That is a lot of non-English (as first language) speaking countries. I can't imagine it would be toooooo hard to have a language option and make this game accessible to countries, particularly those that don't necessarily have rampant broadband access...

o.O


This is already in our to-do list... But I think you underestimate the difficulty heh... we have a ton of text that is static (basically all of it, including things like "Industrial Zones", "Construction Sites", "Explore") that would need to be now variable and database driven.

There is a plan to do this.

Just after the FB stuff...

Cool. I imagined how it would be done and what you described it was I envisioned. That is why too has six o's in it. ;) I would definitely put it as a lower priority than FB interface.

Part of the issue is that we need to finalize the text that would be translated.

I used to play ages of strife (good game for those with time available: not me anymore), and they opened the translations up to the community... got 4 languages done in a month or two... similar content and quantity to earth.. just have to trust people before you let them at it.

It's a good idea, but probably not essential given that everyone online (especially in text based games) will have to understand basic web-english even to find the game... and to interact within it (at present).


If it's not a priority why not setup a page specifically for it (either on sthing like wiki or just make a quick database clone solely for translations).. gets the ball rolling for development much farther down the line at a minimal cost/time requirement.

Edit: Slagpit's post came while I was typing... yeap, that's a pretty important pre-requisite :D

If one friend understands basic English, they can spread it to their friends. All we need is one person to point to it before the flood gates can open =P

I do think the wiki idea isn't terribly bad... like if there was a list of things in English to be translated, and then people could generate lists of translations in the same format for easy porting. Just send out a message to all players when something like this happens so people who don't read the forums are informed.

My first thought was to give some examples how ridiculously complicated localisation is, but then I realised you meant translations, not localisation.

Still, translation by itself involves quite a lot of work if you have a system that today is using hard coded strings.

An example would be when you realize you need to support Unicode throughout the application, including in the queries in the database. This can be a major task to handle if you don't support it today.

A tip would be to set up limits on the number of characters for each translation. A two character word in English can easily be 15 characters in another language and it can mess up layouts if you allow too long translations.

If you are doing languages like Chinese or Japanese your page layout need to work when the font is increased to at least twice the size. Since this is webpages an alternative CSS might do.

If you are ambitious you could also support RTL (right to left) languages like Arabic, but that tend be even more complicated.

Just a few quick thoughts on this...

1) English was never a barrier 10+ years ago to some people ranging from South Korea and/or Singapore (HAN & Elitez), Quebec/France (Arrow/Quebec) and a lot of European countries.

2) Sure...you may successfully translate the entire game into one language (Which is a mean feat in-of-itself), but then there would probably be the expectation for customer service in that language...updates and postings (IE: Blog posts and announcments) in that language...forums in the language...game admins/mod who speak that language...etc?

3) Let's be serious here...English is THE language of the internet. I have been on the internetz for a very long time. I have online gamed for a very long time and the English language has not been a barrier to people who want to play a game. Of course this opinion is completely 100% biased as I am an English speaker.


I'm just wondering if it would be worth all the effort for the game admins. As previous posts have stated regarding the layout and setups of some languages, it won't be easy. And which language would you choose first?

I had site access to Quebec for years and while they were all francophones, they all spoke at least basic English as well. As for HAN&Elitez I can't speak to the English spoken on their membership as a whole. I spoke to a number of Elitez over time and they all spoke English well, but I approached no where near their entire membership to judge.



That is an interesting point, particularly the customer service issues, moderating in foreign languages, etc. I suppose if a language was popular it wouldn't be hard to find volunteer mods (sure they might not have the ten years of screening that everyone here already has) but it wouldn't be at all unreasonable to expect.



Sure, English is the international language and it has never been a barrier to anyone you have played with, because the people who don't speak English weren't able to play with you.



That is the big question, is it worth the effort? Well, if it increased membership two fold is it worth it? Five? Ten? If Earth got back to 40,000 players, even if they all spoke different languages, it would be well worth it. First language would have to be Chinese (and all the inherent difficulties with that) I think. Maybe Bengali and Hindi. Spanish is a very obvious choice (and maybe the easiest big language for many reasons). Is it worth the effort? No way to know until you try.

yea, i played a set with Du in tehclub. 20+ russians with maybe 2-3 that could respond in english. all played the game no problem. and again i have played with pinoys, and while most can/could write/read english, many couldn't and it wasn't much of a barrier.

so i agree with jatam, more fixing of the spies and less fixing of languages =p

I'm from Belgium, speaking Dutch, but I have no problem with English.

Another option could be leaving the actual game in English but give the option to get the frontpage and helppages (info on gov., info on tech, etc.) in another language while keeping the ingame used syntax.

Example (in Dutch) :
Tyranny
+20% winst bij aanvallen
-10% Militaire onderhoudskosten
Slechts 1 beurt per aanval
-25% Maximuum inkomsten per inwoner

This way it shouldn't be hard to get around with the game, even if you're new and aren't very familiar with English.

I'm a little bit scared of a japanese/korean/chinese Earth take over.. (in real life and in this.)

And that's a good idea Route. I'm sure there are many foreign language speakers who could easily help out with various languages for that as well.

Probably wouldnt need too many.. French, Swedish, Dutch, Russian, some asian dialect.