Grokking Megalettering

 

Hello there! In this Tutorial, I'll guide you through the typical way of how a new Megatokyo-Strip is translated (or lettered, hence the name) using Megalettering.

Our first step is to know what we deal with.

 

  1. Knowing the Editor

 

Look at this Pic: editor.png

I marked every spot with ared number. These spots mark the following:

  1. The actual Strip that's going to be translated or lettered.
  2. The language-selector.
  3. Strip-selector
  4. Baloon-selector. We'll get into this later
  5. Debug-selector. This is normally not used.
  6. The Strip-section. Here you can change the number of the script, the name of the Strip ("Text"), the Date of publication. You can even assign a thread in the forums to it.
  7. The Baloon-section. This is the heart of megalettering, and the only thing you normally change in here is the "Character"-combobox. This one is used to determine who said what.

Now, take a look at this one - editor2.png

  1. The Text-section. Here you add the translated text.
  2. The Console with the rants. This is pretty self-explanatory :3

 

 

Ok, so now that we know where everyhing is, we can start the fun, ne?

In this example, I'll show you how I translated Strip number 410 into german.

 

First step:

First, I entered the number of the Strip in the appropiate field in section (6) ("ID of the Strip") --> number 410. I also added the translated name of the strip in the "Text" field, added the date of publication in the "Date" field. Since we don't have a forum now (well.. we are not online now :3), I left the "Forum"-Field alone.

Then, I clicked the "Insert / Update" button and...nothing happened. But don't you worry....

 

2nd step:

Then, I went to (3) ("Strip") and voila – I could choose strip number 410 from there.

I did, and like magic, the strip appeared to the left in english.

 

 

 

 

3rd step:

Now that we have this strip here, we wanna translate it.

Megalettering handles text with polygones. That means we have to click around the text we wanna translate, to mark the apex. I this case, I clicked around the "l33t f0lding skillz" with the left mousebutton. Please leave some spare-place, as very often you need more space in your language than in english, or you just can't come up with a direct translation.

Now try it with your example. You'll notice that if you did it right, the coordinates of the polygone will appear in section (7), in the "shape" box.

Ok, now that you've done that (I suggest it's better to click "too often" as one time to lesser than it may needed. Once finished, just click on "Insert".

 

4th step:

Ok, now for the fun: select the baloon you've just added with (4) ("Baloon").

Now scroll down to the text-box at (8) and insert the translation in here.

There are various different fonts you should use. Here they are:

 

 

<fonts-table>

 

After you've done this, simply hit "Update". You could also use "trim" to trim the lines. Now you should see you text (HINT: If you don't, you should make a complete reload of the page (shift+reload in Mozilla/Firebird)).

After that, go back to the polygone-box, press the "poly" button to reset the values in there, set the Baloon-chooser back to "Baloon" and off you go with the next baloon.

 

 

Now repeat step 3 and 4 until you are finished :3

 

5th step

 

Now just fill in the rants (that's pretty self-explanatory), and you're done :3