Issues, Workarounds & Localization

Thank you, I knew about the one on the official forums but not on eve-ru. I have read through that one as well as its spin-off thread (yes, I am German but no, I am not the German LO and I never have held that position even if I did some work for German while we were looking for someone to hire, though I guess that is not the subject of the conversation.). I'll continue to read and respond to your other points after the weekend.

You are trying to pretend you see no difference between 'налить в стопки' (Pour something, usually alcohol into shot glass) and 'сложить в стопки' (stack something)?

By the way, use Yandex translate

http://yandex.ru/yandsearch?text=%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BA%D0%B0%20%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4&lr=21641

stack, pile, sheaf, bundle(стек, свая, сноп, пачка)
аккуратные стопки — neat stacks
аккуратная стопка — neat pile

This isn't their failure. If you read it as a different homonymic word in place of ´stack´, then it is in fact your failure, and a problem with Russian language fluency: you can´t even pile up stuff into a shot glass! (Налить в стопку (pour into a shot glass ) vs сложить в стопку (add/pile up into a stack). These two words are pretty different despite being homonymic, and any fluent and native Russian language user should feel it; in this case they are governed by different words 'налить' и 'сложить' and cannot be misinterpreted. Once again, once you read and understand the either (or both) of the governing words, you'll no more be able to pour vodka in piles or stack vodka in shot glass, or pour books in shot glass, or imagine yourself doing similar weirdo. You just cannot say and honestly shouldn't even think about something similar to' Сложить водку в стопки' or 'Налить предметы в стопки'). If you see 'Сложить все предметы в стопки' — there's pretty much no reason to see 'Налить' instead, if only for deliberately bad and far-fetched joke.

Your accusation feels almost exactly as if someone blamed translator to English for the usage of the 'high' word just because there is the phrase 'high on drugs'.

A small side note, I would like to point to the following thread:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3467442#post3467442

We are trying to improve the RU client, and we are happy that many have answered our call and displayed their interest in this thread and others. Thank you, it means a lot

Speaking about the Clone I'll just repeat CCP Droog's answer for this matter (one of the first answers in the topic, so please don't be trying to pretend he didn't answer your problem before)

'What's the problem with the wording exactly? Don´t you know these things are not fully-functional clones, but rather blanks, bodies without minds?¨'

In Russian, ´clone´ usually means a fully functional genetic copy (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Клонирование_(биология) ), not some unconscious... well, thing., similar to 'donor' from Olga Larionova's short story 'To the Unreal One.' (Note, I translated 'Ненастоящему' with four English words. Blasphemy! But this is inevitable because of grammatical case and fact this story is about a 'human' clone-body.)

Now what about 'Сложить предметы в стопки'? Note you did three typos in your text (Сложить премедты стопки), so your text really cannot be indexed by a search system (or, rather. Google finds this very topic as the only case). :) I wonder if you did it on purpose...

But, well, without the typos, you can still find only EVE-related topics by searching for the 'Сложить предметы в стопки' query.

Why? Because only EVE has such layered, high technology world, where you, as player, represent your capsuleer, and this capsuleer, in turn, interacts with his fictional world not directly but through the capsule interface!

By giving 'Stack all' order through the controi panel of your hangar, you don't activate the innumerable thousands of robots, and they don't go and weld together your Rifters to make Naglfar or Ragnarok. Oh man, these scary results of wrong previous translations 'объединить/соединить всё' (Combine all) You're just moving some icons in the futuristic accounting system!

Once again, I will just quote CCP Leeloo's answer here:

'You are managing icons, not real items; icons are indeed flat. It's your interface, and by using it you don't in fact stack your items, you're moving little icons in your control panel'

Just try to understand this: in EVE you DO NOT operate with the world directly (except of some edge cases), and working with your hangar doesn't mean REALLY moving and 'stacking' your ships, It's stacking of icons, representing such ships.

Your capsuleer is in fact the best piece of technology to ever be plugged into a starship, and he interacts with the world through computers.

That was already said by CCP Droog here, so you are wrong when you say he didn't answer your questions.

I know, such a concept may be hard to follow, but the Matrix may give you the hint here :) Follow the white rabbit! And this is the reality of scary and precious New Eden world.

Also, please quote where exactly CCP Droog said 'You don't have enough of abstract imagination'. You are trying to blame him for the rudeness, yes? Then don't put YOUR words into his mouth.

Why just dont use flat stacks. Why should we think about our items as icons. I cant find anywhere else in EVE where game items were described as "icons" except post of CCP Leeloo. Why cant we do it simple? There are a lot of words to avoid flat stacks.

For example:
"Сложить все в стопки" - confused (maybe except you and Droog) and we need to use imagination to think that items are icons.
"Сложить/сгруппирова/объеденить все" - not confused (maybe except you and Droog) and we dont need to think that our items are icons.
Maybe it's not a good translation but it will not cause confusion about a flat stacks and we dont need to use the strange associations like: items/ships/guns/etc = icons.

I cant find "shortcuts" or "icons" in russian translation. There are "предметы"(items) that can be not flat.

1) Translation uses the word missing in the original.
2) The phrase "Предметы в стопки" is illegal in Russian.

You translate your point of view (and this point reject by most russian players) instead of the friendly translation.

Missing the point guys, by a football field, I'd say.
This 'stacks' with 'shot glasses' anecdote is amusing, but unavoidable on such or other scale.
The skills tree is not amusing at all, on the other hand - getting it that far off target had to take some serious efforts.

I don't know if CCP Shiny can still be bothered enough to answer in this thread, but I'll ask anyway -
Why do you insist on having your own guy (who's apparently failing by the looks of it) translating such a delicate thing as UI?
There are, after all, professionals to do exactly that, people who master both languages, stylistics, UI design and what not - outsource translation companies, tried in translations for military/medical/industry grade SW for any language you can possibly imagine.
Coming from an industry where international standards require proper UI and documentation translation, i find that a bit strange, almost have the urge to ask for your Russian LO credentials.

I don't intend to bash him or anyone else (too much anyway), but the Russian interface right now calls for someone to be bashed, IMO.

Hi,

Again I will be unable to talk about the specifics of the Russian translation, but there are a few points I can address:



This is an interesting point you make, but I don't think it is a simple point to consider. In fact, it is one that the localization team has been giving quite some thought already. When I look at the threads you posted, then I count for example in the official forum thread 374 responses (excluding CCP, but including ISD) - if I remove duplicates, then I have 101 people who replied to the thread. I didn't analyze the mood of the posts in detail, but I saw quite a few that were neutral or giving input on smaller details, not expressing dislike of the changes as a whole. But let's assume your number and say that 80 players who posted in that thread dislike the changes, 20 are positive or neutral.

The challenge the localization team faces is determining how representative the players posting in the thread are of the entire Russian player base. I think that Localization is one of those things that noone notices until they feel negatively about it, and that is a good thing. It is not supposed to be an entity in the limelight of itself, but rather be something that supports the features in the client in the background. But this makes it very hard to get a good understanding of how successful it is since it is unlikely that many will come to the forums and say "hey, great translation in this release!". I have never seen such a post for German, for example and yet our survey results show us that our players are generally happy with what we are doing there, and every year a little more. We did however have the occasional thread where people were bringing up a bad translation or mentioned a defect, which is of course a positive thing that we listen to carefully but we can't automatically conclude from the fact that there was only negative feedback on the forums and no positive threads, that the overall impression is a negative one.

Please don't get me wrong, I hear and understand that you (and others) have concerns about the approach that was taken in Odyssey 1.1 but it is important that we as a team take a step back from concerns regarding individual strings and look at the bigger picture. Questions of how we can best communicate with the players of all localized clients, and get them engaged in what we are doing are something we had started to look into long before this discussion here started and we will continue to do so. I can't give you an ETA on it, but we have ideas we will announce over the coming months if all goes to plan and if not, then we will find others.



You are right, maintaining the flow of communication is very important - it is so important that we developed the bilingual functionality I mentioned previously. Noone is saying that this functionality is the pinnacle of localization but we implemented it as a way of alleviating a problem that has no solution.

We want two things for our localized client: We want it to feel like it was written in the respective language, it should be immersive and beautiful. We also want it to be a functional software program that has good usability and allows for good communication flow, be it within the same language or cross-language.

I like to think of it like when you are at the cinema. You sit in your chair and have your popcorn. In the past, cinemas had a curtain that lifted. Why? To indicate to the viewer that now, the real world was ending and the story was starting. We don't have this ritual anymore, but we have other rituals like the opening credits. We also have film music. I always feel that film music is a bit like localization. You are not supposed to notice the music. If you sit in the cinema, watching the movie and you think "oh my, this is a beautiful sound" then it has failed - suddenly you see the curtain again, are ripped out of the story. It should not be something you notice, it should be something that touches you. I think this is relevant for EVE because there, the localization can take different paths, too. It can be purely functional - a tool that someone uses in order to achieve a goal (which usually of course involves inflicting pain on someone else ), or it can be a world that is created where the curtain is lifted and suddenly, you are not a mere mortal who just got home from work, no ... you are a pod pilot!

It is a difficult balance to keep and any approach will favour one or the other and any approach has the capacity of disappointing one group or the other. Which way you lean, is a matter of priority and preference but as I said, we will be talking about the overall direction a bit more in the coming months.

[quote=BearUkraine]Much, much more than 50% of Rus community does not like the direction of the philosophy which CCP Droog chose. Korvin (CSM8, Russian speaking)...

I beg your pardon, since there was pun intended (just a pinch, eh?) in my post, and it's out of place.

Thread closed at OP's request.