Add a tag in front of CMDR name with the language they speak

[noisegrrrl]

Lots of players are not english speakers and this results in players ignoring others because they can't understand each others.
Today I met a clueless powerplay player that was preparing a bad system. They did not speak english though but I had no way of knowing that so until I tried speaking to them in spanish they ignored me.
Adding a tag in front of player names with at least the language the version they are playing in is would help a lot for those interactions. Once I knew they understood spanish I was able to use google translate to communicate with this player and redirect them to an area where their actions would actually be helpful to the group as a whole.

So here's my suggestion, at least add a tag in front of players names with the language their game is in abbreviated.
Or give us an option to choose the language we speak and have them displayed in contact information for instance.

 

[metatheurgist]

Seems unnecessary. If someone doesn't speak English they could just type for example "Non habla Ingles", and you'd have gotten the message. I think the guy you were addressing should've been less rude, IMO.

 

[noisegrrrl]

they'd have to understand you're speaking english in the first place and considering how dangerous (pun not intended) the galaxy in Elite can be, I can't blame them if their first reaction when seeing something they don't understand is to ignore it and get far away. And he's not the first time I see someone reacting like that.

 

[Winterwalker]

Interesting idea I think.

Something like Cmdr X, Zachary Hudson, Mostly Harmless, En .. might suit a little better, but I use an autohotkey script to send a simple hail message without having to type it. OP reminds me that I should probably have this ready in alternate languages. How cool might it be (a way off though I'm sure) if the chat window automatically used google translate to interpret "live" for you ... !?

Warning, with some experience in this kind of thing ..
.. any server error should NOT be used as an instruction!

Spoiler

Did you know; When training to be a translator for high level negotiators, it's recognised that humour "doesn't travel", and that jokes on one side of the border can be considered as insulting by the other. Should President Obama say something funny to Xi Jinping China, translators are instructed, not to translate the joke word for word but to say in Chinese, "Sir, the President just made a joke, please laugh".

 

[AJStoner]

Not a bad idea but I would put it last, not before the CMDR tag. You want to know, at a glance, if you are looking at a human player or not. Accidents happen otherwise.

 

[metatheurgist]

they'd have to understand you're speaking english in the first place and considering how dangerous (pun not intended) the galaxy in Elite can be, I can't blame them if their first reaction when seeing something they don't understand is to ignore it and get far away. And he's not the first time I see someone reacting like that.

Then they can respond "Habla Espanol?". They obviously wanted to talk so why not try to respond with something? Just ignoring a direct hail seems counterproductive. Now if they just didn't want to talk, that I'd understand.