What are CSV files

CSV files are regular text files that organize data in tabular form. That means that the data is organized in rows and columns forming a table. However, the file contents doesn't look like a table, but just like a bunch of text separated by a separator character. Their name "CSV" stands for "Comma-Separated Values", as in different text values separated by a , character. Although in practice they can use other separators such as ; or tabulators.

Only when these files are open in a spreadsheet editor they actually look like a table.

For example, if you click here you can see how the CSV file for X-wing in English looks when displayed as a table.

But what the file really contains is this, which is just a regular text file, where every row from the table is a line in the file, and every column is some text separated by a separated character, that for us is usually the ; character.

How to edit CSV files

You can choose to work with these files as you prefer. Use a regular text editor if you don't mind it looking like just text separated by semicolons. Otherwise, you can use Excel or other Spreadsheet software to import them there, edit them, then export them back to .csv files. If you decide to use some spreadsheet software, then we asume you know how to do this (import, edit, and export back to .csv) without messing them up. We are not going to explain those programs here.

It is important that you respect the character used as separator in all lines and columns to be always the same. Don't use slightly different unicode characters as separators in the same file. For example the regular semicolon ; character is not the same as the small semicolon ﹔ character used in some Asian languages, or other similar-looking symbols.

If you decide to work with just a regular text editor:

If you are editing the .csv files from a regular text editor, if you need to use the separator character as part of a value, wrap the value in double quotes. For example, if a line contains

ContainerA;CON-A;M;<name>;;

And <name> must contain the ; symbol as part of the name (which should not happen, but who knows), then make sure you wrap <name> in double quotes like "<name>". So, for example, if the translation for Container-A is Contenedor; Tipo A, then the final line would look like this:

ContainerA;CON-A;M;"Contenedor; Tipo A";;

How to translate XWVM's CSV files

There are two .csv files per locale: one for X-wing craft types, and one for TIE Fighter's craft types.

The first line is just describing the column headers. Do not translate this line.

SPECIES_ID;ABBR;GENDER;ONE;FEW;MANY;OTHER;CLASSIFIER;DEFINITE_ART

From the second line and on, each line translates one entry of the craft type table.

SPECIES_ID;ABBR;GENDER;ONE;FEW;MANY;OTHER;CLASSIFIER;DEFINITE_ART
None;;;None;;;None;;
XWing;X-W;;X-wing;;;X-wings;;
YWing;Y-W;;Y-wing;;;Y-wings;;
AWing;A-W;;A-wing;;;A-wings;;
TIEFighter;T/F;;TIE Fighter;;;TIE Fighters;;

The SPECIES_ID column

The first column is the SPECIES_ID column. A "species" is how the game refers to a craft type. We will use that term from now on. The Species ID is the internal name for that species. You must not translate the contents of this first column, since it is what will help the game match your translations to its internal values.

For example, for X-wings, the species id is XWing. For TIE Fighters, the species id is TIEFighter. The Id is case sensitive, so don't alter it in any way.

The ABBR column

The second column is ABBR. This column is supposed to be the abbreviation that represents the species in the targeting computer, map, briefings, etc. It's the very short way (usually 3 characters tops) to refer to this species. It usually is a short form of the full species name. But it is up to you how you want to translate the abbreviations. For X-Wings the abbreviation is X-W, and for TIE Fighters it is T/F, in English language. Why Rebel craft use a - while Imperial craft use a / to separate the initials of the words is an arbitrary choice. But, for this example, when we translated X-wings and TIE Fighters to Spanish, the translations were "Alas-X" and "Cazas TIE", and the abbreviations became "A-X" and "T/C".

The GENDER column

Certain languages have gendered words. English doesn't. But many other languages do, such as German, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, etc. This column is meant to have a single character to denote gender. Usually M for masculine, F for feminine, and N for neutral (if your language has neutrals). But you can enter here whatever you need for your language (or nothing, if your language doesn't make use of genders). For example, Swedish has Common gender and Neutral gender, so a Swedish translator would use here the C and N characters. While Chinese doesn't have genders, so a Chinese translator would leave this column blank. Whatever you enter here is up to you, becuase it will be used by you later on when translating sentences that need different versions depending on number and/or gender. So just make sure whatever you use is brief and easy to use and remember.

The ONE column

The ONE colum is mandatory and it is there to contain the name of the species in singular form. That is, to represent one individual of the species. All languages must have a way to refer to one of whatever, so enter here the word for that.

The ZERO, TWO, FEW, and MANY columns

There is a number of columns that are totally optional to include. Only some languages require multiple plural forms for a species to denote none, 2, a few, and many of something (such as Russian, or Arabic). If your language needs these columns, include them. Otherwise you can skip them, they don't need to be present if your language doesn't use them.

The order of the columns matters. The game picks the plural form by counting the columns your language provides, in this order: ZERO, ONE, TWO, FEW, MANY, OTHER. Always keep that order.

The OTHER column

The OTHER column is the column that most languages use for representing plurals. English, as well as Spanish, French, Italian, etc use column ONE for singular, and OTHER for plurals to represent amounts other than one (which includes 0).

If your language doesn't make use of plurals, it's okay to leave this column blank, though.

Extra columns

Your language might have additional needs, such as numeric classifiers (Japanese), which definite article is to be used with a certain word (German), etc. Whatever you consider your language would need to correctly use a species name in a sentence, you can try entering it in an extra column. We included the CLASSIFIER, and DEFINITE_ART columns as placeholder, that most of the supported languages don't use and leave blank. But if you need more columns, just feel free to rename these or add new ones. (If you are using a regular text editor, please make sure that when you add more columns, you add also more separator characters to each line to keep the file format correct).

The game internally doesn't know what to do with these columns. It will just pass them all to you along with the actual number of individuals and you will need to use them yourself in the XLIFF files to correctly form sentences. We will see that in their section.