Implementation and translator within the game

You left me thinking with your previous post and really there reason on your part the necessary equipment is must be large to conform

by the way idiot Iā€™m not that extra part

I could ask you to close the topic

So if CCP were to do this, I can see it being implemented one of two ways.

First, you have a team set up an actual translator in-game. Thatā€™s a lot of work and not an easy task. All of the money they spend on developing a working translator would be money better spent on EVE Online.

or

Second, you license out translation software from another company, and hope they donā€™t require messages sent to their own servers for translation because thatā€™s now gonna bring up some privacy issues. Think about it. A 3rd party monitoring EVERYTHING you type in game so that it can send your messages to a server that translates it into a bunch of other languages on the off chance that person receiving it speaks another language? Not to mention the cost of licensing out that software.

Both are terrible ideas.

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CCP may well base their localisation priority on player locations, it could be that Spanish speakers are a minority in Eve despite it being one of the major languages of the world.

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As one who has been responsible for local-language implementations of commercial packages around the world, Iā€™d just like to say that thereā€™s absolutely nothing trivial about it - and thatā€™s even before you start allowing for local variations within a given countryā€¦

I dont see american or british english option in eve anyway, so it would have to stay uniform as much as its possible. The game is sci fi anyway and the boundaries for whats ok are shifted a bit.

Itā€™d be a pig with Spanish given that itā€™s so widespread, and that so many countries speak their own variation of it; my Spanish has a Latin American accent and vocabulary thanks to my ex, which confuses the hell out of the locals when I visit my parents in Spain; especially when I switch between it and my natural West Country English accent.

Arenā€™t they both Celtic in origin ? I had a friend who went on holiday to the Greek islands, and found that Welsh was actually sufficient to communicate with the locals.

Depends on who you ask, in the West Country there are certainly Brythonic/Celtic influences but there is just as much of a West Saxon (Germanic) influence. Accent wise itā€™s probably the closest thing to something you would have heard in Alfred the Greatā€™s court.

I canā€™t comment on the origins of Spanish as I just donā€™t know, I do know that my Latin American accent is seen as somewhat odd, especially for someone from the UK.

Ahā€¦ the rehashes of prior points from prior postsā€¦

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 worldā€™s population does not mean that they would comprise an increased proportionate or near proportionate chunk of EVEā€™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 Iā€™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 donā€™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 arenā€™t terribly inconvenienced if they arenā€™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 youā€™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 itā€™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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It is funny a bit how WoW creators discovered that spanish players do indeed exist and actually make a big portion of players, big enough that it justifies 2 translations, in spanish and mexican spanish, and EVE creators didnt stumble upon that.

Also the fact EVE got korean localization so fast after being bought by PA, suggests that in CCP there is no market research in that direction. Its in PA, if anywhere.

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Like how the Russians have their own community within New Eden and yet most can also communicate in English.

@ Archer en Tilavine Good write up.

EVE does not have even one fifth of the gravity WoW has when it comes to attracting and retaining players. You cannot compare the potential player bases of EVE and WoW when the sizes are totally different. WoW is an extremely high-profile, universally acclaimed, highly accessible game, whereas fewer people have heard of EVE, not many people would enjoy playing it, and not many people are smart enough to play it (unless they want to stick to low level PVE forever). WoW is large enough to justify a Spanish localization (or even two), but EVE can barely justify - if at all - a Spanish localization when, as stated before, almost the entirety of its highly-educated player base speaks/is learning English or gets along fine using translator in a game that demands multi-windows/overlays anyway.

But isnt that also because of lack of investment in localizations?
Which came first: the chicken or the egg. :thinking:

No. EVE is intrinsically unpalatable and inaccessible gameplay-wise to most. Investment in localization has to pay off to be worthwhile. The reality is that failure to localize does NOT pose a barrier to entry given all of the above which Iā€™m not going to restate.

The goal of localization is to create an enjoyable, non-confusing play experience for the end user by paying heed to their specific cultural context while being faithful to the source material.

So, less barriers to entry, isnt it?
Just imagine playing game, but in Polish.

Not in a game where the player base is highly educated and virtually all players speak or are learning to speak English, and where the need to use multiple windows outside of translation means that running Google Translate isnā€™t a terrible inconvenience given the open windows anyway.

You would have to show any statistics of how much of the result localization had on player population in different countries, in comparison to being available only to ā€œhighly educatedā€, who had to know english enought to play. Without that, its only your opinion.

Like I wrote, its more like with that egg or chicken dillema.

Still doesnt really explain why koreans wanted EVE in their native language, even when they are highly educated people.

Pearl Abyss Ā¶ as CCPā€™s current owner demanded it being done; now I donā€™t know if CCP did the translation or PA hired staff to do it for them.