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KSP Weekly: Volunteers Wanted!


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1 minute ago, Codraroll said:

Only as native languages. English is much more widely understood as either of those. If I recall the figures correctly, there are an estimated 2.1 billion people on this planet capable of having a simple conversation in English. Contrast 1.2 billion for Mandarin (nearly all of which are in China) and 700 million for Spanish. And no other language even comes close to English as a second language. More people have English as a second language than Spanish, French, Arabic, Hindi, Russian and Portuguese combined. Chinese and Spanish are more used than English as primary languages, but apart from those speaking it as a primary language, pretty much nobody use them at all. This is even more extreme with Japanese, with an estimated 130 million native users, and 10-12,000 secondary users.

Also, funnily enough, Malay (204 million L2 users) is a more common second language than Chinese (190 million). Or, if you want, approximately as common as Spanish and German combined.

So what you are saying is that due to the propensity of English speakers in the world that Squad should disregard any language other than English?

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Just now, DoctorDavinci said:

So what you are saying is that due to the propensity of English speakers in the world that Squad should disregard any language other than English?

Not at all. I was merely correcting the claim that Chinese and Spanish are the most used languages in the world.

 

Squad gets to do with their product as they please, of course, but it's likely that the English language setting of KSP will be used more than the rest put together and then some.

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6 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Not at all. I was merely correcting the claim that Chinese and Spanish are the most used languages in the world.

 

Squad gets to do with their product as they please, of course, but it's likely that the English language setting of KSP will be used more than the rest put together and then some.

Just because a person can speak English and carry a conversation doesn't necessarily imply that English is the most used language in the world ... I bet many who speak English as a second or third language do not use it very often compared to their native language (actually I would implore you to provide a citation in this regard ... which I doubt you can)

Just because someone can understand and converse in another language doesn't mean that they would like to play as complex of a game as KSP in a foreign language (foreign to themselves mind you)

And yes, Chinese and Spanish are more widely used than English in the world ... just because you have the ability doesn't mean that you actually use that ability

Edited by DoctorDavinci
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2 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Just because a person can speak English and carry a conversation doesn't necessarily imply that English is the most used language in the world ... I bet many who speak English as a second or third language do not use it very often compared to their native language (actually I would implore you to provide a citation in this regard ... which I doubt you can)

Hm. I might have mixed up "most widely used" and "most widely known", then. More words might be spoken in Chinese or Spanish every day than in English (though for text, I'm not so sure), but the amount of people using English at least occasionally is much greater than the same for Chinese or Spanish.

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6 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

the amount of people using English at least occasionally is much greater than the same for Chinese or Spanish.

I doubt this as there are 3 times as many native Chinese speakers than native English speakers in the world ... 1.37 Billion Chinese as compared to 357 million Americans ... At best they would be equal if you account for the UK and other English speaking nations in the world

As for Canada, we got a little over 35 million and many of those barely speak English

Edited by DoctorDavinci
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Words has been spread that Squad need some SC volunteers. I think by now there should already be hundreds of enthusiastic people sending applications to them. Hope Squad you find the man you need and wish you good luck.

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5 hours ago, Elthy said:

Compairing it to Japanese isnt realy fair, since Japanese is a small language while english is the universal language.

Also im complaining because it eats up developer-time for something thats essentialy useless. E.g. the german translation, who will use it? Everyone younger than 30 learned english in school, even the majority of the older ones (afaik they were forced to learn Russian in the DDR before). So you aim the translation at people who are to young/old for realy basic english (again, you dont need the language for everything besides missions) but still able to understand orbital mechanics?

Then im thinking about the implictaions for modders. The obvios one are 6 times the textures (or maybe its done with a decal similar to flags), making stuff more complicated. But also we will see poorly translated messages like "pls help no work" all over mod threads since those people cant even read the big, red messages in the OP.

At last i think its bad from an educational standpoint. When i was younger i needed a few unconfortable kicks until i started playing games in english and learned a lot in the process. Since stuff like minecraft (especially with mods) was only available in english i was forced to learn and improve my understanding of the language to the point i got considerably better than others in my age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

English has less than a billion native speakers. So less than ~14% of the world population. Not that universal. Sure, it's big by language standards, but most languages aren't that big; there's no language that makes up the majority of the population. 

Also, it's pretty obvious who will use the German localization: German speakers. Duh.

And from an educational standpoint, you should learn Mandarin, since it's the language with the most speakers.

 

34 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Hm. I might have mixed up "most widely used" and "most widely known", then. More words might be spoken in Chinese or Spanish every day than in English (though for text, I'm not so sure), but the amount of people using English at least occasionally is much greater than the same for Chinese or Spanish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Yeah nope. Chinese is bigger still.

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40 minutes ago, DoctorDavinci said:

I doubt this as there are 3 times as many native Chinese speakers than native English speakers in the world ... 1.37 Billion Chinese as compared to 357 million Americans ... At best they would be equal if you account for the UK and other English speaking nations in the world

Look further than the UK. English is used officially and educationally in countries such as India, the Philippines, Pakistan and Nigeria, all of which have more than 100 million inhabitants, and where you'd assume a large percentage of the population would interact with the language at least in some form rather often. Wikipedia's list of countries by English-speaking population adds up to a total of some 1.2 billion proficient speakers, and depending on where you set the bar for proficiency, it can be said to have as many as two billion speakers worldwide (this is written at the very top of the article @Esquire42 quoted, with a citation going here). No matter where you are in the world, it's hard to follow any sort of international sports league, tech news, cinema, international business, graduate-level science, international tourism, gaming or international politics without learning the meaning of at least a few words and phrases of English. Much easier to do so without learning a single word of Chinese or Spanish.

Edited by Codraroll
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1 minute ago, Codraroll said:

Look further than the UK. English is used officially and educationally in countries such as India, the Philippines, Pakistan and Nigeria, all of which have more than 100 million inhabitants, and where you'd assume a large percentage of the population would interact with the language at least in some form rather often. Wikipedia's list of countries by English-speaking population adds up to a total of some 1.2 billion proficient speakers, and depending on where you set the bar for proficiency, it can be said to have as many as two billion speakers worldwide (this is written at the very top of the article @Esquire42 quoted). No matter where you are in the world, it's hard to follow any sort of international sports league, tech news, international business, graduate-level science, international tourism, gaming or international politics without learning the meaning of at least a few words and phrases of English. Much easier to do so without learning a single word of Chinese or Spanish.

So what you are saying is that it should be a requirement to either know how to speak or to learn English in order to play KSP?

All hail the overlord who has determined that if you don't speak English you are regulated to a second class citizen of the world ... learn to speak English or else

(I hope all can see the my seething sarcasm in the above staement)

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@Codraroll - I implore you to take a look at this YouTube channel as it will shed some light on the languages within the world and how they interconnect

Actually, all of my KSP brethren should at least take a peek at this channel as it has helped me in my understanding of languages as well as culture throughout the world ... Knowledge is power my friends, gather all that you can and use it to the betterment of the Kerbal human species

This guy Paul is on the ball: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNhX3WQEkraW3VHPyup8jkQ

:cool:

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I expect that this advanced game KSP will spread to the world, and developers as well. Is there something mysterious for Squad to allocate resources there?

If they discontinue localization, the resources will be not allocated elsewhere, just the resources themselves will disappear. I guess.

And the number of people who speak a particular language is just that information, the size of the game market and the population of game players will be another topic.

Edited by EBOSHI
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a78be52a6059252d953671d53c9b033b5ab5b9b4

4ada6cdf8db1cb13d9b551c2d554564e90584bf1fcf9941ea8d3fd1fe295ceeb384e251f94ca5f31I'm a 3-year Chinese KSP player.This is my first reply in the KSP Forum.

The picture above is a part of translation of the KSPedia.Last year,I translated the whole KSPedia into Chinese with my partners in a Chinese KSP Forum.

As a Chinese native speaker,I've seen a lot of work our player do to translate everything in KSP to Chinese.We tried to translate the Game,the mods and the tutorial.However, as we all know,3rd party localization always brings a lot of bugs to the game.So the official localization will change a lot and bring more local player to the KSP.

I hope the localization will bring us better gaming experience.

Thank you,Squad.

Edited by 050644zf
Thanks for supporting!Add more image.
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17 minutes ago, 050644zf said:

a78be52a6059252d953671d53c9b033b5ab5b9b4

I'm a 3-year Chinese KSP player.This is my first reply in the KSP Forum.

The picture above is a part of translation of the KSPedia.Last year,I translated the whole KSPedia into Chinese with my partners in a Chinese KSP Forum.

As a Chinese native speaker,I've seen a lot of work our player do to translate everything in KSP to Chinese.We tried to translate the Game,the mods and the tutorial.However, as we all know,3rd party localization always brings a lot of bugs to the game.So the official localization will change a lot and bring more local player to the KSP.

I hope the localization will bring us better gaming experience.

Thank you,Squad.

I'm his partner who translated most of the rest of KSPedia. Although I'm a little against the localization, I hope the localization can attract more people onto astronautics and KSP. 

Good luck SQUAD, the QA team and the hardworking translators working behind the scene!

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31 minutes ago, 050644zf said:

a78be52a6059252d953671d53c9b033b5ab5b9b4

I'm a 3-year Chinese KSP player.This is my first reply in the KSP Forum.

The picture above is a part of translation of the KSPedia.Last year,I translated the whole KSPedia into Chinese with my partners in a Chinese KSP Forum.

As a Chinese native speaker,I've seen a lot of work our player do to translate everything in KSP to Chinese.We tried to translate the Game,the mods and the tutorial.However, as we all know,3rd party localization always brings a lot of bugs to the game.So the official localization will change a lot and bring more local player to the KSP.

I hope the localization will bring us better gaming experience.

Thank you,Squad.

Welcome to the forums my friend ... If you are so inclined, feel free to contact myself in regards to making a translation between Chinese and English for BDArmory Continued

I created the KSPedia for BDAc and would be willing to work with you in order to translate it into Chinese

This goes for anyone in the community who would like a translation for the KSPedia's I have created ... I have the RAW files so translation will be fairly simple as compared to someone with just the .ksp files

PM me and we'll see if I can help

Edited by DoctorDavinci
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8 hours ago, Shiva said:

Lets hope the default text does not look at the IP address and change to that. I don't want to be in Japan and everything changes to Japanese.

Sorry I havent responded yet, but I have been overwhelmed by the response of non-English speakers who want the game in their language and volunteering to help.
But to answer your question: The setting of the language will be totally within the players control.

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9 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

So what you are saying is that it should be a requirement to either know how to speak or to learn English in order to play KSP?

All hail the overlord who has determined that if you don't speak English you are regulated to a second class citizen of the world ... learn to speak English or else

Where did I say that? I was merely discussing the relative spread of the English language relative to the others. You're fabricating opinions of mine regarding KSP. I might as well claim "So what you are saying is that KSP should discontinue its use of English once localization is complete?". You never said that, of course, but I never said that you should have to speak English to play KSP. We should both know better than inventing claims of the other that can easily be debunked as ridiculous.

I'm glad KSP is being localized. It's great that people can play it and mod it in their local languages. I can easily see that it's the most prfitable project Squad could undertake for KSP, as it opens the door for a lot of new players and communities. But I think that starting the game's development and marketing in English was the most advantageous way they could have got the game off the ground in the first place. KSP wouldn't have grown as much or as quickly if they had developed it in Spanish until now and then began localizing it.

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19 hours ago, something said:

Localisation may bring further customers but that won't necessarily enhance the game.

@something you're talking about issues that mostly pertain to the online community and not the stock game. While I can see that modders might not be able to localise their mods as fully as Squad can with KSP, I don't see that as a big issue. Mods are completely option and if they dissatisfy you at all you are totally free to remove them. More KSP players may not mean more users for all mods, but surely it is at least an increase in potential exposure. This can only be good for modders (who after all are doing this for fun, and probably because they want the mod more than anyone).

As for tutorials, I don't really understand the issue. Translation of tutorials is pretty straightforward for anybody with a good understanding of the game and a good grasp of more than one language. The resources are their to exploit, they need only be exploited and redistributed once. Direct community support on specific issues is another matter, but suspect that is why there are multiple forums in multiple languages for KSP around the world already. And of course lets not underestimate the powers of Google Translate.

19 hours ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Fixed that for you. 

While I agree with your general sentiment, there is absolutely nothing that says Squad HAS to keep developing the game if they keep bringing in money. They could very well just sit back and let the profits roll in. 

@FullMetalMachinist I admit I was a little too absolute in my causal expression, but you are failing to see the more subtle associated logic. If profits, Squad has the option to continue development or not. If not profits, Squad has no option but to stop development. Big market exposure (through localisation) = big potential for profit = strong profit motive = good chance of Squad making their product as awesome as frickin' possible. Small and saturated market exposure = diminished profit potential = motivation to expand into other markets OR stop development. Is that a bit clearer?

18 hours ago, Hodari said:

I agree with that much of it.  The problem that I(and probably a lot of the other people complaining) have with this is that they they keep hyping it up and making it sound like that have something really great that's coming soon, but "we can't tell you WHAT it is yet."  If they don't want to reveal stuff too soon, that's understandable, but...save the hype for when you actually have something you CAN tell us about.

@Hodari You can't really blame them for that. Everything about merchandising through social media (including this community) demands hype and sensationalism to feed the discussion and get people interested. Interested people talk, talking people spread the word and get people thinking about the product, and people thinking about the product buy it or talk about it more. Squad wants this. Equally if Squad just clammed up about what's in the pipeline more months after the dev reshuffle, wouldn't everybody be talking about what a dead project KSP was now? Which Squad clearly does not want.

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On 2017/1/14 at 10:23 AM, federicoaa said:

Chinese simplified only? sad, I could help with traditional

What a coincidence, that's what I can do too.

On 2017/1/14 at 10:29 AM, JPLRepo said:

We are only looking for a few more people who can help with Chinese Simplified and Japanese for now.

My address. Send me a private message.

:( too bad.

On 2017/1/14 at 11:57 PM, Me1_base said:

Managers of Chinese KSP Community reproduced the news to Chinese players, I am sure SQUAD can find helpers to cope with the translation problems of Chinese. Also Chinese simplified can be directly translated to Chinese traditional by just replacing the characters with little amendment. That what the team can do,in order to kill two birds with one stone.

Actually not, getting traditional characters from simplified Chinese will cause problem due to uncertainty of character mapping. But the inverse do work: you can get simplified character from any traditional character, afterall, it's "simplified". You can check this wiki for details
It still wouldn't work even without the problem though, due to differences in translation.

23 hours ago, Acea said:

Nope many technical translations are significantly different between traditional and simplified Chinese, due to many historical issues. I guess there would be quite a bit of adjustments, instead of only minor fixes.

Second this.
They are quite different used by different people in different region.

However, it probably won't worth the work of having a Trad. Ch. version considering the amount of people using it compared to the simplified one.

Edited by EwingKang
add some thoughts
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I can see no reason why I should be bothered that there are a bunch of options for language I will never use. As long as the option I want is there I`m happy, I`ll select `UK English` and everything will be fine and I`ll pay it no further thought. KSP is for everyone so there should be a long list of options for language.

Just makes sense.

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23 hours ago, Elthy said:

You dont need english to play the game, since most stuff is numbers. You need english for the community, which wont get magicaly accesible by localizing the game.

English is the top language in the world because its the language of science, engineering and informatics. This is due to historical reasons, not neccesarly because English is the perfect language (although its quite simple to learn while still having lots of cool, very specific words to describe stuff with great accuracy). At this point other languages are just cultural ballast from a logical standpoint.

German is by far the most accurate engineering language i know. But i can`t speak mandarin, so, who knows...

Edited by Mikki
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