Friday Facts #436 - Lost in Translation

[ladavarga]

Přílíš žluťoučký kůň pěl dábelské ódy

[Ghabisub]

If I was a dev I probably would have just deleted the search bar for any language other than English

[Holy-Fire]

I suspect the unsupported RTL support can be greatly improved if you update the python-bidi library to a more recent version. Please consider doing that!

Seconded. Revisiting localization is a great opportunity to bring back Right-to-Left support.

[chl]

Regarding the mod portal search, I always found it strange that it's so hard to find mods you're looking for by searching for the name. For example, if I search for "Space Exploration", the mod itself with that exact name is not even on the first page of hits.

Are you sure you don't just have the wrong Factorio version selected when searching?

If I set version to 1.1 and search for Space Exploration, it's the first hit. It just hasn't been updated to 2.0 yet, so it doesn't show up searching 2.0 (or in-game, which forces a search for the version you are running).

Yeah this seems to be it. I remember having trouble finding mods by name in the past, so I just tried searching forgetting about the version setting. My bad! Maybe the version should be at the top of the options sidebar so it's more noticable.

[dogwong]

I hope the search works with English even when Factorio uses another language.
My Factorio life would be easier while following an English guide or get rid from stuck at toggling on/off the IME

[mblue]

I dont get why developers are putting effort in translation issues, if you cant understand basic English you should not even game in the first place.
Focus should be on game performance and network optimalization.

[BlueTemplar]

My other bafflement at this notwithstanding... have you heard of these little people called 'kids' ?
('optimalization' indeed...)

[mblue]

Very mature to call people "kids" by just small grammar mistakes, post still is valid, you understand the sentence so basic English is applied.
Anyways this is totally irrelevant for the point, language rollout should never be a priority and is a waste of resources if there still are severe performance and multiplayer issues

[Nidan]

Very mature to call people "kids" by just small grammar mistakes

You're misunderstanding their post. While they're calling out your mistake, if it was understood as a mistake in the first place ("optimalization" to me feels similar to German "Verschlimmbesserung"), it is unrelated to the remainder of the post.
What they're saying is that there are these people called "kids" that tend not to speak English (yet); not letting them play is indeed baffling.

[mblue]

Ah yeah I think your correct Sorry for misreading.

Anyways really hope they fix normal multiplayer through Steam real fast, the lags / desyncs are taking the fun out of the game, and as I really enjoy solo this game is so much better with friends

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
language rollout should never be a priority
[...]

What makes you think it's a (high) priority ?
This FFF is about 2.0.16, coming out nearly twelve years after Factorio's release.

Also, you might not have noticed it, but Wube isn't an indie "garage company" of 2 programmers and 1 graphician any more, but a mid-sized company of ~30 people, they might be even able to spare whole people on this alone ! (You get diminishing returns very fast when trying to put multiple people on the same task, especially if it's not their specialty.)
(Not to mention that almost all (?) of the translating work is outsourced.)

P.S.: Are you sure the lags/desyncs are not an issue on your end(s) ? Have you reported them ? EDIT : You did, nice, thanks !

[MaxAstro]

Regarding the mod portal search, I always found it strange that it's so hard to find mods you're looking for by searching for the name. For example, if I search for "Space Exploration", the mod itself with that exact name is not even on the first page of hits.

Are you sure you don't just have the wrong Factorio version selected when searching?

If I set version to 1.1 and search for Space Exploration, it's the first hit. It just hasn't been updated to 2.0 yet, so it doesn't show up searching 2.0 (or in-game, which forces a search for the version you are running).

Yeah this seems to be it. I remember having trouble finding mods by name in the past, so I just tried searching forgetting about the version setting. My bad! Maybe the version should be at the top of the options sidebar so it's more noticable.

TBF I realized what had happened only because I did the same thing.

Version number should definitely be at the top of the options, it gets buried.

[BlueTemplar]

It's technically also at the top, in the URL bar, but yeah, less noticeable.

[Néomorphos]

Hello
I play in French and there is a text that isn't localised : when hovering the spoilage priority selection the pop-up is still in english

Sans fthfth.png (3.31 MiB) Viewed 995 times

[eradicator]

Thank you very much for the べると⇔ベルト feature (albeit I have to admit in 150h of playing Japanese Space Age I've - in retrospect oddly - never missed it). After years of default-English I am very very happy with the Japanese experience. The translation quality is extremely high compared to other regrettably less satisf...ying games.

I'm not a native-native Japanese speaker but sufficiently high level, so if you have a lack of native speakers to ask specific things feel free to contact me via email.

Feature I find missing:

IME causes a very annoying experience when inputting numbers (combinators, logisitic requests). Currently like this:
1) Click number field
2) Type number
3) Notice that IME is still active (from naming stations or whatever)
4) Press ESC to cancel current input, press IME-off, wrongly input key combination half the time and loop back to 3).
5) Finally enter the actual number.

It would be much nicer if either the IME was auto-disabled in number fields, and/or at least recognize full-width numbers as valid input （１２３４５６７８９０）.

Also a general problem with search functions is lack of wide-space "　" support for seperating search terms, but it seems ascii space isn't supported in English either.

* Also thanks for the best addon ever.

[iouter]

hey, i'm a chinese player, i think the "custom mapping" would be helpful to implement pinyin search. pinyin search will allow chinese players to search directly without switching to chinese IME.

there is a mod in minecrarft that has already implemented this: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc ... characters

so, is there a way to customize the "custom mapping" through a mod? of course, it would be best if this feature could be officially supported.

[untra]

I'm curious if Wube has stats on the overall languages selected by players. I wonder what languages Factorio are most commonly played in, after english?

[Holy-Fire]

I dont get why developers are putting effort in translation issues, if you cant understand basic English you should not even game in the first place.
Focus should be on game performance and network optimalization.

Whenever someone argues not to work on problem X because there is also a problem Y, I am reminded of the "The King and the Fireman" fable.

There are many problems in the world - and in Factorio - and people can and should work on many of them at the same time. And they're not always the same people - someone who works on translation compatibility might not be able to help in the least with performance, network or whatever.

And while personally I don't completely understand why people would want to play a translated version of a game - the fact of the matter is that many do, and it's important to them. It would be remiss of Wube to ignore that.

have you heard of these little people called 'kids' ?

I think playing English-language games as a kid is a great way to learn English. That's how I learned English.

[BlueTemplar]

Yes, but they were saying that (also) kids should refrain from playing video games at all until they achieved a basic proficiency in English.

[youtakun]

As someone learning the Japanese language, I noticed that input fields often regognize partial input before pressing space to invoke the conversion. This means that you can for example type (keypresses) "berut", it will display "べるｔ" and the the field could already be performing a partial search:

11-20-2024, 11-40-58.png (49.67 KiB) Viewed 115 times