Localization & Internationalization best practices with 3.0 ruleset layering

[Blacky]

Well, I hate to say it, but that's the thing when a new "Standard" is proposed - there is often a load of work that needs to be done to bring older, non-Standard "stuff" up to quality.

That's a possibility, but you didn't answer my examples: we're working (nearing beta) on a ruleset for a French game that should be localized and printed in English in the future (could be months, probably more like next year). How do we do this?

Or, what about a ruleset for a game that has no English version whatsoever.

[damned]

That's a possibility, but you didn't answer my examples: we're working (nearing beta) on a ruleset for a French game that should be localized and printed in English in the future (could be months, probably more like next year). How do we do this?

Or, what about a ruleset for a game that has no English version whatsoever.

So what are you suggesting?
Its a very good point that as FG grows up it will benefit from a more standardised approach to all things and this is one that would benefit from having standards.
But having standards will always disadvantage some - a quick and dirty fix or a fix that works for one person/group might not be allowed under a standards based approach. It might also completely disadvantage everyone whose native tongue is something other than english if the standards based approach is language goes in extension at end. Or maybe it has no effect - you could code your ruleset that extends CoreRPG with internationalised strings in French with support for a further language extension on top of that - be it to turkish, german, spanich or english.

[dulux-oz]

OK, I thought the answer was pretty implicit, but I'll make it explicit:

If we as a community go with a Standard (any Standard) then to be considered Standard-Compliant a Ruleset needs to be written in the Base Language - if there is also one or more Language Paks for languages OTHER THAN the Base Language then that's fantastic.

So, to answer your exact question (assuming that the community adopts the Language Pak Standard and English as the Base Language) the Ruleset that Blacky and bzjeurd are nearing beta on will need to be written in English (hopefully with a French Language Pak - and maybe others) to be Standard-Compliant. If they release their Ruleset and its not in English than it WON'T BE Standard-Compliant!

It's as simply as that.

OK, so does that mean that they can't/shouldn't release their Ruleset?

Of course not!

What it does mean, however, is that until they do release it IN THE BASE LANGUAGE it won't be Standard-Compliant - so what does this mean? Nothing! Except that it may have a bearing on others using their Ruleset and basing their own variants on their Ruleset. Whether this is a problem or not is one that the community will have to judge.

So, if it were up to me and I was developing a new Ruleset (no matter what language I was working in) I'd be writing it in the Base Language NO MATTER WHAT, so that it would be Standard-Compliant and therefore MORE USEFUL to the WHOLE community.

Not what you wanted to hear, no, but that's the way its got to be if we go with a Standards-Based approach - and don't forget, I've been through this before (on a professional basis) and believe me, we DO NOT want to "throw the baby out with the bath water" standards-wise just because it puts some members of the community "out".

Finally, the above may seem harsh and/or dictatorial - I don't mean to be either; I am simply putting forward an idea or two for the community (and SmiteWorks, incidentally) to decide upon, for the good of us all - if people don't like what I've said or disagree with me, then that's fine. If the community decides to go with a different Language Standard, again, that's fine. I'm just trying to pass on some knowledge and experience for the benefit of the community.

++++++++++

OK, a couple of other things.

First, it would be a mistake for the community to go down the route of having some Rulesets written in the Base Language and some others written in various non-Base Languages with a Base Language Language Pak, because this defeats the whole purpose of having a Standard in the first place. If the community is going to have a Standard then it need to have ONLY ONE Standard - not a bunch of Standards. This is one reason that [B]ALL[/A] commercial aviation communication uses the same language - can you imagine what it would be like if any old language could be used in the commercial aviation industry?

Second, to avoid having to load multiple Language Paks (eg CoreRPG => 3.5DnD => etc), we could make the CoreRPG Language Pak(s) available in "raw" form (XML or LUA). Then if you are playing 3.5DnD you would grab the raw 3.5DnD Language Pak DIFFERENTIAL (that part of the 3.5DnD Language Pak different from the CoreRPG Language Pak and simply "merge" the two raw Paks together to form the actual Extension with then load. Similarly for "deeper" raw Language Paks.

Yes, its a bit more work INITALLY but I think its the best of both worlds from a maintenance point-of-view and a playability/loading point-of-view - again, just my $0.02 worth.

Cheers

[damned]

OK, I thought the answer was pretty implicit, but I'll make it explicit:

If we as a community go with a Standard (any Standard) then to be considered Standard-Compliant a Ruleset needs to be written in the Base Language - if there is also one or more Language Paks for languages OTHER THAN the Base Language then that's fantastic.

So, to answer your exact question (assuming that the community adopts the Language Pak Standard and English as the Base Language) the Ruleset that Blacky and bzjeurd are nearing beta on will need to be written in English (hopefully with a French Language Pak - and maybe others) to be Standard-Compliant. If they release their Ruleset and its not in English than it WON'T BE Standard-Compliant!

You are going in pretty heavy handed. There is no standard as of yet and there is no reason why the standard could simply require that all language strings support internationalisation.
This requires no more effort than doing it the other way.
There are many RPG's written in European languages (other than English) that have no following outside of their home countries which could be ported here. That would never happen if someone had to translate everything into English first when no English translation already exists. Who would translate it for a non existent audience?
Aviation uses a single standard that specifies language - because planes and pilots continually transit between different language zones. Games *may* not need the same standard.

The minimum standard may be as simple as a load order for rulesets and extensions and a requirement to support internationalisation of elements and functions.

Anyways - JPG has to work thru that once it gets to the top of his list - in the meantime lets try not to bruise each others toes

[Moon Wizard]

Now for my two cents:

I think that the language of any community rulesets should be completely up to the ruleset developer. I plan to put no limits on anybody willing to put forth the effort to build a ruleset, as it is a challenge enough. Any language packs are bonus.

As for rulesets sold through our store, I would say that the rulesets should be written with an English interface, mainly because the majority of our users speak English. (There may be a case for rulesets that are specific to a country not to be English by default, but we can discuss with the ruleset developer before adding to the store.)

At this point, any language extensions for SW-provided rulesets are a blessing given to us by those willing to take on the work.

Dulux-Oz, I agree that standards are very useful, and required in some cases. However, I'm not sure it is necessary at this point. Though, I'm sure there will be some extra work down the road because of the lack.

The challenge will continue to be how to keep extensions up to date as versions of the underlying rulesets change (including language packs, whether they are extensions or something else).

If FG continues to evolve and grow, we can look at some sort of "language" setting for Fantasy Grounds that can be defined in the Settings, and language packs can be installed and automatically loaded for each ruleset based on that settings. (i.e. no need for tracking extensions, etc.) And, fall back to base language if language not available for that ruleset. Of course, this is just brainstorming at this point, because I have no bandwidth.

Cheers,
JPG

[dulux-oz]

You are going in pretty heavy handed. There is no standard as of yet and there is no reason why the standard could simply require that all language strings support internationalisation.

In the meantime lets try not to bruise each others toes

Yeah, but didn't I actually say exactly that (or at least imply it)? AND I said that (and sort of, kind of apologised for it) if the COMMUNITY decides on things then that's what we should be doing?

So, I'll be explicit again:

If I have offended anybody or trod on any toes than I am deeply, deeply sorry - that was not my intention at all. As I said, I was simply trying to provide some insight and experience to the community with the aim of helping to progress a discussion on the new functionality of languages and to propose and develop ONE POSSIBLE Standard as a starting point for what has the potential to quickly become "a great big pile of spaghetti".

Again, if I've upset people than I apologise.

[Blacky]

If we as a community go with a Standard (any Standard) then to be considered Standard-Compliant a Ruleset needs to be written in the Base Language - if there is also one or more Language Paks for languages OTHER THAN the Base Language then that's fantastic.

So, to answer your exact question (assuming that the community adopts the Language Pak Standard and English as the Base Language) the Ruleset that Blacky and bzjeurd are nearing beta on will need to be written in English (hopefully with a French Language Pak - and maybe others) to be Standard-Compliant. If they release their Ruleset and its not in English than it WON'T BE Standard-Compliant!

So your proposition is to make a standard that will right off the bat, right now, say to the world: “your roleplaying games do not exist for the Fantasy Grounds community if they weren't published in English at some point, in the same manner”? I mean… really?

I thought maybe I missed something. But it seems I didn't. So obviously, no, I don't think that's a valid proposition for any kind of community organization or standard. How could it be? It's physically impossible to write a ruleset in English for a game that does not have an English version whatsoever.

Standard isn't probably the best word. Right now, I'll stick to guidelines and best practices. What would be the goals of such guidelines and best practices?

1. To help the end-user. Facilitate its search for how to handle his games. For example if most localizations are done as an Extension, that's a different Google search that searching for “ruleset rolemaster Deutsch” in Google.
2. To help the ruleset author(s). For example their might be some technical disadvantages to do localization as a separate ruleset, having the best FG minds preemptively point that out would help beginners.
3. Lay foundations for the future. This future could be features (like automatic download of dependencies, like transparent updates, like a decent FG gaming library), or documentations (like new guides to write and maintain rulesets for FG 3.x), or community efforts (like shared maintenance of ruleset or localizations).

Probably even a few others.

And I think the gains of such guidelines should outweigh the (minimal if possible) hassle of sticking to it. I also think given the past attitude toward i18n, we should be careful on how we as a community address this and talk to people outside the very small percentage of FG users actually being here on those boards.

Not what you wanted to hear

This has nothing to do with me (I have zero personal stake in this, my personal level of English is quite enough to translate and localize whatever I need for my gaming tables, and even at my abysmal coding level a quick&dirty localization of any ruleset is well within my means). But I also seriously doubt you could have any idea whatsoever on what I wanted to hear or not.

On another note, Moon Wizard about translations being purely as strings, I'm afraid that's not the case. There are several graphics with text (from the top of my head, the chat emote icons, or the tabs, or the windows titles to the left side, or in CoreRPG all the big sidebar buttons). All those graphics would need to be remade (right now from scratch since there's no source file available for those) and included in a language pack (whatever shape it would take in the end).

[Blacky]

I missed the various answers before posting mine above.

One thing I could propose, to keep with this Base Language idea, is that the base language of a FG resource would be the original language of a game. The trouble I can see with this, is how a ruleset author can access the original language of a game? Let's say (again, purely hypothetical) I want to do a Kobols Ate My Baby! ruleset for my French tables. But I do not own the original English game. Will SmiteWork buy it and send me a copy?

As far as I can see, there's no true gain for that base language thing, and several issues (but again as far as I can see, if I'm wrong please do tell). Maybe we should try another angle on this? Maybe FG resources could have clearer dependencies (something more visible than unzipping a .pak or .mod or .ext, reading through the code to find those) and more important a language string?

Like an attribute for the root tag, <root version="3.0.3" lang="en-US"> (en-US for USA, en-uk for great Britain, fr-fr for France, fr-ca for French Canada, just en for all English, and so on)? It do require some coding from Moon Wizard, something I would have prefered to avoid since he has no time for those right now but this seems like a very small thing. With no impact today, but there's a lot of inertia in the FG community (hell, I still use a ruleset that was abandoned before Goblin King sold it because there's no improved version that I know of). Whatever plans, guidelines, best practices are drawn today would take several months at the very very least to get hold of the beach.

This language tag would be optional for past resources of course, not for future ones. It's a small thing, but unless FG output some kind of error it will be overlooked.

This is something that would be both somewhat human readable and that would be machine readable. It could in the future be displayed inside FG launcher, and/or in the forums download, and/or the SmiteWorks library, and/or the community library, etc. And there's no need to reinvent the wheel, there's already widespread use and good documentation by the IETF and a couple of RFC I don't remember the numbers right now for this.

But again, just a question and a quick suggestion for this area of things.

Edit another thing to add. Maybe important, maybe not. But I doubt you know of it, so there it is. There's several FG ruleset/extension authors that don't speak English. Don't ask me how, I still don't understand how one can learn LUA and more difficult learn the various FG intricacies without reading at least some basic English, but there is. Again, not saying this is important or need to be taken into account, just putting it out here these people do exist.

[dulux-oz]

So your proposition is to make a standard that will right off the bat, right now, say to the world: “your roleplaying games do not exist for the Fantasy Grounds community if they weren't published in English at some point, in the same manner”? I mean… really?

That's not what I said - I said it wouldn't be Standard-Compliant. I also said:

OK, so does that mean that they can't/shouldn't release their Ruleset?

Of course not!

What it does mean, however, is that until they do release it IN THE BASE LANGUAGE it won't be Standard-Compliant - so what does this mean? Nothing! Except that it may have a bearing on others using their Ruleset and basing their own variants on their Ruleset. Whether this is a problem or not is one that the community will have to judge.

It's physically impossible to write a ruleset in English for a game that does not have an English version whatsoever.

I don't disagree with you - it's incredibly hard!

Standard isn't probably the best word. Right now, I'll stick to guidelines and best practices.

I thought that's what we were doing, trying to come up with some guidelines and best practices with the aim of developing a Standard - I obviously misunderstood.

Its a good list. The "danger" I see is one (as I said a couple of times) I've seen professionally before - ESPECIALLY if we take Point 3 into account. I was just trying to avoid a "mess" in the future.

This has nothing to do with me... But I also seriously doubt you could have any idea whatsoever on what I wanted to hear or not.

OK, the "you" I was referring to wasn't you (Blacky) particularly, it was a generic you as in "hi, you cats, what's happening". I would never attempt to presume what someone, ANYONE, was thinking. And that last sentence is indicating to me that it does "have something to do with you". So, let me apologise again:

If I have offended anybody or trod on any toes than I am deeply, deeply sorry! That was not my intent - I obviously let my big mouth run away with me again.

[dulux-oz]

And I just did the same (missed the intervening post)

That's some very, very good ideas - I like them a lot (for what its worth). Plenty of things to consider.