Despite the fact that the developers have repeatedly replied to numerous translation requests that it is practically impossible to do so, I managed to do it (it took more than half a year of work during evenings and sometimes weekends). So why was it so difficult and why did I do it?

If you're not interested in details, you can scroll down to the IMPORTANT part right away.

First, the game is based on the company's unique narrative engine named Inky, which works exclusively in English according to its rules. What this means among other things is that the game has a bunch of "phrase constructors" where a phrase is created from individual words for which there are many synonyms. This is done so that in one run or walkthrough, the character said something like "We can find the new place now thanks to the new information", and in another, the phrase will be changed to, say, "We may find this area using the clues we have found". The meaning is the same, although almost all the words have changed. It doesn't really make much difference in terms of replayability (you won't remember what exact words someone said during the previous playthrough anyway), but it does make it very difficult to translate. It is impossible to translate constructors that work according to the rules of English into another language with all of its nuances and with full adherence to its rules, so in several places where these constructors are heavily used the resulting phrases will look unnatural.

Secondly, in English there is no distinction between formal and informal “you”, there are no gender forms of words, there are a bunch of other things that Russian language rules require. For this, I had to edit the formal or informal depending on the context, who is talking to whom. In the constructor of the artifact names (yes, the game has one), it is impossible to take into account the gender forms without changing the code, so there are inconsistences where some of the words are in female form and some in male (German and many other language speakers might understand this difficulty right away).

Third, it's a huge amount of text - it's a real interactive book (and a big one). In the final translation, about 44,000 phrases (!) consisting of almost 220,000 words (that's just under two volumes of Tolstoy's War and Peace) have been replaced, each of which is edited by hand and, as far as possible, adjusted to fit different situations where it can be used (see point one for why this is the case).

Fourth, the sheer variability. Almost all possible places can be visited in any order, some places can be returned to many times (but some places will be impossible to return to), you can miss some places at all and still complete the game, and so on. Therefore, the game has dozens, if not hundreds, of different cases in dialogs, when the player already knows something, and something not because completely ignored the first location for example.

Fifth, and this is the cherry on the cake - the central part of the game is the translation of the signs of a forgotten ancient language into English (now Russian). It has a strict logical structure (more complex words are made up of simple words, and simple words are made up of elementary concepts) - unfortunately, the authors themselves did not always follow this structure, i.e. using a verb as an adjective. There are about 1900 words in its dictionary, which must be all unique, and if the dictionary contains even one mistake or does not match the dictionary in the saved game, the game will simply hang up on launch. These peculiarities turned out to be a really unpleasant surprise when three months of time were spent, the translated game worked with English Ancient dictionary but hung up with a dictionary error when trying to add the translated dictionary and the developers ignored my request for help in finding the problematic words, sadly. I had to figure out everything myself, add new words, synonyms, etc.

And the last question - why? I started this translation as a kind of test of my ability to translate such a huge and complex in terms of text logic game on my own, whether I could do it. I can already say that it was a success, although I originally estimated to do it in three months instead of seven.

The game is really good, but relatively difficult English coupled with the inability to pause all the dialogs (the lines disappear after a few seconds even if you set them to the minimum speed, so you can play it only in the language you know well, preferably in your native language) meant people who don't know English good enough can't play it. I hope that with the help of my translation Russian-speaking fans of literature, archaeology and history (and even philosophy) will be able to enjoy it fully.

Saves are incompatible with the English version, because all the vocabulary of the Ancient language is written to the save file at the beginning of the new game, and this vocabulary, of course, is translated into Russian. If you have previously started or are currently playing the English version, you will still have an English save files and the game will hang up when you start the Russian version. To prevent this from happening, you need to delete (or move somewhere else) the game's save folder, which is located at Users\{folder with your username}\AppData\LocalLow\Inkle Ltd, as well as prevent Steam from downloading it from Steam cloud (for example, by disabling the cloud saves in the game properties).

Originally posted by Player:

But "Heaven's Vault" doesn't translate to "Небесный ключ" ("Heaven's Key")!

Yes, it's a literary translation. Why, it will become clear to you closer to the end of the game, otherwise it's a spoiler.

Originally posted by Player:

Words minute, hour, month, year are left in English

Unfortunately, it looks like they are displayed on the screen using the same function that calculates the time in the entire game (puts the event on the timeline, reads time from specially formatted internal files, etc.), so this change can really go wrong and broke a vital part of the game. This is not a big deal since you'll see them only at the top of the timeline screen and several dialogue phrases.

Originally posted by Player:

I saw some other remaining English word, here's a screenshot

Thanks - leave a link to the screenshot or screenshots in the comments, I'll try to find the cause and fix it. Unfortunately, in very rare cases it won't work - sometimes authors put the variable name directly into the character's speech, so one can't translate it without editing the code.

Originally posted by Player:

The character says some strange phrase, as if it was translated by an old and dumb translation software!

Yes, as I wrote above, not all phrase constructors turned out to be perfect in Russian. Strange looking phrases remained during the navigation (hints where to turn), in the names of artefacts, in the main character's thoughts about the correctness of the translation of the words of the Ancient language, but the meaning should be possible to understand everywhere without problems. The main volume of the text (about 95%) is translated and proofread as carefully as possible.

Originally posted by Player:

A character spoke to someone in polite form of "you" in Russian and suddenly switched to informal one or vice versa.

Thanks - please leave a link to the screenshot or screenshots in the comments, I'll try to find the cause and fix it.

Originally posted by Player:

I'm stuck, I can't progress here, maybe there's a mistake?

This situation is unlikely (I've already complete the game with translation installed almost twice in different ways, correcting it on the fly), but it is possible because of its variability. Give me a link to the archive with your saved game in the comments (zip the Users\{folder with your username}AppData\LocalLow\Inkle Ltd folder) and I will try to find and fix the problem, if there is one.

To install the translation, download this zip archive and unpack it into the folder with the game, overwriting the original files (to remove the translation, just check the game files integrity using Steam and it will restore the original ones, but don't forget to delete the save folder with the Russian dictionary as well).

https://cloud.mail.ru/public/CEn7/6LPvGjNZg

Enjoy the game! Take your time, this game is like a good book that needs to be enjoyed, not rushed.