Question A question about localizing Stardew Valley

[MJ99]

Hello everyone!

I'm new to the forum, and I was told this was a great place to seek assistance from the community, so here I am.

I come from Serbia, and I noticed that Stardew Walley has no official translations for Serbian (or any Balkan language for that matter). I would like to help bring this lovely community to the Balkans by translating Stardew Valley to Serbian. This would not only help Serbians who struggle with English get into the game, but a lot of other Balkan nations as well since our languages are very closely related and similar in a lot of ways.

What I'm looking for is guidance when it comes to this endeavor. I have no idea where to start and how to go about doing this, since I've never done anything similar before. Is there a localization spreadsheet I can use to easily access all lines of text in the title? I have a lot of motivation to finish this project, but starting without any available resources seems very difficult. I imagine people who have done translations before me did not go to the Wiki and translate text-by-text from the pages there, so I'm looking for the resources they used to make the process easier for them (if there are any, that is).

I would appreciate any guidance or advice on the topic, since I'm very new to this. Thank you for reading and thank you in advance for your responses.

Best wishes,
MJ

 

[konerini]

Hi!

Regarding the technical side of it, you can find everything you need in the Stardew Valley\Content folder. For example, my path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stardew Valley\Content

You'll notice that there are several folders with somewhat clear names, and files are in the .xnb format. Those are compiled files created with gamedev software, somewhat similar to archives, and you need to extract editable files (text and images) from them. I was intimidated at first but it turned out really easy and simple. You'll need a small program named XNBNode, make sure to use the recent version (I recently used 0.2.2). You can refer to this video to see how to use it (5 min long): https://youtu.be/ojpGf6ioxGw?si=PhW5iuDKk2Dibjwx

.yaml files will contain all the text for translation, and there are also a few pictures with text that you may also want to localize.

Starting from there, you can start actually translating content.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to create such changes as mods and not just replacing original files. If you figure it out, I'd be glad if you reach out to me and let me know ^^"
***
Some other points I'd like to bring up:
- You may also want to check out the discord community, I've noticed you can get a reply there fairly quickly.
- Agreeing it with the developer / making it official potentially. Since SV has such a big modding community, I really guess you're free to edit any files, but discussing it with the game team at some point may be a good idea if you proceed with your project. Although, I'm really not sure how to go about it and does not seem urgent at this stage, but still seems good to keep in mind to me.
- How much time it would take & motivation: I have not counted exact word count for SV, but I'd expect it to take AT LEAST a few weeks. It's a personal thing, but based on my experience with similar projects - I'd recommend to take each next step as soon as possible without delay while you have high motivation. The more you get in the process, the more it fuels your motivation. And it you're stuck, you might start losing it, while the idea sounds really great!
- Some sort of project management / planning may help.

To sum up, I think your idea is really great and I wish you all of the best luck! I love Serbian and I studied a bit of it. I have experience in setting up localization projects (although not gaming ones), so I may be able to help with something, and I'd like to get more experience like that myself. Feel free to DM me!

 

[Coder0987]

Mj99,

I was facing a similar issue so I created https://github.com/coder0987/StardewValleyTranslationHelper to help
Try it out and feedback is appreciated!

To share your language mod with friends, go to your Stardew Valley Mods folder,
.../Stardew Valley/Mods/
Then right click on your language -> Send To -> Compressed (zipped) folder and share

Stardew Valley is a HUGE game so I wish you the best of luck!