high. But if you think that's it...

I'll just let you know that I've deceived you again.

In fact, it is not a straight line.
This is a whole area of coordinates.



Where up means more characters in the translated word or phrase, and down means fewer characters in the translated word or phrase.

And as a result, in practice, everything looks like the formula y=x^3.

Because an absurdly accurate translation from English into Ukrainian will, in the vast majority of cases, increase the number of characters by a couple dozen. On the contrary, the so-called "vasyanstvo" will most likely reduce it, but by deleting something important.

That's how I got from a seemingly ordinary stick to this graph.

Did I manage to find the compromise between a bad and a very bad option? To be honest, it depends. At least I can explain certain decisions, including the "vasyanstvo".

For example, combat skills - some of them are quite easy to translate and are not much longer than the English originals (which is important), and sometimes even shorter:


The rest of the terms were a bit more complicated.

For example, I deliberately wrote Regen, knowing that the correct word is "regeneration". But this is not the same "regeneration" we usually think of.

I had to be more creative with other terms. For example, I translated «Charge» as «Спритність».
And although at first glance this word sounds like a typical element of "surzhik", which is an extremely undesirable element in our case, I first check myself with Ukrainian dictionaries.[goroh.pp.ua]

Fortunately, a simple check shows that such a word is quite acceptable in our language, it's just that its usage is rather atypical.

The same applies to the word «Скритність», although here are examples from fiction[goroh.pp.ua], which confirms the hypothesis of its atypical use.

With such examples as "Quickdraw" and "Overwhelm" (as well as the same "Unblockable"), I acted in relation to their icons, even if it contradicted their direct translation - because the option I chose also explains this icon and this property quite accurately and is short enough, which is especially important.


That's why I noticed "regeneration" as the root word next to Regen.

And next to «Скритність» (Unblockable), I added the word «Підступ» (The catch) because one commenter suggested an interesting substitute for the original English word.

As for the rest of the skills, there are a lot of my alternative translations that do not correspond to the simple translation of these words.

For example, I translated «Amplify» as «Додача» (Additive) for the same reason as above — because it's a short enough word to describe its property quite accurately.

Some terms had a different problem, such as «Corrupted». I can't just use the translation «Пошкоджений» (Damaged) because it is inherently very close to the word «wounded», which is not true.

Especially when such a creature creates a damned copy of itself after its death. That's why I chose the variant «Проказа» (Leprosy), since such cursed copies also give certain visual distortions to the body.

Please do not Google this word if you are a very sensitive person.



One of the commenters suggested that I use the simplest translation of the word «Decay» — «Гниття» (Rotting).

And again, given the very essence of this word and the corresponding skill, I rejected this suggestion in favor of the longer, but still accurate word «Ослаблення» (Weakening), since that is what this property does. And from «гниття» (rotting) I moved on to the same «Проказа» (Leprosy).

Attentive Ukrainian-speaking viewers noticed a kind of "Easter egg" left by me, and it refers to the word "Entomb," which I translated as «Заповіт» (Testament).

And this, in turn, is the title of a poem by our writer Taras Shevchenko, our national pride.

I won't deny the obvious, but this example of my "vasyanism", as I said, is quite justified, since this word is not only relatively common, though not in everyday conversation, but also characterizes exactly what we will be talking about[goroh.pp.ua].

Of the more arbitrary translations, I can highlight the following:

I translated «Imbue» as «Коменсал» (Commensal) because of the nature of the skill.

In case you didn't know, a commensal[en.wikipedia.org] is a creature that receives food or benefit from another creature, without giving it a mutual advantage (like symbiosis), but without harming it (like a parasite).

In fact, this is exactly what happens when you activate this skill — this creature shackles another creature and gets a corresponding bonus to attack and health, but as soon as the commensal (or its target) dies, this complicated relationship also disappears. Speaking of shackles...

For this special case, I allowed myself to invent a new specific word:

«закайдувати» (shackle) is the process of putting on shackles, because it is too stupid to translate the word "stun" as a typical «оглушення» (stun) or «приголомшення» (stun), given the very specific icon that is being hinted at.

But "shackles" are still shackles, I just gave a name to the process of putting them on.



The last controversial decision is the translation of the "silence" skill.

In the game, it allows you to erase the description of a card, making it as uninteresting as possible, especially if its ability was extremely strong.

This is the path I took and named this skill «стертя» (erase).

But here's the problem - the problem is in the cases.
More precisely, in the affixes, and I'll talk about the cases a little later.

It's because if the skill is called «стертя» (erase) the command of the skill is «зітріть» (erase).



As a result, we have two words with different letter combinations that mean the same thing.

It's just that in the first case, the opportunity is given, and in the second case, it's a direct order that cannot be refused unless there is a corresponding purpose.

The translator's decision is less controversial — «Unleash» to «Дублікат» (Duplicate).

How else do you propose to translate a skill whose essence is that when you draw such a card, you get a copy of it in your hand, which will be discarded at the end of the turn and cannot be free?

A "duplicate" is still a "duplicate" in the magical world.
You're unlikely to find a substitute that's as short anyway.

And although it seems that it is enough to translate all these concepts, and then there will be no more difficulties, I have to disappoint you.

I was already disappointed with the first example.
It was about cases.

I don't remember how many cases there are in English, probably 2-3, but in Ukrainian there are 7.

The miracle of English cases is that in the vast majority of cases, words either don't change or just get an additional ending on top of the existing one.

What about the Ukrainian language?

The word ending also changes, but depending on the context of the word, it will change much more often.

This means that I need to check each such case, ask the right question to understand the type of case and modify the word to make it look as organic as possible.



Otherwise, the translation will be as stupid as possible, as cavemen were portrayed in movies and TV shows of the last century. And then the translation of «You gain Aegis» in this case would be "u get Egis», which looks and sounds as stupid as possible.

In the «Концепти» (Concepts) sheet, I've kept phrases that are very common in card descriptions, but require separate consideration.

Most of them relate to card interaction - drawing, selecting, interacting with enemy cards, discarding, duration, and so on.

In this case, I even compared them to compare how much their length has increased compared to the English language.

As you can imagine...
Yeah... It's not good.

In any case, you can rewrite something there, depending on the context of the skills.



In the «Ключ» (Keys) sheet, I've kept the most common terms that are used and mostly NOT during the battle — card type, currency, factions, mode name, etc.

There's really nothing special, except that I translated «Gauntlet» as «Гаунлет».
That is, I just made a transliteration.



Let's jump from one sheet to another — «Переклад назв кампанії та сетів» (Translation of campaign and set names).

And it actually contains the translation of campaign and set names.
It's nothing special.
Taking into account their context, I think it turned out quite well.

The «Архетипи» (Archetypes) sheet contains translations of creature archetypes, from bard and bat to wolf and yeti.

In a separate column, I highlighted the archetypes that exist in the game client but are not available in practice. For example, crocodile, squirrel, titan.

And no, the cards you're thinking of belong to other archetypes, I'll show you on the screen.

Unexpected, but true.



And the last letter for consideration is «Переклад назв та імен» (Translation of titles and names).

It concerns the names of story characters, creatures of the "Hero" subtype that have several unique cards, proper names within the game universe, etc.

The list is very incomplete, as I missed many one-off examples.
That is, heroes that had only one card, or at most some other thematic event, avatar or cover, etc.

In some cases, I had doubts and put a question mark in the fourth column because I couldn't say exactly what the word meant — city, destination, country, etc.

This game, of course, has an extensive lore, but not enough to explain almost everything.



The rest of the tables don't make much sense to show — in this green one I kept some statistics on the completion, in the red ones I kept technical lists for the future, when the work is almost complete.

Well, now that all the necessary tools for preparation are ready, it's time to move on to the actual process of translating the game.

Since I have defined many of the key game terms and I am sure that there can be no other interpretation, I simply use auto-correct.

However, because of the cases, it is necessary to modify some endings depending on the context of the text.
Or replace a phrase at once if it is quite common.
And then make fewer edits.

First, I started by describing the cards themselves — they have the code "localized_game_text" at the end of their key, so they can be easily identified.

Then I started with the prompts that appear during the battle - their key has the code ".prompt". Some of them have the ".choice" code, so I left them for later.

Of course, even after autocorrecting some of the wording, there were still a lot of corrections to be made, and I was doing that for a long time.

Usually, I edited all the cells that mentioned a particular game term.

That's why you could see that the sheet with them was colored yellow — that's how I indicated that I was mostly done with this term.

This also applies to the cells themselves: I use yellow to indicate that I was satisfied with the translation and it was completed at this stage of work.



In the key column, I use 2 additional colors - green to indicate the most important, top priority, and purple to indicate cells related to tournaments and other things.

First of all, I am not really interested in this, and secondly, most of the information shown there is already outdated and is unlikely to appear in the client again, so you can either ignore it completely or leave it for last.

By the way, the game's localization has a little more than 35 thousand cell lines.
All of them have keys, but a third of the corresponding values are empty.

So I marked these empty cells in red to avoid eye strain.

In magenta, I mark those values that, as in the case of the keys, the player will not see them under any circumstances. This is because it is either cut, outdated, or test content.



Light blue is another thing.

This game has story campaigns, thanks to which the player can learn part of the history of this game universe. They are presented mainly in the format of communication within duels, but sometimes there are also cutscenes.

Unfortunately, there is much more to do than just translating card descriptions. Fortunately, there are fewer restrictions here. Both from a technical and artistic point of view. The main thing is to have a broad knowledge of what is happening in the story. And to translate properly with full preservation of the context.

Remember what I said about "surzhik"? So, there are two moments in campaigns where the use of this unacceptable type of language is quite acceptable. The first of these moments is the conversation of the character Jack, who speaks American English very directly. With a characteristic accent.

The second such moment is the Homecoming campaign. Absolutely everything in it shows a very characteristic allusion to Tsarist russia:

• starting with the fact that the tsar (called "Oren" in local terminology)
  
• is killed by a usurper named Yushkov,
  
• in the land of Kosul,
  
• whose capital is Korovyat,
  
• which has its own bear guard and snow,
  
• and Yushkov has a counselor named Severin, who looks like Rasputin.
  
• And the Oren's daughter, Sveta.
  
• together with her bear Mokhnaty wants to regain her throne and her country.
  
• By the way, her full name is Svetya Katarina Stormhalt-Kurtz.
  
• And they also have a very distinctive accent.

I think you get the general idea.



Fortunately, there were almost no problems with the translation of the campaigns.
Unlike... the translation of the cardtitles.

It would seem - what could be so difficult?

First, as I said earlier about the process of translating cards, I colored yellow those cells whose translation I considered completed at that time.
And the emphasis is on the last phrase.

Because there's another thing: the descriptions of many cards refer to their own names or to the names of other cards.

That's why we had to postpone them until later.
And translate them in bulk.

Second, there are much stricter technical limitations. If there is this much space in the card description, then this much is allocated for the name.

Of course, the developers have anticipated possible problems and created a system so that the game will automatically reduce the font size of the name so that it all fits in one line. But here's the thing...

Thirdly, the Ukrainian language does not have some word formations that are used in English. For example, «Brightmace Paladin» — if we follow the technically accurate translation, we get the following: "a paladin with a glowing mace".

Is the translation correct?
Absolutely.

Do you want me to show you what would happen if you used this particular solution?
Because...

And now imagine that there are several hundred similar examples.



And now imagine that the name of the card consists of two words, the first of which is such a short English combination, and the second is its own name within the game universe. And if you don't pay attention to the second word in time, you might lose some connection with a dozen other cards that also refer to this proper name.

And it will not be cool.

That's why when translating the names of these cards, I first tried to determine whether a word is a proper name or refers to a specific term within the game universe.

For example, the name of the dinosaur types. And then I translated the rest based on the context of the card's effect, as well as its image. That's why you'll notice a lot of this "vasyanstvo" when comparing the English title and my translation of the cards - all for the reasons explained above.

There was a special problem with the heroes - they were either plot-important creatures or important creatures in principle that could have several cards.

They existed before, but the developers decided relatively recently (about a year ago) to give such cards a special application in the center.

And at the same time, new cards of this type are named in the following format: name, comma, description of the characteristic or affiliation of this hero.



I decided to take this concept as a basis and translate all such characters in this way, even if the names of these characters looked quite standard. So that as a result, each of these heroes had a name according to their type:

• Richard, the Lionheart,
  
• Henry II, Curtmantle
  
• Yaroslav the Wise
  
• Vladimir Hu...

Well, you get the idea.

Due to the need to invent new word combinations, this process took as long as possible, and I'm still in the process. At the time of writing this script (December 2022), I have 1877 card names without translation.

And that's not even taking into account the fact that their descriptions need to be updated.

Of course, it can be tedious and boring to translate names exclusively, so I changed my goal from time to time - to a campaign, a mini-campaign, or other interface elements.

For example, buttons, hover tips, in-game store, glossary, customization, notifications, etc. In general, everything else that is not related to the battle process.

Although the translation is not yet complete, I am happy with even this result. I put a lot of effort and mental effort into it so that the game would read as if its developers were third-generation Galicians, ha-ha.

That is, as native as possible for a potential Ukrainian-speaking player.

Of course, I would like to share it already, to contact Ukrainian-language streamers and content makers, but it will be better after I have completed the names of all the cards. Because even after all this, there is still one problem.

Or rather, two problems.

Okay, three.

The first one is that in order for the localization changes to work, you need to perform a very simple but still strange ritual.

And anyway, the game will end up replacing a part of the translated text with the original English, no matter how you slice it.

That's all I have to say about it.



The second is the release of a new set in a week (December 2022).

This will mean a hundred new cards, descriptions, and not the fact that the changes will be activated on them, because see problem #1.

And the third problem is the developers. My translation is currently nothing more than a fan translation of the game. Of course, the developers are most likely aware of my initiative, since I created a similar thread on Reddit and it got an unexpectedly high number of upvotes. Compared to the rest of the topics on subreddit.

But they can refuse to add my proposed variant, and they don't even have to give a reason. Of course, this is not a very good chance, given the reaction their refusal will provoke, but still, it will be their right.

And they may even be right.

The main problem with this whole project was that the developers update the game client in a rather tricky way. And although I don't understand how exactly this happens on a technical level, it all goes without updating the game client itself, i.e. without downloading the update via Steam, etc.

That's why I saw a case where the game was "updated" 10 months ago - in October 2022. But that was not the case: since then, until August 2023, the "Enter the Arcanum" expansion pack and the new "Behemoths of Thera" pack have been released as an add-on. Plus additional Episodes with new cards almost every week.

Despite such big changes, the game client was not updated and, accordingly, there was no way to view or edit anything.

Thus, about 95% of the work that was relevant a year ago gradually turned into 90%...
Then to 85%...

Of course, the inability to update the work done and fully test it makes you forget about what you have done...

And then...

---

In mid-August 2023, a new card, The Beast Slicer, was added to the game with a fairly simple feature: "When the wielder kills an enemy unit, create and draw a Treasure Trove".



The only "problem" with this card was that it was a card with a relatively new "Versatille" property, which allows this weapon to be played as a relic (for an avatar) or a regular (for a creature). And obviously, something went wrong, and this card just didn't work properly. So much so that the developers had to create a separate patch to fix this (and other) bugs.

• Eternal Small Update - Patch Notes 1.59 (August 17, 2023)[news.direwolfdigital.com]

However, more importantly, this was not just some "inconspicuous technical patch". It was a relevant update on Steam.

I decided to check if any other files had changed, and then I noticed:



And sure enough, the localization file had "new" elements.



This meant I could finally get back to work and try to update both the old and new data.

First of all, I felt like Gandalf from a rather memorable moment:



Since it's been a few months since I last did this, I completely forgot my action plan. Luckily, I remembered everything in a few hours of work and continued with the actual work.

Fortunately, there were almost no special adjustments to the balance of the cards, except for their cost, Attack and Health levels, so I didn't have to worry about the work I had done.

The issue of new content needs to be addressed.

Since the last update, there have been several new expansions with cards:


Explaining my choice:

1. The very concept of "Arcanum" is not explained almost anywhere, except perhaps «Praxis Arcanum». It seems to be a university city, something like Cambridge or Oxford in our world. And a lot of these cards are directly related to this university, as well as some of the characters who work there. That's why "Entrance to Arcanum" can be interpreted as «Вхід до університету Арканум» (Entrance to Arcanum University).
   
   
2. This case is a bit more complicated and interesting. In English, the word "behemoth" is also used to refer to a huge, gigantic creature (as well as an extremely large organization, etc.). In Ukrainian, the word "behemoth" has only one meaning: it is the actual animal, the hippo (бегемот / behemoth), which is also quite large, massive, and terrifying.
   
   The events are transferred to a new country called "Thera," which I decided to translate as «Фера» (Fera) rather than "Tera" because the letter combination "Th" is pronounced closer to "F" than "Tx" or "T".
   
   The peculiarity of this country of Thera is that there are many different sources of power (called "Rifts" here), and it is thanks to these Rifts that creatures of gigantic size grow - giant rats, chameleons, wild boars... rabbits.
   
   (adapted meme)
   
   So in the end, I took the easy way out and it turned out to be quite successful: Велетні Фери (Behemoths of Thera).
   
   Fortunately, the term "велетні" (Giant) is not tied to anyone, because other huge humanoid creatures have the Giant archetype.
   
   
   
   
3. It's actually quite simple - in Thera there is a cult of worship of a giant centipede called Hecaton, who was christened God. There is nothing extraordinary or divine about it, but it is a powerful creature. And these cultists often make sacrifices to appease Hecaton for the process of "Devouring" - both literally and figuratively.
   
   It's the same with the concept of "Apocalypse" - it has both the usual mass media meaning and a religious one.

---

Some other names and terminology were a bit more difficult. Here are just a few of them:


During this time I came to some conclusions, including rethinking some of my old terms:

• Whenever possible, use the letter "Ґ" in names with the letter "G". Exceptions are possible, for example, if the G is in the middle of a word and/or it comes before syllables with a large number of consonants. For example, Ґарет (Gareth), Марґо (Murgo), Ґрінва (Grinva), Ґрен (Gren), etc.
  
  
• More feminine gender - if the image of the card clearly hints at the female gender of the creature, it is advisable to use the feminine gender for her profession. Exceptions are possible.
  
  A very special exception is "Hive Queen Uther". Althoutherugh this is clearly a male character, the tooltip clearly states that
  
  

  Hive Wardens are called 'Queen' regardless of their gender

  
  
• If necessary, deviate from the "canonical name" of a card in the "Behemoths of Thera" set if the card is associated with a direct creature.
  
  For example, the "Furious Bandit" card depicting a raccoon. Instead of translating it directly as "Furious Bandit", I chose the option «Несамовитий єнот» (Furious Raccoon), since there are quite a few similar cards in this set.
  
  
  
  As for me, this adaptation is quite acceptable, as it creates a better memorization of the card through its image.
  
  
• I decided to change the character "Nomnom" to «Ням-ням» (like "Yum-Yum") (instead of the existing transliteration «Номном»). A particular problem of translation is often that there are many expressions, phrases, and terms in English that either do not exist in Ukrainian or are difficult to translate. Or a translation exists, but it is not suitable for the format of this game, given the limitations of the text.
  
  For example, the card "Nomnom, Epic Epicure" cannot be translated directly as "Ням-ням, Епічний епікурієць" because "Epicure" is used to describe "a person who takes special pleasure in fine food and drink". At that time, the term "Epicurean" would immediately lead to Epicurus[uk.wikipedia.org] and his teachings, which, although quite similar in meaning, was completely inappropriate within the framework of this game world.
  
  I had to get out of it with the word «Насолоджуючийся» (enjoyer). And what does he enjoy? Of course, with the food he cooks in his frying pan - this retains the original intention of the name even without the reference to the Greek philosopher."

You should also pay attention to two new mechanics in this game:

---

Since Thera is dominated by giant animals, there is a separate profession of Hunters for such creatures. And, in fact, they hunt for giant rabbits, rats, etc. This is the basis for the rather ambiguous mechanics that can break a lot of things.

And it especially "broke my head" trying to find the best appropriate translation.

First of all, I couldn't use the term «Мисливство» (Hunt) because there is ALREADY a combat skill called «Мисливець» (Hunter for "Killer") that allows your creature to attack a specific enemy creature.

Secondly, I don't like the word «Полювання» (Hunting) because compared to "Hunt" it doubled the length of the term and this is without taking into account the logical verbal summary, which also increased the length of the text.

And remember that the Ukrainian language will almost always be much longer than English (in terms of the number of letters in words, etc.), so the issue of saving text space is extremely important here.

Since the animation of this effect resulted in the appearance of a paw that "hits" the enemy avatar, after which it discards the corresponding number of cards from the deck, we thought of using the term «Поріз» (Cut).

However, as they say, sometimes the simplest option is the best.

And I just came up with the term «Скид» (Discard). After all, this is literally what is being done - the enemy Discard cards from his deck. And I didn't even have to "reinvent the wheel," as they say. And it's easier to find in the search in case of emergency.

---

Perhaps the concept of «Змінна» (Variable) is a rather stupid adaptation of the word "Versatile", but it is definitely shorter than the direct translation «Універсальний» (Universal).

Besides, I always think of it as a solid concept in the spirit of "interchangeable barrel (of a weapon)" or "variable (of a piece of construction)".

---

Of course, I was tempted to translate "Swift" as "disconnect" (since SWIFT is practically not available in the russia, haha), but that would be 100% waffling, which is unacceptable in this localization. Especially if I want to make it official.

"Swift" translates to «стрімкий» (swift), «швидкий» (quick), which, given the properties of this card's ability (it doesn't give the enemy the opportunity to cancel it or use something in response), I decided to translate as «прудкість» (swiftness), since the word «швидкий» (swift as fast) can also be part of the concept of "fast spell", which Swift is NOT.

Of course, because at the time I started this translation, I had practically no similar experience. Yes, sometimes I translated some sentences and texts, but trying to translate Eternal Card Game into Ukrainian surpassed everything I had done before.

Of course, gradually in the process I gained experience, found better options, and it was time to look at what I had done and start rethinking some of the things that were either bad or not good enough by my new standards.

---

This refers to the so-called Polivanov system[en.wikipedia.org], which was developed by a russian linguist to render phonemes and signs in Japanese into the russian.

In Eternal, this applies mainly to the demon race, which is a clear reference to Japanese (or Eastern culture in general).

The problem is that the same "Polivanovshchina" is an archaic russian system from a russian for an archaic russian language. In short, it's a complete 🚩🚩🚩.

And many Ukrainian translators still use this system, including for Ukrainian.

I wouldn't say that I made these or other changes intentionally, because I have no idea whether I made any mistakes yet, but I want to apologize in advance if you can find the consequences of this "Polivanovshchyna" in the translation.

---

The meaning doesn't change, but it saves 2 letters (and 3 in width), which is great.

---

As in the case of the previous term, replacing one term with a term that is quite similar in context but shorter. Besides, although there is no creature or weapon that has both «Спритність» (Charge) and «Скритність» (Unblockable), this similarity is somewhat confusing.

---

Probably the most controversial change I'm going to make with this translation.

It's about cards that refer to themselves in their description. Let's take the example of «Вершник Аканти» (Horseman of Acantha), which should be translated as «Вершниця Аканти» (Horsewoman of Acantha):



As you can see, this card has a reference to itself in the description - that it will cost 3 less as long as you have the relic. As for me, in the vast majority of cases, you can either remove such noun references or replace them with pronouns: he, she, it, his, hers, this, that.

That's because there are practically no cards in this game that refer to other specific cards. Quite rarely - to certain archetypes.

Most often, they refer to a condition:

• the presence or absence of something
  
• whether this or that action was performed before or just before

Again, this is a matter of saving space. And also the expediency of having the name of the card in its description, if its skills already refer to the same card.

I don't know if other Collectible Card Games (CCGs) have this practice, including those with the existing Ukrainian translation, but something tells me that if they do, many people will be unhappy with my decision.

Probably, the most problems will arise with the Stranger archetype, since the skills there work for all Strangers on the field, including the enemy.

---

I don't know why, but I translated "Eternal Chapters" as «Частини Eternal» (Eternal Parts), although it would be more correct to call it «Епізоди Eternal» (Eternal Episodes)... The more I think about it, the more stupid this initial choice looks.

---

.
This one is super simple and straightforward - in my opinion, you shouldn't leave a full stop in a card description if it's the last character of the card description.


This applies mainly to the description of the cards - in other story dialogs and the like, I would keep this point.

---

If you read the name/description of some of the cards in detail, you'll notice that some of them are, as we say, "a little bit of a dumb thing to write":

• Somewhere a word suddenly starts with a Capital letter
  
• and in some places it still starts with a lowercase letter, although it should start with a capital letter
  
• there's a missprint in the word
  
• there's a missing leter somewhere
  
• and something doesn't matter what it is
  
• a small discrepancy in micro-terms: either "among the top 5 cards of the deck" or "among the 5 top cards of the deck"
  
• and so on and so forth

All this will be gradually corrected. But it will take a lot of time.

And it would be desirable to have a second or third editor who will evaluate certain decisions and translations from their own point of view and be able to notice things that I did not notice for one reason or another.

Officially, of course, only through interaction with the game developers.

In order to increase the chances of Ukrainian appearing in Eternal Card Game, it is advisable to:

• support this guide by liking, commenting, adding to favorites
  
• support other relevant threads on Reddit and/or Discord
  
• do the same with the Ukrainian guide at the link below

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2905550376


Luckily, Dire Wolf is not a studio like Ubisoft, EA, or, God forbid, Activision. Therefore, the chance to influence the studio's decision on localization is much easier than with the above-mentioned ones.

For now, if there are any negotiations at all, I'll try to conduct them alone, but I'll try to get the support of the SBT Localization Administration. And other editors as well, because...

One head is good, but two are better.

The main part of the work has already been done, so the main part of what remains is text editing. I'm sure there will be many, many more.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029095705 https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3031207220 https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3119201864
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181975472
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3149051671
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3026033381
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3221301561