Implementation and translator within the game

Ah… the rehashes of prior points from prior posts…

Translation of the game client is plausible if and only if market research suggests it would draw in and retain a considerable number of new players so as to pay for the very expensive initial and ongoing translation effort. Just because native Spanish speakers comprise a humongous chunk of the world’s population does not mean that they would comprise an increased proportionate or near proportionate chunk of EVE’s potential player base. The reality is that many (perhaps most) Spanish speakers who would be interested in, educated enough, and can afford to play EVE happen to speak English as a second language. This I’ve observed this trend to be true among those from multiple cultures and speakers of other languages, including non-European languages.

In EVE, those who speak English as a second language or who don’t speak English at all quickly recognize it is in their best interest to learn/speak English as the primary means of communication to interact with other players or join better player groups (ie. the better player groups might not be in their native language, and starting your own group is no guarantee of success or even fun just because you band together fellow native language speakers) - as such, they often join English corps/alliances, or at least aren’t terribly inconvenienced if they aren’t in a group that speaks their native language. In EVE, English is a necessity - no amount of translation or translation software is going to ever change that. Along the same lines, this is why all around the world most institutions of higher learning, professional conferences and publications, terminology in science and technology and medicine, etc are in English.

Even integrating translation software is expensive and unnecessary in a game that all but demands having multiple windows open that you’d either alt-tab between or have on multiple monitors for just about any activity (PVE, PVP, industry, marketing, etc) - there is nothing stopping you from copying and pasting into Google. If you use an overlay such as EVE Vision, you can have Google Translate in the game itself (this is not an endorsement). The heavy use of EVE-specific terminology and slang would be lost in translation in any case (even if performed by a fluent but EVE/MMORPG-ignorant translator), so it’s not as if translators would solve the problem.

Enlisting enough Spanish-speaking ISD so as to open a Spanish forum category is a highly achievable goal, however. This costs little to nothing to do and would make the game more inclusive.

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