Translating Steam into Hebrew?

[SmileyBarry]

I was going to opt into the Steam Translation Program, but I saw that you don't offer Hebrew as one of the primary languages. While I know translating a Left-to-Right program into a Right-to-Left language would be difficult, it is very much needed. Steam has a living, breathing Israeli community and a partnership with a leading Israeli gaming site (Steam's sole download server in the Middle East is owned and run by this site.). I'm also willing to bet there are many Arabic players on Steam, which brings me to my main point:

Steam support for right-to-left languages is very, very broken. It was broken before and with the new 2010 update, it's now even more broken. Texts in IMs appear mostly left-to-right, with symbols and numbers breaking formatting. In the overlay, you can't switch to Hebrew, and in more parts the client doesn't play well with Hebrew.

Thus, I ask that you enable translation into Hebrew. Please? :-)

[ultio]

Hey,
I'm actually not sure how much time and effort is needed to properly support languages that read from the right to the left. You always have to think of this from Valve's point of view. The Hebrew user base is not that large and the effort that is needed to properly support Hebrew might be too much for too little reward.

About the Steam Translation Server:
Currently Valve is not adding any new languages to Steam and this will not change for quite a while. Feel free to create a community group ("Hebrew Translations") for your language though. Find people that support your idea and would offer their help in case your language gets picked to be an official Steam language. You can post the link to your group here, I will add your group to the "Petitioning languages list", which hopefully will soon be public.

[BLASHPHEMY]

Interested in contributing (not fluent, but in an advanced level of ulpan). PM me if this goes anywhere and you need people on-board.

[Mangr0v3]

I can contribute a little, not fluent either. Do you have a supporting Steam Community group?

Ultio: Where is the 'here' to post a SC group link to?

[Mave.ts]

Isn't Turkish from right-to-left as well? Torsten released that a while ago, so that would mean right-to-left support?

[Esat]

Isn't Turkish from right-to-left as well? Torsten released that a while ago, so that would mean right-to-left support?

What? :( It's not, we use Latin alphabet.
Well, a hundred years ago, it was right-to-left actually.

[ultio]

Ultio: Where is the 'here' to post a SC group link to?

You can post it right in this thread or over here (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1244344) ;).

[Mave.ts]

What? :( It's not, we use Latin alphabet.
Well, a hundred years ago, it was right-to-left actually.

Oh right, my mistake. People don't seem to understand how hard it is to actually implement things like right-to-left support. Imagine having to change the way the entire client, games and pages work. It would all need to be re-lined, and oh god. I don't even want to think about it. :<

[Esat]

Oh right, my mistake. People don't seem to understand how hard it is to actually implement things like right-to-left support. Imagine having to change the way the entire client, games and pages work. It would all need to be re-lined, and oh god. I don't even want to think about it. :<

No offense, but I hate people considering Turkey to be an Arabic or a third world country.

[Mangr0v3]

Steam already supports RTL text entry and display in chat, but it might require a partial UI layout redo for the UI to make sense for RTL viewers.

You can post it right in this thread or over here (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1244344) ;).

Thanks, I'll see if I can get together enough people for an EN-AU petition. (Yes, I'm picky.)

[Mave.ts]

No offense, but I hate people considering Turkey to be an Arabic or a third world country.
I thought you guys all ran with a turban in the desert, humping camels everywhere you'd go! Nah, that's over-the-top, but I thought it was arabic-like, haha.
Steam already supports RTL text entry and display in chat, but it might require a partial UI layout redo for the UI to make sense for RTL viewers.


It would require checking if someone his language is ($language == "arabic" || $language == "whateverotherRTLlanguage"), and then link to another CSS, which would be made specifically for RTL users, but that might be a lot more difficult than you might think probably.

[Mangr0v3]

It would require checking if someone his language is ($language == "arabic" || $language == "whateverotherRTLlanguage"), and then link to another CSS, which would be made specifically for RTL users, but that might be a lot more difficult than you might think probably.

The layout files already support Windows-specific and Mac-specific settings, e.g. the location of the notification popups and the font in the console. It can't be too hard to add an RTL check... right?