Support For Non-English Speaking Players

[MattSquare 426]

Currently, public chats are English only. This poses a problem for those who do not speak English. Our current solution is to use an online translator, but it is much too tedious to alt-tab between a translator and Wurm Online. When someone needs help or just wants to talk to someone, it is neither practical nor morally right to tell him or her that he or she can not speak his or her native language. Therefore, I am writing this post to propose solutions and to allow others to comment with their suggested solutions, and to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of all of them. Of note is the fact that Wurm is close to 1.0, more players will be joining and that means more money for Rolf and Code Club AB. However, players who cannot speak their native languages, possibly the only languages they know, will not play long, will not buy premium, and will not generate income for Rolf and Code Club AB.

The first idea is to create multilingual chat channels. Wurm Online is an MMO and public chat is a large part of the game, so multilingual public chat and help chat channels would be very useful. This would allow non-English speaking players to converse in their native languages and get help from others who speak the same language. It would also allow a sort of educational experience within a virtual world - people could teach and learn languages and practice using them with native speakers.

The second idea, which could be integrated with or separate from the first, is a list of players who are multilingual and volunteer to help players who cannot speak English. This also could be a new staff position, similar to the Community Assistant position, the only difference being that these players would be marked as multilingual and a list could show which volunteers speak which languages. This information would only be collected upon application for the position. If this were to be a new staff position and the multilingual help chat were to be added, multilingual CAs could have their names show up in a little side window similar to the current CA Help channel.

Discuss.

[Aetherwalker 1,863]

-1 to multilingual chat channels, too hard to moderate the ones we have at times

-1 to more CAs just to have multilingual ones, CA applications are closed for a reason

The internet is a primarily English and Mandarin speaking environment. As this game is Europe-based, English is the overwhelmingly dominant language. Not exactly sure that limiting Wurm to English is hindering accessibility to anyone really.

[Maedhros 13]

-1 to multilingual chat channels, too hard to moderate the ones we have at times

-1 to more CAs just to have multilingual ones, CA applications are closed for a reason

The internet is a primarily English and Mandarin speaking environment. As this game is Europe-based, English is the overwhelmingly dominant language. Not exactly sure that limiting Wurm to English is hindering accessibility to anyone really.

I couldn't agree more and not telling it would be more confusing and odd having another chat windows blincking all the time.

Maybe, if possible would be an automatic and language detector translator aplication for chatting, i've seen this somewhere outthere.

Regards

Edited October 1, 2012 by Maedhros

[shadowblasta 142]

being bilingual i noticed when i do speak a language that is not widely used at the location people think to jump to the worse conclusion so i think having one main language is best, easier to control and keep peace. I have seen that there are people that have joined together and made villages that have the same common native language with a few bilingual that can translate for them to the rest of wurm, i find that this is a good way to solve that

I say we just tell people of this diplomatic solution than making a whole new chaotic multilingual channel

[Maedhros 13]

+1

[ashoof 43]

I vote nay to the proposed ideas.

-1

[BjornYngvar 35]

-1.

English is the predominant language in the areas where Wurm Online is played, and will continue to be the majority language even after Wurm 1.0 is released.

We don't need language specific chat channels. People already band together based on common language and found villages. That gives them their language centric chat and community.

[Xallo 2,599]

Perhaps a Wikipedia page where it lists helpful Bi/Multi-lingual persons, categorized by languages?

Edited October 2, 2012 by Xallo

[axeblade346 164]

Perhaps a Wikipedia page where it lists helpful Bi/Multi-lingual persons, categorized by languages?

There are a few non-English pages on the wiki

Polish - Crocodile

http://wurmpedia.com/index.php/Pl:crocodile

-1 to the Main Idea as it would involve too many channels and moderation.

How about adding a channel that like a pm but send the text to Google translate and sends the text back in English?

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/66304-in-game-chat-translator/ & https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/pricing

[Becket 843]

English is still the dominant language for international business and global communication so I'm going to give it a -1. Trying to mod a channel with four or five languages going is asking to much of the CM's.

[Dragonmob 18]

The second idea, which could be integrated with or separate from the first, is a list of players who are multilingual and volunteer to help players who cannot speak English. This also could be a new staff position, similar to the Community Assistant position, the only difference being that these players would be marked as multilingual and a list could show which volunteers speak which languages. This information would only be collected upon application for the position. If this were to be a new staff position and the multilingual help chat were to be added, multilingual CAs could have their names show up in a little side window similar to the current CA Help channel.

I do like this idea, though, it should apply CAs only. At CA help channel, when right clicking CAs name, there should be option "show languages", where are all languages he/she can speak good enough to use it in game. This will help if you are bad in english or you just want to report things with your mother language.

(This will only help when asking help in CA help though.)

Edited October 2, 2012 by Dragonmob

[Alyeska 2,621]

There are a few non-English pages on the wiki

Polish - Crocodile

http://wurmpedia.com...hp/Pl:crocodile

A list of helpful persons speaking a certain language, not a page written in a certain language. For example, you'd have a page "helpful persons" and then categorized by their second language.

Helpful persons Arabian

Abdullah

Ahmed

Hakim

Helpful persons Czech

xxxx

xxxx

xxxx

Helpful persons Danish

XX

xxxxx

xxx

etc etc etc

[Lolabelle 597]

GM's and CM's have a hard enough time moderating the people who are trolling in English. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like if we had to go find a person who spoke a certain language to moderate a problem. If you think Wurm is not efficient now, Think what this could do to it.

-1 to Multilingual public chat.

Possible for those of a certain language. They could Create Wurm- (insert language) IRC channels player made of course. But outside of wurm itself. Too many tabs already.

Sorry guys.

[belthize 438]

A list of helpful persons speaking a certain language, not a page written in a certain language. For example, you'd have a page "helpful persons" and then categorized by their second language.

If I brush up a bit you can put me down for Latin, if the Pope plays I'll give him a hand.

[Sir Arowhun 473]

a big +1 from me.

More languages = more players = profit

This could be done through different chat boxes. It would get annoying to if they were all on the same channel. The tabs should be very easy to turn on and off so they don't fill up your chat bar.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Sir Arowhun

[Warlander 2,730]

+1

More languages ​​= more players. Forcing the English language is like racism, I know many good players that (for many reasons - especially historical) speak English poorly or very poorly. Translation is an effort, but it will certainly pays off.

[thenewcndo 528]

Hi!

5) You must use English if possible when speaking in public chats, like Kingdom chat, CA Help and when making support calls. If you cannot use English, a translator may be a good option.

Hope this helps

[shadowblasta 142]

more language does not = profit.. it equals chaos... plus you dont know who you may know that is a dormant racist that will just start a bunch of racial slurs against others... having one language is best, if you cant speak it im sure you know someone that does, english it taught all over the world.

Like i said before make a community where your common language is the same and have a translator( as an embassador of sorts)

[Torgrim 403]

-1

This has been suggested before and always gets mostly negative response, for good reasons. Currently Wurm has only English speaking servers, if more languages were allowed they would need to reside on their own servers (like in many other mmos).

There are just too many problems when you don't understand eachother at all. How do you agree on something with someone that doesn't understand a word of what you are saying? And how are CA supposed to handle non-english speakers?

In real life it works ok most of the time because we have body language, facial expressions etc. that can actully be enough in many situations, but in Wurm there ere no such things.

More languages definitly doesn't mean more profit. If Rolf thought it worth while he would have made non english speaking servers or whatever already. I don't even get why people care about how Rolf makes a profit, it's his business, I'm sure he can deal with that part himself. Currently you can buy prem time and money in the shop, sell things to other players so they buy more money from the shop etc. If you want to support him go buy stuff or prem many alts

[Wraithglow 787]

-1 to the idea of multi-lingual chat channels. You can already talk to whoever you want in whatever language you want with a pm, alliance, village or team chat. Nobody is stopping you talking directly to someone else who speaks the same language.

The only times you are limited is when you are talking to the whole server and it is right that people are expected to stick to a common language when you are trying to share something in a public forum.

[Sir Arowhun 473]

i'm not talking about a tiny increase in players. I'm saying that if more languages were added, especially Portuguese and Korean, there will be a HUGE increase in players. I guess players who speak the same languages could settle near each other or something to avoid confusion.

I personally find PVP warfare between kingdoms that speak different languages interesting.

Edited October 5, 2012 by Sir Arowhun

[nikkunikku 75]

+1

[belthize 438]

Yep, that's the reason for the few thousand some odd player base, English only global chat. Same thing happened to WoW, they had to up the subscription cost to $20 million per person to offset the loss.

Once Rolf sees the light 18 million people will sign up and he'll be able to buy Tonga. hire its citizens. buy 10,000 licenses of Rosetta Stone and make them all CAs.

[ago 470]

i'm not talking about a tiny increase in players. I'm saying that if more languages were added, especially Portuguese and Korean, there will be a HUGE increase in players. I guess players who speak the same languages could settle near each other or something to avoid confusion.

Your logic is flawed. If the language was the main barrier then Wurm would be a game played by 99% english native speakers only. But apparently there's a huge number of people with english as first language who rather play WoW than Wurm. Why would that be different for Portuguese or Korean players?

[Alyeska 2,621]

Forcing the English language is like racism,

I would feel far more offended if there were a few different languages available but not mine, than I am right now with no other languages than English. It's not racism, but it's a matter of resources and other issues.

Maybe when wurm reaches a few hundredthousand subscriptions, Rolf can consider making local servers. IE a USA server, a UK server, a Russia server, a China server. Good for lag problems, too. I'm afraid at this moment the playerbase is simply too small for this though.

Wurm has a magnificent amount of non-english players. Many seem unaware of the fact you're supposed to speak English in public channels. Every other day I see one or two polish guys asking something in kchat in their own language. Someone will tell them, through a translator, that they are supposed to speak English in the public channel. They say they either do not want to, or can't. If you allow the game to be set to their own language, it will promote this. People who refuse to speak or cannot speak English are somewhat rare now since the entire game is English.

Unless the servers are specifically designated to said language, only allowing GMs, CMs and CAs speaking that language, translating the entire game to that language, and only allowing that language in public channels, this becomes a problem with monitoring chats. The chat rules allow English only so the moderators can do their job and pick out foul language. If two people have a conversation in their native tongue, the moderator will not have a clue what they're saying and can not see if they are keeping to the rest of the chat rules, and I think it's obvious why that is a bad thing.

Aslong as Wurm doesn't immensely grow, there are simply not enough resources to designate entire servers to a single language. A way to create private channels much like in IRC, where you have your own rules and people can join through a /join #xxx command, would possibly allow for more help to people who struggle with the English language. But it should be clear to all in there that it is a private channel that is not moderated by the game itself.