Important : my position about player run translations
Considering that :
- Translating is a volunteer work, there is no obligation.
- They're useful to people. You're not allowing someone to translate your stuff only to please him/her so that he/she stops "whining".
- It's not up to the translation volunteers to watch out what is going on. It's something that concerns the whole community.
- Translating is not a middle ground task. If you bother about it only afterwards, and not during the design phase of the project, then you don't really want it. If you don't understand that position then you don't want it.
From when this text is posted, my attitude towards translations becomes the following :
- There is no public service.
- I won't watch out what needs to be translated anymore. Don't expect me to translate stuff from my own initiative. Some people don't like to see their stuff being translated without their agreement. It's up to the author of the text / leader of a project to directly ask me for the translation.
- I will only consider demands coming from the author(s) / leader(s).
- Be assured that I will refuse to do a translation if it's asked afterwards. I mean, when translation is not considered as a regular part of the event/project and carried forward.
- Still expect me to refuse to fulfill a demand.
- On the other hand, I won't whine anymore if more than a third of the community is once again treated like second class citizens. I expect people to complain by themselves to our project leaders.
- Lastly, I reserve the right to translate what I wish and, as an exception, to break above rules at will.
Work In Progress
What can be translated in a social MMO
ATITD is a game that heavily relies on social interactions. "Social" implies exchanges in a human readable form. Humans use languages like english, spanish, german or french to communicate. Supporting multiple languages means having a game that is fully playable using several human languages. There basically are two kinds of interactions in a social game :
- game between players (GbP) : includes every text that the game may display, official communications, newsletters, official website, and so on. The staff is responsible of that. This is called translation & localization (yes, these are two separate works).
- players between players (PbP) : include everything that is ever typed or said by the players and related to the game. If several spoken languages are mixed in the same server, this part is up to the players (though tools provided by the game / how the game is designed can help greatly or ruin the experience).
a game is perfectly localized in a given language when people speaking that language feel the game was initially designed in that language and not translated/localized. "great quality" GbP localization is a reasonable goal to set (even though, reading from a few others games forums/bulletins this is a more difficult work that it seems). PbP requires an honest cooperation from the whole player base to work. Obviously, achieving a great quality PbP localization would be very difficult and ask too much work from the players, but goods results can be got if a few rules are respected by the whole playerbase.
Staff run
- Builtin texts : tests, items, menus, etc.
- Lexicon updated here http://atitd.mondespersistants.com/?rubrique=92
- Events description and content
- System messages
- Announces, newsletters, emails, any official communication
- Official website
- Game Support at any level (GM, DEV, BILLING)
Player run
The huge list shows how much social ATITD really is :
- Unofficial News and announcements
- Important chats (ENN, Events, etc.)
- Wiki
- Items library, buildings and resources + index pages
- Test pages
- Guides
- Event pages
- Some user pages
- Some guild pages
- Important Microphone announcements and events. Requires to watch various microphones a lot
- Important informal events that occurs on various "public" channels which are not described on any permanent support.
- Legal system
- Laws
- Codes of conduct
- Player run events
- rules
- speeches (i.e. marriage)
- directives
- possible stellas, sculpture titles, etc.
- Tests
- Veneries
- Bureaux
- Festival
- Announcements
- Rules
- Dates
- Guides
- RT chats
- Demi-Pharaoh
- Real time chats (if any non english speaker there)
- Introductions
- Public debates
- Any annoucement that may be made on a microphone,...
- All day life
- welcome people, point them, answer questions, give directions
- Allow trading and exchanges between people who don't speak a common language
- Send new players to mentors and guilds
When it goes to an issue
Overview
It seems most English speaking players find it very difficult to understand the localization problem and to see the implications of it. Maybe I should go with an example :
Settling
Imagine you arrive (in real life!) in Egypt with the goal to settle there. You speak English. The majority of the population, of course, speaks Egyptian. Officially, the country supports the 2 languages so that most of the textual content you can find everywhere is written using both languages : signs in the street, official announces at the Town Hall, titles, names of shops and goods description too. But most of the people knows only one language, major one being Egyptian. As a consequence, you can't communicate directly with Egyptians.
Now, you're alone, in the middle of the street, carrying a bag full of brick racks. People around seem nice and wave at you when they pass by, whatever the language they speak. You meet many people. Imagine hanging around in the middle of a crowded street, hearing many people talking a language you don't understand. You can communicate with the one who speak English. So you start to interact with them. Of course, you're going to ask them hints, you'll probably build your house near theirs so that it's easier for you to find help. You're invited to come with them. You're taking part in the English speaking community and contributing to make it grow, but not much to Egyptian one since you can't interact at lot with them.
A few weeks or months later, you have settled there. you probably learned a few words or sentences in Egyptian so that you can buy and sell basic goods with them. Of course you can't have more than really basic conversations with them. Fortunately, a few people speak both language (some better than other) and can punctually help, when they're available. In the end, you interacts a lot with English speaking people but not with others. To your eyes, there are two communities.
Elections in a mixed environment
One day, Egyptian Government organize elections for a key position for the life of the town. No matter which one but this a really enviable job, which gives nice privileges. As usual, every official announcement and text about that subject are published in both languages. As many people will want to take part, official rules state that several private rounds must take place before the public voting period, in order to eliminate many people quickly. In each round, people are randomly chosen to go in a room, in group of 7, to debate and vote until there is either 0 or 1 remainder. This is up to the candidates to organize and run their campaign. Most rounds have a majority of Egyptians players, who discuss in Egyptian. You're the only one to speak English in yours and don't really understand what's going on in your round. You have a book to help with translations, but people speak fast, they don't really pay attention to your clumsy attempts. (OK in real ATITD most first rounds are dead but the idea is still valid). They vote, the round ends, an Egyptian wins the round.
When you get out of the room, you discuss with other English people. All got similar results. It doesn't sound fair to you. One or two bilingual people managed to win their first round because they know quite well the two communities (in addition to being good). Rounds continue to go on.
A few days later, the final rounds takes place. All 7 candidates are Egyptian. They advertise in Egyptian, do their campaign in Egyptian. A debate in Egyptian is planned as well. A few bilingual people try to translate texts produced by Egyptian. They can only translate written words (adverts, etc.), not spoken ones (speeches, oral discussions in the street, etc.). Since translation requires time, they're often ready a few hours to up to a day later.
Now, to be honest, you must admit you're not that interested in choosing an Egyptian among other Egyptians. Firstly, you're still a bit disappointed because you had no fair opportunity to show your skills (and you think you'd be suited for that job). But, at least you could try choose the good person. Secondly, the worst part is that you can't honestly judge people you don't know very well. you don't melt with Egyptians a lot. You can only read the few translated text that you see around. You can't ask them questions. You can't read everything you see because translators can't translate everything. You don't feel impacted by elections, since they seem to happen in the Egyptian community.
Demi-Pharaoh Test in ATITD
Players who don't speak English feel they are left aside :
Rounds They think they can't take part in rounds because they're lost in these English speaking channels. The test is very competitive and it's easier to leave someone aside. Traditional language in rounds channels is English. Even passing the principle can be very difficult. They quickly loose interest in the test and, after a few attempts, don't try to take part anymore.
Voting They already lost interest in the test during the previous phase, ok ? If you get disappointed because you couldn't participated in an activity (and feel it isn't fair ! Remember that the game officially supports 3 languages) and loose interest, there's chance you will totally loose this interest. Worst : most advertising takes place in English, as campaigns an debates. As a result you don't feel concerned with votes a lot, except if someone you know shows up.
What is really weird is a DP is always elected at the end of each DP session, whatever happens during rounds. Even if now ad took place or all 7 candidates were bad.
Thinking about solutions
I focused on DP because it's the most visible and most important related to communication between communities who speaks different languages. Once a valid solutions is found for DP, that would greatly help with other language and communities related issues.
Popular belief and such
Various ideas
Something that should work for the last public voting round :- Public round is announced.
- Ask all candidates to post, as early as they can, an introduction either on the forum or on the wiki, but the place must be the same for all. A page / new forum thread is promptly created / prepared.
- These texts are translated in other languages if translators are available.
- Public debate date is announced. As for festivals dates, the same hour/day should always been picked up over rounds. No suprise. Any impromptu change should be announced as early as possible, and repeated often.
- Since debates might be commented/summarized/translated (according to translators availabilities and skills) in RT, they should not go too fast (leave some gap between questions, have a way to communicate with translators, who might need to look up difficult words / slangs, etc.)
- Questions should be made available before the event to translators, if possible.
Translations tools ideas
Firefox Extension
- Drop down lists parsed from existing wiki
- Lists shows item names without wiki code (Student's Casting Box)
- Once Chosen in one of the list, an item may
- be pasted as it is in the page, in wiki code [Student's Casting Box]?, under the cursor.
- be translated according to the wiki, and that word pasted in the page, at current cursor position.
