Language Translators?

[rklenseth]

Question to Cantr Staff; If I wanted to play a character in a different language do I have to be fluent in that language or could I use one of those nifty language translators that are usually good at defining words but really suck at grammar?

[new.vogue.nightmare]

I'm not staff, but I think that if you used that you'd have a very Zero Wing experience.

[rklenseth]

I'm not staff, but I think that if you used that you'd have a very Zero Wing experience.

True, very true.

[west]

All your iron are control to us

[new.vogue.nightmare]

You have no chance to mine make your wood shields.

[Meh]

Translation programs are the reason I stopped doing accents in English areas.

Becausin' tawk liike thisherein ain't abowt to be transferlaten that well if ya knows whadimeen.

[new.vogue.nightmare]

Ecksington J. Deeimus IV.

[g1asswa1ker]

I for one don't see why not, it is true they define better then they grammar so you might sound really strange to some but you would get your point across. We might want to bring it up with the other PDs

[Jos Elkink]

Personally - didn't discuss this with other staff people - I think you should be careful with this. You should at least have enough knowledge of the language that with help of the translator, you have an idea whether your sentence sounds ok or not.

Of course, you can play the somewhat dumb character ... I wanted to observe the French players and had a French character for just a while, and he was just the kind of person that friendly greets, and works on his building - that's all ... But we also want to avoid that all language groups are overwhelmed with dumb characters, of course ...

The accents were really funny, though, so I hope this is not going to be too much of a reason to avoid them ... If people cannot read English well enough, they should play in their own language, just like the other way around ...

So, all in all, working with just those free translators doesn't really work, I think, although the odd dumb character wouldn't hurt too much. But if everybody is going to do that, it will ...

[The Lurker]

Translation:

Yes , but no .

[Meh]

[kroner]

Those things are not really reliable because of the Idiome and idiomatischen consumption, those the computer, which translates services, not to recognize can. Also words with repeated meanings cause large problems. I pass through this Babel fish into German and in back and look, how she came out.

[Jos Elkink]

LOL (both @ Last Laugh and @ kroner)

[Missy]

Just take it from me... It's not a good idea to have a char in a diff language area than that which you speak. Especially when using silly translators. I tried it once and I'm most positive the French are sure Im stupid now. I had an idea of the language but not as good as I expected. Also make note that even though you can make sense of a grammatically incorrect sentence that you write...WHen you take one of their sentences and stick it in a translator you're bound to come up with something incredibly odd. It can be time consuming too. But could possibly be fun...for you maybe. *Shrug*

[Nick]

As the french language dept member, I disagree. I use the translator to translate large strings that need to be translated. Its a useful tool if you know how to use it, but it should only be used if you already know the language, so you can look it over for errors. It can save you time, but actually trying to have a character work like that probably wont work. Maybe for a little while, but you will come across a few problems sooner or later. Like someone said, double meanings throw off the translator.