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Translation request - add feminine, masculine, and neuter options


Geras

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Dear Devs,

 

I would like to kindly ask you to add feminine, masculine, and neuter options to the Tooltip.txt file entries, and also for a way to distinguish item gender in Items.txt file.

 

I am aware that English language lacks that diversification but a vast majority of other languages do not. That leads to translation imperfection where, in case of Polish language, an axe should be a 'she', or a baseball bat a 'he', but where everything is an 'it'.

 

It's especially visible with prefixes:

 

Broken

Fresh

Rotten

Frozen

Burnt

Cooked

Uncooked

 

and:

 

Tooltip_item_TwoHandWeapon (sledgehammer and baseball bat are masculine, axe is feminine)

 

I would suggest to add a gender defining variable, i.e.:

 

Axe{f}

Orange{n}

 

and that would take from the gender prefix database:

 

(Broken)

Zepsuty{m}

Zepsuta{f}

Zepsute{n}

 

(Fresh)

Świeży{m}

Świeża{f}

Świeże{n}

 

etc. etc.

 

Thank you.

 

EDIT: It would be, of course, up to translators to setup their variables next to item names. As for example: an axe is feminine in Polish but masculine in Russian. OR to avoid it completely in case of languages that don't have gender nouns.

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Well, I translate the game into Polish and it's a real grammar pain to look upon.

 

I don't know how difficult it is in other gender languages such as:

Russian, Spanish, Italian, Icelandic, French, and German.

 

Of course, languages without gender nouns would just not use gender variables.

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It would probably also benefit from the translators being able to determine their own item gender, because unlike with Polish "Axe" being a feminine, here in Russian it's actually masculine.

 

There is also super-advanced form of rules in Russian language  that might sound like nightmare to people using English language, namely: the "cases" (падежи).

 

There are six of those, and each case determines the ending few letters of a noun, depending on context it's using in the sentence. To determine which "case" the noun is, you have to ask what kind of question the verb answers within your sentence. It is also "interconnected" with the gender that the item is, so each "case" has three ways it's noun could end within 1 sentence. 

 

In this example I'll be using the name "Hannah" (feminine noun) and show how those 6 "cases" differ from each other, and why an english-speaking person would think of it as nightmare.
 

1st case: Я Ханна (I am Hannah)

2nd case: Я привёл Ханну (I brought Hannah)

3rd case: Ханне 30 лет (Hannah is 30 years old)

4th case(Only similar to 2nd if the noun is masculine/feminine): Я подозреваю Ханну (I suspect Hannah)

5th case: Я горжусь Ханной (I'm proud of Hannah)
6th case: Я говорю о Ханне (I'm talking about Hannah)

 

So, why does it even matter within the game's translation, you may ask? Well, not only do we get a problem with applying adjectives to each noun (namely states of food/weapons), but we also have to think of workarounds for stuff like "Fill empty bottle" (from sink), because in Russian the 'empty bottle' would use a different case with different few letters at the end for it's noun. 

1st case (used universally for all standard "name of the item" nouns): Пустая бутылка (Empty bottle)

4th case (case used for "Fill X" action): Наполнить Пустую бутылку (Fill empty bottle)

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It would probably also benefit from the translators being able to determine their own item gender, because unlike with Polish "Axe" being a feminine, here in Russian it's actually masculine.

 

-snip-

 

Yeah, that's how I imagined the system would work: you could put whatever variable next to an object. It would be up to the translator to set the Items.txt file up.

So whichever of those would be possible:

 

Axe{f} or Axe{m} or Axe{n}.

 

^ you would specify it yourself.

 

Polish also have cases and it would be awesome to be able to put it in the game.

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We do have gender in FR, but no neutral.

That brings up an odd question (and would probably take a linguistic to answer) if gender is specific to each language or there's enough similarities.

Like, I wonder if all the ones that are neutral in say Deutsch are all the same gender in (either all masculine or all feminine) in French.

 

Regardless, it'd probably be easier to simply code the existence of the variable (defaulting to Neutral) and a bit to select the adjective/determiner.

 

Then have the actual addition of non-neutral gender (and non-neutral adjectives/determiners) under language files. (I did a lot of modding to Civ IV and V but never did much with langauges since I'm not bilingual - I understand grammar for Deutsch but know little vocabulary as I wasn't a fan of memorization by rote and preferred memorization through use - but I recall seeing the variables in the XML).

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I don't think there's a rule that could apply for every language. I can even tell you words that are masculine in FR but feminine in Spanish. And even though I don't know much German, I'm pretty sure that neutral German words correspond to both masculine and feminine French words.

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That brings up an odd question (and would probably take a linguistic to answer) if gender is specific to each language or there's enough similarities.

Like, I wonder if all the ones that are neutral in say Deutsch are all the same gender in (either all masculine or all feminine) in French.

 

-snip-

 

There might be _some_ similarities but not big enough to call it a rule. I know "a book" is feminine in Polish but neuter in German, "a dog" is masculine in Polish but neuter in German. "An orange" is neuter in Polish but masculine in Russian. Etc. etc.

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