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[Seytra]

Originally posted by Zeraph
I guess the problem is that you would have to find <*Insert-Language*> speaking moderators & someone to translate part if not all into another language & they are just to lazy atm, & If I spoke something other then English, I would like a forum for non-English-my-language players?

Well, I regard national language sections as being totally redundant. This is because english has been picked as the world language (and rightfully so since most of the world\'s population speak it). So why should I bother searching in my native language, as there is bound to be far less information available in it? Also, I simply hate to find just what I need to know but it\'s in some other language, like greek or gaelic. It at best leads to the same stuff being posted several times, clogging the internet and also defeating the purpose of universally accessible information. Therefore I post my stuff in english. I\'ll reach far more ppl. with it using the same effort.

I know, it\'s tough for everyone besides english speakers, but OTOH, everybody is supposed to speak english anywy, so it\'s not that much to ask, is it? Think of it as visiting another country: you aren\'t going to get anywhere without a means of conversing in the local language or english.
IMO, it mostly is a matter of misunderstood national pride to refuse to speak english, which is, also IMO, utterly stupid.

[Moogie]

Originally posted by karakth
Just because something has been around for a long time doesn\'t mean it\'s perfect ^^

But it does mean that Talad doesn\'t see a need for foreign forum sections. If he did, there would at least be an Italian section.


When it comes down to it, it\'s not the admins or moderators that are being lazy, it\'s the people who post in their native language and expect us to figure out what they\'re saying. If they are capable of understanding the forum and the website and things written in game, then they should do us the courtesy of speaking to us in English. It really can\'t be that hard to do.


Once you start getting into all that \"hire extra people to moderate different language forums\" things get messy. English-only mods won\'t understand a thing in there, thus won\'t be able to help, and won\'t be able to communicate properly with the foreign mods.


Plus we\'re forgetting something- it simply isn\'t needed. We get a few visitors a year who post illegible messages like this and suddenly people think they need an entire forum section, complete with specialised mod staff, to handle it. The majority of foreign speaking people who post on these forums can communicate in English, and that\'s good enough.

*nods to Seytra*

[dfryer]

While I support the \"encouraged\" language being english, I think it would be wise to give speaking forum members a chance to respond (as happened in this thread) - i.e. I wouldn\'t like the fact that it\'s a primarily english oriented game result in some \"instant lock for foreign language posts\" rule.

[Sudomir]

Originally posted by Seytra
Well, I regard national language sections as being totally redundant. This is because english has been picked as the world language (and rightfully so since most of the world\'s population speak it). So why should I bother searching in my native language, as there is bound to be far less information available in it? Also, I simply hate to find just what I need to know but it\'s in some other language, like greek or gaelic. It at best leads to the same stuff being posted several times, clogging the internet and also defeating the purpose of universally accessible information. Therefore I post my stuff in english. I\'ll reach far more ppl. with it using the same effort.

I know, it\'s tough for everyone besides english speakers, but OTOH, everybody is supposed to speak english anywy, so it\'s not that much to ask, is it? Think of it as visiting another country: you aren\'t going to get anywhere without a means of conversing in the local language or english.
IMO, it mostly is a matter of misunderstood national pride to refuse to speak english, which is, also IMO, utterly stupid.

Getting a little fascist here, aren\'t we? FYI about twice as many people speak Chinese as those that speak English(yes, I do have the Oxford World Atlas in front me, I was kind of curious . And then we have Spanish, various Slavic ones, all of which aren\'t so far behind. Riiiight, let\'s ignore the other 30-40% because we\'re the 60-70% majority. Now, where have I heard that before?

As far as PS itself, since it went this way: I don\'t think it would have been so hard to add gettext support or something like that to it, but I suspect it wasn\'t even discussed much. Making separate \"patches\" for each language is broken by its nature.

When it comes down to it, it\'s not the admins or moderators that are being lazy, it\'s the people who post in their native language and expect us to figure out what they\'re saying. If they are capable of understanding the forum and the website and things written in game, then they should do us the courtesy of speaking to us in English. It really can\'t be that hard to do.

Perhaps they were also trying to get an answer in their own language? And they have no idea where to post it otherwise? If you so dislike foreign languages, why\'d you not at least make sure everybody(including newcomers) has a chance to find that out before posting(ie make it one of the rules and post it on the website)?

When it comes down to it, it\'s not the admins or moderators that are being lazy, it\'s the people who post in their native language and expect us to figure out what they\'re saying. If they are capable of understanding the forum and the website and things written in game, then they should do us the courtesy of speaking to us in English. It really can\'t be that hard to do.

Seriously, just go and try to learn a foreign language, prefferably one that has a radically different writing system, then talk(no offence intended, but it doesn\'t look like you\'ve done so)... Btw, I thought this is a community forum? Why do you want to answer every question yourself?

P.S. This attitude is absolutely horrible, and if it actually is shared by developers, I don\'t see it getting PS anything other than a fork. I\'m not sure about win32 developers, but most of the other opensource projects I\'m aware of take as many steps as possible to being portable and having i18n/l10n capability from the beginning - if there\'s, say, one person having trouble compiling on FreeBSD, he/she doesn\'t usually get \"Get lost, all of us are using Linux/win32 to run it\"... acknowledge your bugs, at least, maybe someone will be around to fix them...

[Moogie]

Plus we\'re forgetting something- it simply isn\'t needed. We get a few visitors a year who post illegible messages like this and suddenly people think they need an entire forum section, complete with specialised mod staff, to handle it.

See what I mean. :rolleyes:

Riiiight, let\'s ignore the other 30-40% because we\'re the 60-70% majority. Now, where have I heard that before?

This person is about a 1% here actually.


All this fuss over someone who hasn\'t even come back to read his thread...

[Levski]

I agree with Sudomir here, Mogura.  Although the names should be in the lating alphabet only.

If you guys wanted to avoid this problem, you\'d put up more forums for people around the world:  Russian for the Slavic speakers (most slavs know Russian, except the younger generation), Chinese for Chinese, and so on.   I\'m sure people like Karyuu or Russian Vodka wouldn\'t mind helping out.

Nice Avatar Moogie .

[karakth]

True, sometimes it is easy to be mean to people who do not speak English properly, as it makes them appear ignorant/uneducated/whatever.

It\'s just that sometimes, as Sudomir said, it\'s hard to learn a language, unless you\'re naturally gifted. We have been gifted with being English speakers, but that doesn\'t mean we should trample anyone who was gifted with another language.

Anyway, PS should constantly be looking for new players. If this is truly to be the best MMORPG, then should our non-English-speaking brethren also have a chance to experience it?

Just because they don\'t come here and are never seen does not mean that they don\'t exist. Just because they don\'t seak English doesn\'t mean they shouldn\'t be allowed to enjoy the game. Why can\'t they, for example, roleplay foreigners to the world, or madmen? I\'ve done it in games where the primary language isn\'t English.

[Monketh]

The Official forums are english.  Nobody is stopping others from creating non-english Planeshift forums.

The current setup works for the vast majority of players.  No offense Karakth, but non-english speakers are going to have a hell of a time trying to play Planeshift with everybody speaking english, or worse, AOLlish.  

Until there are non-english servers, the Official Forums should remain english.  Unless, a sub-section is created for all other languages.

[Moogie]

Until there are non-english servers, the Official Forums should remain english. Unless, a sub-section is created for all other languages.

Agreed with that, the best person to ask is probably Acraig (when he\'s around) or Vengeance (poor guy, he\'s the recommended person to speak to for practically anything ).

[Sudomir]

Until there are non-english servers, the Official Forums should remain english. Unless, a sub-section is created for all other languages.

That\'s what I was thinking, too. (as a side note, don\'t forget that some of us like to /talk, too Using ascii for that could be VERY annoying)

Next up would be gettext/whatever else for actual i18n in PS (\"when CB is released\" although I guess something could be done with the code that\'s in CVS already)

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Sudomir
Getting a little fascist here, aren\'t we?

Am I? I must have missed that. Sorry if I let my real self out (Hail Hitler!).
Seriously though, do you actually think that I\'m going to back down just because you accuse me of being fascist? Or that it helps convince me? Or that I\'d try to make sure that nobody thinks I\'m a fascist, or a nazi, or a communist? Well, neither is the case. If you are inclined to think I am, then please do so all you want, just know that it doesn\'t help your argumentation to use such emotion-laden keywords.

Originally posted by Sudomir
FYI about twice as many people speak Chinese as those that speak English(yes, I do have the Oxford World Atlas in front me, I was kind of curious .

Well, so I had that fact wrong if your information is true. This doesn\'t, however, change the fact that english has been decided upon as the world language. Surely noone has been asking the russians by that time (I wouldn\'t know, actually, but I doubt it), but it\'s also true that english is the most important language in the world and that\'s because you\'ll be able to communicate with the highest percentage of ppl. in the world. I\'m not talking about native speakers exclusivley, but also about those who have english as a second language, or can at least communicate basic things as I believe applies to way more than 50% of the worlds population (or does your world atlas count that? I\'d really like to know which language is the most widely understood one it it\'s not english.).

Originally posted by Sudomir
And then we have Spanish, various Slavic ones, all of which aren\'t so far behind. Riiiight, let\'s ignore the other 30-40% because we\'re the 60-70% majority. Now, where have I heard that before?

I don\'t know, actually, for I am not you. Maybe in any democracy? FYI, this concept, called \"tyranny by majority\", is commonly used in the computing world (or do you get every game and application for Mac OS? Or Linux? I don\'t think so), for simple economic reasons. I strongly believe that there is a great need for a common language for the world, and if this is english (as has been decided), that\'s fine with me (remember, I\'m not a native english speaker. I chose to learn english because it\'s the most important language in the world, no other reason. I could have learned other languages just as well, but with english I get most conversation for my learning effort, flat and simple.). Of course, I wouldn\'t be happy if it were changed to, say, greek, but choosing a language that is spoken by the majority (or the most influencial nations) certainly will be better than some artificial language or another one, because the general acceptance will be better, as can be seen from RL examples.

Originally posted by Sudomir
As far as PS itself, since it went this way: I don\'t think it would have been so hard to add gettext support or something like that to it, but I suspect it wasn\'t even discussed much. Making separate \"patches\" for each language is broken by its nature.

Probably it wouldn\'t have been, but as long as there is no significant player base that doesn\'t speak english I\'d rather see the effort go into the game itself. If you start catering to anything and everything, regardless of it\'s actual impact, you don\'t get anything done anymore.

Originally posted by Sudomir
Perhaps they were also trying to get an answer in their own language? And they have no idea where to post it otherwise? If you so dislike foreign languages, why\'d you not at least make sure everybody(including newcomers) has a chance to find that out before posting(ie make it one of the rules and post it on the website)?

Well, we should indeed put this somewhere to be easily found. I also agree that reading technical details in a foreign language can be very hard if you don\'t have basic knowledge of this same technical stuff, but in that case you wouldn\'t be able to use the information anyway.

Originally posted by Sudomir
Seriously, just go and try to learn a foreign language, prefferably one that has a radically different writing system, then talk(no offence intended, but it doesn\'t look like you\'ve done so)... Btw, I thought this is a community forum? Why do you want to answer every question yourself?

OK, then find another person on this forum who speaks russian... I believe they would have posted something in this thread if they did exist...
And nobody is saying that you should learn english for PS.  But I wonder how you can even find PS if you don\'t speak english, or how you can think of playing an online game without basic knowledge of english, let alone an RPG, which is a great deal about talking..., unless there\'s a local server for your language (as isn\'t the case in PS).
And still, the posts must be intellegible by the mods because they are, well, mods. If they\'d not be able to read the posts, they couldn\'t police the forum and flamewars or SPAM would just have to be posted in some non-english language.

Originally posted by Sudomir
P.S. This attitude is absolutely horrible, and if it actually is shared by developers, I don\'t see it getting PS anything other than a fork. I\'m not sure about win32 developers, but most of the other opensource projects I\'m aware of take as many steps as possible to being portable and having i18n/l10n capability from the beginning - if there\'s, say, one person having trouble compiling on FreeBSD, he/she doesn\'t usually get \"Get lost, all of us are using Linux/win32 to run it\"... acknowledge your bugs, at least, maybe someone will be around to fix them...

I don\'t think that internationalisation is the same as portability. Furthermore, there is a greater chance of FreeBSD being used than gaelic. Furthermore, I don\'t think anybody is going to try to be compatible with, say, Unununium... or DOS.
So even if none of the devs feels like adding gettext support, they\'ll most likely not refuse your patches.
I don\'t think that a fork would get very far, though, for the lack of developers. Also the content would not be able to be used in the fork unless you\'d get permission, which I doubt. Not to keep you from forking in general (they could have used something other than the GPL to achieve this), but to keep PS unique (as stated in the PS license).
Also, most of the time, ppl. who want to run it on an unsupported OS usually create the appropriate patches themselves (or at least do a great deal of work on them), which I don\'t see happening in the language case (but I don\'t read the CVS so I might just have missed it).

However, do you honestly want the conversation in PS to be a mixture of 10 different languages, talking simultaneously? It might be an option to have national servers, but how likely is that, anyway?

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Sudomir
(as a side note, don\'t forget that some of us like to /talk, too Using ascii for that could be VERY annoying)

Next up would be gettext/whatever else for actual i18n in PS (\"when CB is released\" although I guess something could be done with the code that\'s in CVS already)

Which immediately brings us back to the topic of names, on which I have commented here:

http://www.planeshift3d.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=9586&boardid=11&styleid=3&sid=3ad5924c3aa3d349557f8cb912ddbd6c

[Sudomir]

Seytra, you\'ve just rephrased about all of the points I was trying to make... Just a few reminders: 1. Opensource(read a few of Eric Raymond\'s works, he\'s pretty good at that ) 2. XFree86(okay, the scale is kind of different, but you get the idea) 3. AFAIK modern \"Democracy\" means a little more than its literal meaning. Maybe I\'m wrong.
That\'s about it, I\'ve had no intention of flaming over such a simple thing in the first case.

[Moogie]

Bit late for that...

Might aswell close this now, the most important points have been said, there\'s a Forum Feedback thread been created, so unless anyone has a dire need to say something here: locked.