A simple way to save elite dangerous - more localisation
- Thread starter sanitieta
- Start date
Already got a thread on this exact topic, but this is a novel approach, how to save Elite Dangerous? Get more people to buy it!
C'est la vie.
Folks, we have a choice here, fill the thread with stuff we already read and wrote or move on to pastures different.
I'm obviously not saying don't reply, but asking how many times do we need to go around the same roundabout OP?
I see the OP joined in Oct 2023, that's enough time to read around the forum and see that this topic is already active.
I also expect, the OP is coming from a place of hope and aspiration and is not a troll post. If true, kudos on the idea and that way of thinking OP.
Here's looking forward to a good 2024 for Elite Dangerous and continued updates and perhaps developments from FDev also.
Season's greetings
S!
I'm obviously not saying don't reply, but asking how many times do we need to go around the same roundabout OP?
I see the OP joined in Oct 2023, that's enough time to read around the forum and see that this topic is already active.
I also expect, the OP is coming from a place of hope and aspiration and is not a troll post. If true, kudos on the idea and that way of thinking OP.
Here's looking forward to a good 2024 for Elite Dangerous and continued updates and perhaps developments from FDev also.
Season's greetings
S!
At this point nothing will save ED, unless something saves FDEV. Their stock price is slowly sinking and the reentry friction is burning them up. The stock value is by now almost down to the lowest it ever was, and that was 2013.
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I expect the problem here is not the translation of the existing text, for which finding community members willing to do it for free might often be possible, but translations of future texts - Galnet updates, new POIs, descriptions of new items, and so on. Every language they support adds a permanent cost of translating all future content - and potentially also means it takes longer to produce that content because they're waiting for the translation - so needs to be considered quite carefully.
Possibly there could be two sets of language
- official languages, which would be translated by Frontier at their expense before release
- community-translated languages, which would have translations provided by the community after release, and which would fall back to the selected official language if a translation wasn't yet available
A language might then get promoted from community-translated to official if enough people selected that setting in their game client over a long enough time.
There'd still be some up-front work required by Frontier to make the list of strings required available for community translation and especially to make sure anything we haven't discovered yet gets redacted - and then some additional work to manage the translation list and verify the correctness of the translations (in a way that doesn't require them to know the language themselves...): in previous times, when they've opened things up to community submission the problem has been that they've got a huge volume of contributions, many of which just haven't been usable for various reasons - and that's hard enough for them to assess in a language they can read. It might of course be cheaper for them to pay someone to verify a set of translations than to do the work themselves.
Are there any particular languages you can think of where there's likely a large market but none of the existing languages are ones that are "close enough"?
The problem is, the English language.
The company and developers speak it, most likely as a first language.
English I believe is the the most used second language (not sure how much this applies to the likes of China though).
It is the international language of science, business, trade and culture amongst other things.
Start picking few other languages to include and lots of others lose out. But then again, whether there are translations or not must depend to some degree on the player base only able to use their own language. Would more players be attracted to the game if their own language was included? Difficult to know.
Steve
The company and developers speak it, most likely as a first language.
English I believe is the the most used second language (not sure how much this applies to the likes of China though).
It is the international language of science, business, trade and culture amongst other things.
Start picking few other languages to include and lots of others lose out. But then again, whether there are translations or not must depend to some degree on the player base only able to use their own language. Would more players be attracted to the game if their own language was included? Difficult to know.
Steve
It's suggested that players should help translate, but you see this is really pointless in the end and will save no money or time at all for FDEV. Why is this, because people are people. Every single translation will have to be checked by someone fluent in the language because, people being people, they will try and sneak rude words in, they will try and sneak controversial subjects in sideways, and once these words are in the game it's FDEV's fault and they will take the flak, if for instance someone from China/HK sneaks in a certain square's name. So they will need to hire translators to check the community submissions, and if they are hiring these people anyway, why not just get them to do the translations to start with?
It's a nice thought, have lots and lots of different languages, but in the end the problems it could cause just aren't worth the time an money since in the end there really isn't a guarantee it will bring in more users anyway, that's a bit speculative, just like the all the other ideas, some may indeed work, but you won't know until you spend the time and money trying the idea out, and how many do they try if they don't do the attracting of new players?
I say let them invest money and time in introducing features and fixing issues and leave the attracting players to them.
It's a nice thought, have lots and lots of different languages, but in the end the problems it could cause just aren't worth the time an money since in the end there really isn't a guarantee it will bring in more users anyway, that's a bit speculative, just like the all the other ideas, some may indeed work, but you won't know until you spend the time and money trying the idea out, and how many do they try if they don't do the attracting of new players?
I say let them invest money and time in introducing features and fixing issues and leave the attracting players to them.
I'd suspect that the best is to leave it up to Frontier to save the game and the company.
Not sure that us players can do any of that, and we often have a slightly naive idea about what changes to the game actually entails as far as work is concerned.
Not sure that us players can do any of that, and we often have a slightly naive idea about what changes to the game actually entails as far as work is concerned.
There are fan translated games without developer approval, I wonder if that would fall under the category of acceptable mods like the HUD stuff...
Where's the
Khoisan
Translation???
...and as a reminder - aside of texts, at least some translations will require also fonts to be created
I don't quite understand the argument that belongs to the category of second class customers. Game language localization is usually done by a team that has nothing to do with the progress of the game content, so it won't affect your game experience.