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Real time translator in eve chat
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Alexei Stryker
Council of Stellar Erections
#1 - 2017-05-10 13:00:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Alexei Stryker
Eve is a game with a lots of different player from a lot of different countries. Although we "silently" agreed on english as the common language, there are non-english speaking player in EvE that could have a slight problem in communicating with other players. To overcome this barrier it would be a great idea to build in a rudementary translator in EvE. It is not meant to be 100% well functioning translator (which does not exist), but more of a helping hand in communication.
It could be almost like Microsoft tried to do it with Skype https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRh09hSCN40.

In your UI setting you would have a setting for your favored target language. If the translation option is turned on, every chat window will try to auto-detect the language of every chat entry. This is then sent to a translator provider (google, bing or any other with a functioning API). The translated text is displayed after the actual text in a different color (Or any highlight, so that it can be easily identified as a translation).
If the auto-detection fails a translate button will show up next to the character's name. If the player clicks on this button he will be able to select the language of the entry.

There is no extra load on the EvE servers since the auto-detection happens on the client side. There is also no extra load because of the translation, because the translation itself is done by a third-party provider.

And... I think... EvE would be the first game ever with a built-in translator.


Bing Translator API
Google Translator API
Lugh Crow-Slave
#2 - 2017-05-10 14:24:20 UTC
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a semi accurate translator that does just a phrase or two at a time?



In no world is this worn the amount of time and resources it would take to pull off

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Alexei Stryker
Council of Stellar Erections
#3 - 2017-05-10 22:21:22 UTC
Lugh Crow-Slave wrote:
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a semi accurate translator that does just a phrase or two at a time?



In no world is this worn the amount of time and resources it would take to pull off


And that is relevant.... Why?
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#4 - 2017-05-10 22:30:10 UTC
Half of what gets said in this game is slang, acronyms, typos and jargon. No translator will be able to manage all that.

Here's one for you. Translate the following into Russian, German, Japanese and French. Translate it back from each one and post the results. Use your favourite online translator, they'll all spit out nonsense at the end.

'Primary that heretic. all DPS on the Nyx, anti-support get those inties, dreads you are siege green. Subs try not to die. Someone call point on The Mittani and get that bifrost before we all get booshed.'
Cade Windstalker
#5 - 2017-05-10 22:36:43 UTC
Alexei Stryker wrote:
Lugh Crow-Slave wrote:
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a semi accurate translator that does just a phrase or two at a time?



In no world is this worn the amount of time and resources it would take to pull off


And that is relevant.... Why?


Because if you're asking for this you may as well ask for 100,000 more added to the PCU, a button that automatically rebalances the game perfectly, and a pony?

Basically the only way this might be even remotely feasible is if Google opened up their Translate service to external API calls basically for free to anyone who wants to use it, and even that it'd be super super questionable as a feature.
Sonya Corvinus
Grant Village
#6 - 2017-05-10 23:28:35 UTC
Alexei Stryker wrote:
And that is relevant.... Why?


Realism of actually implementing an idea isn't relevant to you? I hope you never manage a software development project IRL
grgjegb gergerg
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#7 - 2017-05-11 00:44:57 UTC
Lugh Crow-Slave wrote:
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a semi accurate translator that does just a phrase or two at a time?



In no world is this worn the amount of time and resources it would take to pull off

That would be the best way to do it. There's no perfect way, but that would take the least effort for the most payoff.

It worked tolerably for me back in the grind-cesspit of FF11, because {Mithra} {fun} {hole} means pretty much the same thing in NA and JP.

It forces people to organize their communication somewhat, and then passes a few tokens between clients, which would display them in the local language. Why would this be a bad thing?

You would need:

  • Standard hello/goodby niceties
  • Requests for X
  • X translated to things: permission for things, passage, information, whatever.
  • Challenges
  • Fleet stuff- all the fleet commands
  • Anything else that gets added over as many iterations it takes.


This cannot possibly cover slang, or random chat. Once you exclude that, though, there's not a huge amount of impossible-to-translate stuff. And it would be mostly clientside, a one-time localization effort, just passing text tokens through existing chat channels.
Alexei Stryker
Council of Stellar Erections
#8 - 2017-05-11 16:16:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Alexei Stryker
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Because if you're asking for this you may as well ask for 100,000 more added to the PCU, a button that automatically rebalances the game perfectly, and a pony?

Basically the only way this might be even remotely feasible is if Google opened up their Translate service to external API calls basically for free to anyone who wants to use it, and even that it'd be super super questionable as a feature.


Google and Microsoft have open APIs ... Not for free... But everybody can use it.


Sonya Corvinus wrote:
Realism of actually implementing an idea isn't relevant to you? I hope you never manage a software development project IRL

If you quote me.. Please also qoute what he wrote.. Which is
Quote:
Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a semi accurate translator that does just a phrase or two at a time?

This is completely irrelevant since this is covered by a third party (Google, Microsoft)... Using those APIs are not rocket science either... I used the Bing Translator API once from Excel using VBA code. And that did not even took me a day to code.
The auto-detection of language is may be the only thing that could be tricky... I know Google and Microsoft are able to do it, but I am not sure if the API has a functionality for this.

Danika Princip wrote:
Half of what gets said in this game is slang, acronyms, typos and jargon. No translator will be able to manage all that.

Here's one for you. Translate the following into Russian, German, Japanese and French. Translate it back from each one and post the results. Use your favourite online translator, they'll all spit out nonsense at the end.

'Primary that heretic. all DPS on the Nyx, anti-support get those inties, dreads you are siege green. Subs try not to die. Someone call point on The Mittani and get that bifrost before we all get booshed.'

You are completely right... This sentence pushes the translators to its limits... Specially the ship names. The heretic is translated to Ketzer in german, which is correct, but in this case it should stay Heretic. No posibility of detecting that.
You need a lot of imagination to be able to understand the translated version of the sentence.

But this proposal is not meant to be used in fleet fight conversation actually... Translation will never work there correctly, because of the way you are forced to chat - short and specific... Its more aimed for chats... Like chatting with russians or japanese... Боже мой
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#9 - 2017-05-11 17:23:43 UTC
Casual conversation is always going to be just as bad for slang and jargon. Hell, ask an American and an Englishman what a biscuit is, or what pants are.

And as fun as it may be to post Хочу как сыр в масле кататься. Я хочу чтобы вы облили меня кленовым сиропом и улыбнулись or Eins og póstarnir þínir in local, it's just not going to spit out anything legible at the end.
Cade Windstalker
#10 - 2017-05-17 19:09:40 UTC
Alexei Stryker wrote:
Google and Microsoft have open APIs ... Not for free... But everybody can use it.


But not in a way that would be viable for the kind of traffic Eve generates. That API is there for people to use for small apps and services, not real-time translation of massive amounts of Text. I'd have to take a close look at the ToS for that offering but even if you were to make a locally run tool that just took chat logs and fed them through Google's API my guess is that you'd either run up a massive bill or get shut down by a request limit in short order.

And, the "questionable as a feature" bit was referring to exactly what Danica was talking about. Google Translate is *far* from flawless, and the more jargon you throw at it the bigger the mess you get back.
Dark Lord Trump
Infinite Point
Pandemic Horde
#11 - 2017-05-17 19:14:35 UTC
I once had a Discord conversation in which I jokingly admitted I was a Russian spy. I tried to say "well, duh" in Russian by Google translating it. The actual Russian in the conversation informed me that I had said something about child soldiers. I don't think this will work well.

I'm going to build a big wall that will keep the Gallente out, and they're going to pay for it!
Lothros Andastar
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2017-05-17 19:40:28 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
Half of what gets said in this game is slang, acronyms, typos and jargon. No translator will be able to manage all that.

Here's one for you. Translate the following into Russian, German, Japanese and French. Translate it back from each one and post the results. Use your favourite online translator, they'll all spit out nonsense at the end.

'Primary that heretic. all DPS on the Nyx, anti-support get those inties, dreads you are siege green. Subs try not to die. Someone call point on The Mittani and get that bifrost before we all get booshed.'

>implying The Mittani ever undocks
Shawn en Tilavine
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#13 - 2017-05-17 23:12:22 UTC
Personally, I think it's a great idea. A universal translator would be paradigm changing. I studied Cyrillic for a (short) while. Damn near gave me an aneurism. It's like the anti-Christ of Latin based languages. But alas, I don't think our tech is quiet there yet. Though with concerted effort, I don't think we're more than 20 or 30 years from such a device. RW that is. As for chat in a game, who knows. Big smile

In either case, it would be an undertaking of truly epic proportion and even more epic cost. Nice idea though. Really.

Respectfully Submitted.

"The world ain't fair, there is no Santa Claus, and not everyone gets a F'n trophy just for showing up. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to Eve."