As you know, currently CCP client only supports English, German, French, Russian and Japanese. (Unofficial) access to Chinese will probably be cut off in the upcoming patch. There are quite lot of people troubled by not having localization in a language they understand.
I know CCP has difficulty addressing this issue–they have to spend money and human resource before they can support a language. Even if CCP is benevolent and decides to work on Chinese or other language’s localization, it will still be months before that is done. While some people are trying to communicate with CCP, we can also talk abbout what we players can do by ourselves: helping others understand what the game is about when language is a problem.
I know many of you would just say “learn English/other supported language” at this step. As a person who had learned another language from scratch I know how difficult it is. Fortunately, to learn enough English/other supported language sufficient to play the game is way easier than to learn the whole language. You need to understand only the fraction of the language about what you have and what you are doing in game. And some times you don’t even need to understand the text because the icon is more convenient.
But as a person who can communicate well in English I still find it difficult to imagine what kind of difficulty those who are less proficient have. And I may still missing something good. So I need your advice on what are the problems and how can we help others.
One idea would be to have someone who knows both English and Chinese to write a list of ship names in English with the Chinese name next to them (or vice versa). Then for someone to add to the list with as many guns/module names as they can. From this point the community can continue to compile this list with important EVE references.
This list of EVE-related translations would serve as a handy reference for Chinese players. It isn’t perfect, but it would be something.
make it a corp feature that you have speakers of one of the supported languages who can help with translation and comms with other corp. Maybe use the set name function and name your ships in your native language. Again a useful corp feature would be prefit corp ships to dish out to players too.
I think new play experience is a problem. Many of new players get stuck even when they are playing in the right language. And there are just so many crazy possibilities that could’t be covered in a video tutorial. Assistance from others speaking the same language is very helpful in that moment.
In this instance I suggest seeding the starter player stations with MTU’s named as advertisements for your corp in your native language. Direct new players to a chat channel using your native language also. They can ask for and receive far better advice from existing players that the NPE will ever give.
It would be funny if CCP made even just the UI in the Icelandic language for a few days. They wouldn’t for business reasons, but it would be amusing.
OP, many people who did not speak English and whose first language was not supported by the game have played EvE. Many. If they can overcome obstacles to playing this great game than certainly a highly resourceful group such as Chinese players can.
The only way we’re likely to get new localizations is if machine translations are good enough to do the job. Otherwise it’s too much work - you not only need to create the localization, you need to maintain it as changes are made to the game.
Alphabet have only few letters, chinese ideograms are in thousands, just learn letters and words are constructed out of them. If people could master chinese, they could master english with ease.
Sigh…and what if they just don’t care, or even do things you don’t want? And you’ll just look like idiot(s) who draw CCP’s attention to the problem and forever be blamed for everything CCP does. That doesn’t sound nice and it actually happened to me.
I know is not easy. Some people have bugged me “I can’t learn this much just in a short amount of time!” I would tell them you should try to learn step by step. Who can just learn everything, from NPE, to lore, to ship stats overnight? Or do you have to learn everything overnight just to play the game? Even those who knows English wouldn’t say that. For example, the second time I do the SoE arc I just went for the standing and barely remembers the lore. Is it just normal learn something everyday, from the basics, to what the ships do, to the lore of the game.
I am deeply worried that this incident on localization is creating a lot of division between Chinese players who read English well and those who don’t–not to count those vicious demagogues who wanted to create more division and even put political division into this, while many good people are also working towards a solution to the problem and the division it caused. I had seen many constructive feedbacks from this forum and reddit, and other communities. Thanks for that.
Still, the paradox is that although CCP does not object to localization in any languages, the only way we know to access this localization at the moment lies in the grey area in which benign and malicious uses are both possible. Some people say it is the only way, while some others say there can be other better ways. Only time will tell who is right.
I was actually kicked out by them because I talked of this issue before and they all thought that was my fault making CCP aware. I know they’ll eventually calm down but that takes time.
It is still alive and I assume they are able to make enough money to make it alive. But the content haven’t be updated since Oct 2016 (except a few minor, serenity-only events), and there are some problems like rmt and botting. So many people are worried about it. Serenity being alive is also a pull factor for those who try to decide which server to play.
About 8(?) years ago I was in a German speaking corp where none of the leaders could speak sufficient english and since I speak both languages fluently I was shoehorned into the role of translator.
Sure, this is not quite the same situation since the actual client supports german but for fleets and PVP we simply set up a whisper on comms so all the german-only speakers could ask me if they didn‘t understand something.
Later we also created a glossary with common sentences and terms that are often used in fleets.
It worked quite well and many of the german-only members quickly learned the basics and didn‘t require much translations.