Skip to content

Community translations

You can help translate Signs of Life without writing code. Work happens on GitHub, in the browser. Contributions are optional and unpaid. You must be at least 18. The studio may edit, combine, or decline what you send, and may use accepted text in Signs of Life. Inclusion and credit are not guaranteed.

The project lives here:

SignsOfLife-CommunityLocalization

Read the Translation Contributor Terms before you send anything. Opening a pull request and signing the form is how you agree to those Terms.

What you are doing

English examples sit in english/Config/. Each language has a folder such as locales/es/ (Spanish) or locales/fr/ (French). Those folders are ordinary locale packs: they overlay English text. Anything you leave empty stays English in-game.

You change player-facing words. You leave identifiers alone: ID, ItemID, SaveName, keys like item.ammo, and tokens such as {0}, [lightkey], or @AGIS@.

{
  "ID": "item.ammo",
  "Text": "Ammo"
}

In a locale file, translate "Ammo". Do not change "item.ammo". Keep the quotes, commas, and curly braces. A missing comma can break the whole file, so change a few lines at a time.

Do not copy the english/ folder into a locale folder.

Rules that will get a submission rejected

  • Machine translation or generative AI (DeepL, Google Translate, ChatGPT, and similar). Ordinary spelling and grammar checkers are fine.
  • Text copied from unofficial patches, other games, websites, subtitle files, or other third-party sources.
  • Submitting someone else's translation under your name.
  • Being under 18.

GitHub in the browser

You do not need Git on your computer.

  1. Create a GitHub account if you do not have one.
  2. Open the localization repository.
  3. Click Fork, then create the fork under your account.
  4. In your fork, open locales/, pick your language, then Config/, then a file (start with UILocalization.json if you are unsure).
  5. Open the file and click the pencil (Edit this file).
  6. Translate the quoted player-facing text. Commit to a new branch in your fork (GitHub offers this when you save).
  7. GitHub will offer Contribute / Open pull request. Use that. It points at the studio repository.
  8. Fill in the template: language, a short summary, third-party sources (None unless you have permission to name one), and the checkboxes.
  9. Wait for a CLA Assistant comment. Open that link, sign in with GitHub, and confirm you are 18 and that you did not use machine translation or generative AI. Every person who authored a commit on the pull request must sign, not only the person who opened it.

You choose what and how much to translate. There are no quotas or deadlines.

Voice and markup details are in the repository's TRANSLATING.md. The full submit rules are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Try a pack in the game

Each locales/<code>/ folder is a mod pack.

  1. Copy that folder into Documents/My Games/Signs of Life/Mods.
  2. In Mods, enable it, then Load Now or restart.
  3. Enable only one locale pack at a time. The last loaded overlay wins.

Accepted work, if used, is expected to ship as community or Steam Workshop locale packs unless the studio later ships an official language separately.