Official 5e Adventure module translation plausible ?

[Swissman65]

Hello there,

I was wondering if a translation of an official, already created, 5e adventure module would be plausible, here's my reasoning:

I own a copy "Rise of the drow: collector's edition 5e", to my surprise there is a soon-to-be-released translated version in French which will be in physical/pdf form by Black-Book-Editions (https://black-book-editions.fr/produit.php?id=27351)
I remembered that there is one other adventure module that exists in French: "The haunt" sadly I do not own it to see how they did it, but I might know what are the main obstacles to translating an adventure module might be:

obviously NPC stats block will have to remain in english (to let FGU automate the dice attacks, Saving throws etc)
various damage types must remain in english

unless I'm missing something else major, if we keep the important working bits in english, then it must be a question of keeping the format of how the text is displayed in the Reference manual, potential images swapping and possibly the story entries.

(Keep in mind I'm not asking anyone to do it, in fact if this is indeed plausible I would voluntarily do that kind of work)

now ,let's face it, the french community on FGU is rather small that's where I don't know if a full price French-only version might be the best idea, that's where I thought about extensions. Could we, as an extension, Require the initial english version of the module to buy the (let's say 10 bucks) extension which is basically the same module but with modified text in French?

now I guess if I want to try it that way I'll have to get permission from AAW games(original publisher), Rob Twohy(module creator) and Black-Book-Editions (Translation)
the "10$" could then be split among everyone using the Royalty Recipients feature from the forge?

To summarise my questions in regards to this idea would be:
is it plausible?
Would there a better way to do it?
is this simply a bad idea?

please let me know your thoughts! I personally think this could be a great way to bring more French-speaking people to FGU since this adventure is quite complete (from lvl 1-20)

[LordEntrails]

Translations are tough. FG was never designed for localization. And as you noted, it would require that anything used for automation remain in English so that the parsing still works. But there are parts that could certainly be done. And I know at one time there was a fairly active community project before it died out. See here: LanguagePak (LPak) Community Project/Program (fantasygrounds.com) (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?27202-LanguagePak-(LPak)-Community-Project-Program)
That will probably give you the most in depth detail of what is and isn't possible, as well as an approach, that at one point in time seemed like the best approach.

[Swissman65]

Translations are tough. FG was never designed for localization. And as you noted, it would require that anything used for automation remain in English so that the parsing still works. But there are parts that could certainly be done. And I know at one time there was a fairly active community project before it died out. See here: LanguagePak (LPak) Community Project/Program (fantasygrounds.com) (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?27202-LanguagePak-(LPak)-Community-Project-Program)
That will probably give you the most in depth detail of what is and isn't possible, as well as an approach, that at one point in time seemed like the best approach.

Yeah I've gone through this thread already since I made FrenchUI (https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/1318/view)
that's a shame it died though.

I'm purposely targeting an adventure module for a potential translation since it contains limited amounts of automation behind it (instead for example the player's handbook which is full of them )

From what I've heard the change from feet to meters isn't a big deal, only the default light effects need to be changed, the extension Meters & Kilograms (https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/1336/view) solves that.

same with pounds to kilograms, haven't automated the change yet, but I don't think it is automated somewhere natively

So yeah if we are left with changing non-automated text, that could go a long way, this adventure has about ~300 pages of text related to descriptions,narrative,dialogs which would be awesome to get it translated in an official manner!

even though if the French version isn't as polished as the original one, if my idea of working on an extension could work, every user could always go back to the original if they aren't pleased with the translated version

[Zacchaeus]

I doubt that an extension would be able to translate text or even used to replace existing text. You'd have to create it as a module which could be loaded within Fantasy Grounds. Sounds like you'd need the reference manual at least; I don't know what else is in that module but as you say anything that doesn't create some kind of automation could be translated.

If you want to create a French version Smteworks and AAW Games would have to figure out a publishing agreement just for that version before you embarked on the project.

[Swissman65]

yeah I was talking about extensions because on the forge you can send .mod files as well so, yeah, it would be only a .mod file with probably the reference manual,stories and images translated.

or maybe I'm getting the "Royalty recipients" feature of the forge wrong and doesn't work the way I'm thinking.

anyway, of course, I'll have to get agreements from everyone involved before doing anything