OpenXcom Forum

Contributions => Translations => Topic started by: SupSuper on October 20, 2012, 01:44:56 am

Title: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: SupSuper on October 20, 2012, 01:44:56 am
Just wanted to draw attention to a debate going on about soldier names here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,205.0.html

Original X-Com (and other games) just have the names in standard A-Z alphabet, regardless of language, since they're global. Should we bother to make them more accurate with the proper national characters?

P.S. This is also the chance to add/improve soldier names for your own country. ;)
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: AedanClarke on October 20, 2012, 01:59:10 am
I feel it'd be more appropriate to add proper national characters in to help contribute to the feeling, no matter how minor, that XCOM is an international team. So, even if your rookie's shots aren't accurate, their names will be.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: radius75 on October 20, 2012, 09:37:03 am
Quote
We should probably at least give it try it with the full list of Latin derived glyphs (French, Polish, Hungarian, etc), and exclude the Cyrillic/Japanese/Chinese/Non-Latin alfabet
@powerc80 I agree with this.

Quote
Lets stick to the standard A-Z , i have enough trouble with them ;)
@luke83 This is not such difficult.  8)
Ąą, Ćć, Ęę, Łł, Ńń, Óó, Śś, Źź, Żż. (Polish)

Quote
Remember that soldier names are global (language-specific names would be a ton of work)
@SupSuper I know about this.
I propose Cyrillic/Japanese/Chinese/Non-Latin alfabet  only in language Mod.


EDIT
Quote
Alright, here are the new French soldier names.

A lot more variety than the old names... :)
@powerc80 is this correct French letters? (French_names.zip https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,205.msg6559.html#msg6559)
  - ╔lisabeth
  - Franńoise
  - Gķraldine
  - Vķronique
  - Pķtain
does the sign display '?'
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Volutar on October 20, 2012, 02:40:42 pm
SupSuper, national letters in multilingual game? okay, how'd you suppose to read chinese names, for instance? or georgian names? which will be written in their respective alphabets..

for recap: soldier names should be witten with only 26 latin characters. National symbols are mostly unreadable. You shouldn't expect from people reading your alphabet. I don't know how to read those. I'd prefer to get "latin mod" if these "localized" names will take their place.
BTW, only "latin derived" sounds kinda offensive.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: powerc80 on October 20, 2012, 08:39:16 pm
EDIT@powerc80 is this correct French letters? (French_names.zip https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,205.msg6559.html#msg6559)
  - ╔lisabeth
  - Franńoise
  - Gķraldine
  - Vķronique
  - Pķtain
does the sign display '?'

The French.nam file opens fine on my computer with a standard text editor (i.e. Notepad).

Or did you try it in-game? Is that why you got those strange spellings?

Anyway radius75, here is what the file should look like: https://i.imgur.com/UipyG.png
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: SupSuper on October 20, 2012, 08:58:29 pm
There seems to be quite the different opinions surrounding this, so for now I'll leave all the names as A-Z for 0.4.5 and we can discuss it again afterwards.

The French.nam file opens fine on my computer with a standard text editor (i.e. Notepad).

Or did you try it in-game? Is that why you got those strange spellings?

Anyway radius75, here is what the file should look like: https://i.imgur.com/UipyG.png
It's because your files are in ANSI and OpenXcom uses UTF-8. I've fixed this on my end, for future reference, you can change this in Notepad's Save As.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: powerc80 on October 20, 2012, 09:47:07 pm
There seems to be quite the different opinions surrounding this, so for now I'll leave all the names as A-Z for 0.4.5 and we can discuss it again afterwards.

That sounds fine, we can hold a vote sometime later if that's what you want.

It's because your files are in ANSI and OpenXcom uses UTF-8. I've fixed this on my end, for future reference, you can change this in Notepad's Save As.

Oops, I forgot about that... :)

Thanks for correcting it. In the meantime SupSuper, here are the French soldier names without accents.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Yankes on October 28, 2012, 12:56:23 pm
I have one big problem with no ASCII characters, who you input them to OpenXcom? Every letter should have unique keybind.
Another problem is keyboard layouts e.g. in Poland we use "right_Alt+e" to type "ę", what happens when some other language use same combination for different character? You will be limited only to characters form you language?
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: SupSuper on October 28, 2012, 05:19:38 pm
I have one big problem with no ASCII characters, who you input them to OpenXcom? Every letter should have unique keybind.
Another problem is keyboard layouts e.g. in Poland we use "right_Alt+e" to type "ę", what happens when some other language use same combination for different character? You will be limited only to characters form you language?

Keyboard input is not affected by your OpenXcom options (current language etc). It's handled by SDL and should match whatever your current system layout is, so you should be able to type text like you would in any other program (eg. I can type á by pressing a+´ since I have a Portuguese keyboard layout). If not, that's a problem with SDL and nothing can be really done about it.

The only limitation is you can only type in characters available in the OpenXcom font, naturally.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: papamaanbeer on October 30, 2012, 10:15:02 pm
Xcom is a global organisation, so you wil get soldiers from all over the globe. keeping it a-z is logical for the xcom admin and there are more pressing matters on there mind. stopping the alien menance!
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Solarius Scorch on May 18, 2014, 07:14:05 pm
I think some threadomancy is in order, or at least forgiveable here.

So what's the status on non-English characters? Are we supposed to add them or not? Has there been a consensus on this, or any sort of decision? I would like to contribute, but I don't know what to do!

If I may speak for myself, I think non-English characters are bordering on necessary. When I see French or German names that are missing parts of letters, it looks... well, unprofessional. Semi-literate. Honestly, this looks bad. Sure, it's a very minor feature, but since we're discussing it anyway...
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: SupSuper on May 18, 2014, 07:55:22 pm
I think some threadomancy is in order, or at least forgiveable here.

So what's the status on non-English characters? Are we supposed to add them or not? Has there been a consensus on this, or any sort of decision? I would like to contribute, but I don't know what to do!

If I may speak for myself, I think non-English characters are bordering on necessary. When I see French or German names that are missing parts of letters, it looks... well, unprofessional. Semi-literate. Honestly, this looks bad. Sure, it's a very minor feature, but since we're discussing it anyway...
What about non-latin alphabets? :P Personally I'd rather leave this topic dead, as people will argue semantics until the cows come home.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Solarius Scorch on May 18, 2014, 08:18:03 pm
What about non-latin alphabets? :P Personally I'd rather leave this topic dead, as people will argue semantics until the cows come home.

Non-Latin alphabets are non-Latin. They can't render Latin names exactly anyway, they need to make concessions.
This topic concerns our Latin alphabet. Which contains more letters than the English language.

Frankly, I don't understand the problem at all. How do non-English characters relate to the fact that there are non-Latin alphabets? How would it hurt users who use Cyrillic or Arabic?
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: xracer on May 21, 2014, 03:25:06 am
I agree we should at least try to get all latin alaphabets working,  non-latin well nothing we can do for now
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: winterheart on May 21, 2014, 06:10:55 am
In my opinion, names should be translatable, but there already hundreds and hundreds names, it would be pain for translators...
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Falko on May 21, 2014, 08:11:45 am
if that is builtin i have to admit i would like to have some sort of filter options to avoid non-latin soldiers
remembering 堤田 美羽, 大植 康平, 羅詩淳 or 戸坂 義雄 (https://de.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-random-jpja-us.php) if i cant read it seems difficult
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Solarius Scorch on May 21, 2014, 06:00:58 pm
In my opinion, names should be translatable, but there already hundreds and hundreds names, it would be pain for translators...

How can you translate a name? Pierre Morceau to Peter Piece? :P
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Aldorn on May 22, 2014, 01:42:29 am
How can you translate a name? Pierre Morceau to Peter Piece? :P
Congratulation for your French
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Solarius Scorch on May 22, 2014, 04:35:13 am
Congratulation for your French

Thanks, I used to speak fluent French, but it got very rusty over the years.

Regarding the names translation, seriously I think what Winterheart meant was changing first names to equivalents in the language the player uses... But such practices died out in XIX century, at least in Poland. (We say Jerzy Waszyngton instead of George Washington for example, but it never applies to modern people.)

if that is builtin i have to admit i would like to have some sort of filter options to avoid non-latin soldiers
remembering 堤田 美羽, 大植 康平, 羅詩淳 or 戸坂 義雄 (https://de.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-random-jpja-us.php) if i cant read it seems difficult

No, I think it's not about changing alphabets. Similarly, a Japanese player would see マルク スミス instead of Mark Smith. It's not about changing names, it's about using characters that the player can read.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: winterheart on May 22, 2014, 04:38:46 am
No, I meant write names in alphabet of current language. Not translated, but transcribed.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: Solarius Scorch on May 22, 2014, 04:55:32 am
No, I meant write names in alphabet of current language. Not translated, but transcribed.

Ah, I understand now, sorry. But that's already in - We have Shinji Kagawa, not 香川真司.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: winterheart on May 22, 2014, 10:18:48 am
Again, I meant that if I switched to Russian language in settings, I would see all names in Cyrillic letters. If German - to German transcription with diacritics where they should be. IMHO, user should see all text in selected language, including names.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: yrizoud on May 28, 2014, 02:15:47 am
I think everybody will agree if you can edit a name with any character that are present in the fonts (Fontsmall.png and Fontbig.png) : German keyboard will let you rename a soldier Günther Füß, french keyboard will let you spell "Françoise" with that pesky ç, cyrillic for people who can type it, etc.

About auto-generated names, I understand that it's difficult to put everybody on an equal foot.
I'd enjoy those weird nørse åccents on norwegian / swedish name, because I have no idea how to pronounce them right anyway.
Same with polish characters, I know that even when you see a polish name that only contains a-z letters, you simply cannot "guess" how it's actually pronounced. So don't hesitate to put those accents where there belong... I have fond memories of polish friends, and pure awe for a language where i and w are full words, but uses so many consonents that you can sometimes see accents on them (Ź !) or even across them (ł !)

About cyrillic, I can understand that people who play in russian+cyrillic will prefer to see russian names in their native cyrillic spelling (rather than the conversion to english sounds in A-Z alphabet ), but what about the names that are not originally in cyrillic ? Can they also be translated into cyrillic (does this need the translator to know the pronunciation), and should they ?
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: grzegorj on October 31, 2014, 08:14:08 pm
In my humble opinion, non-English Latin characters (= letters with diacritics) cannot be treated exactly like Cyrillic or Japanese symbols.

First, say, Polish ogoneks are still regarded Latin. But the 26-letter alphabet is not Latin but English (note that "w" was never written in Latin, besides "j" and "u" were not used in classical times as well). Hence the term "non-English Latin characters".

Second, non-English Latin letters are not transliterated, and omitting all those strokes, ogoneks ("Ogonek" = "tail" is an official name of the diacritic seen in the Polish "ą", "ę") etc. is considered a spelling error, at least here in Poland. Telling the truth, spelling my surname which is Jagodziński as Jagodzinski (without the stroke above "n") may be considered offensive. I do not exaggerate!

Third, in countries where non-Latin writings are in use, Latin names are transliterated. Some time ago I was in Russia. In my visa, it was spelt "Ягодзиньский" (it is a kind of transcription, even not transliteration). So, if Cyrillic-writing countries can transcribe Latin names and it is all right, also Latin-writing counties can transcribe non-Latin names. It is a common practice and I feel good with it. But I do not understand why anybody should spelt Jagodzinski instead of Jagodziński. These are two, complete different problems.

Taking it all into consideration, I would persuade to place correctly-spelt soldier names written in the Latin alphabet in the game files. This post: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=159.msg35088#msg35088 (https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=159.msg35088#msg35088) has an attachment with 4 versions of correct Polish names that differ in size (you may choose one, or even use all of them). They work all right, at least on my computer. I have also tried to have done my best to correct the Czech file. In the current version, the one in the game, some name look really strange, i.e. Jioi instead of Jiří, and I just cannot have stood it... However, I cannot speak Czech, so there can still be errors in the file - my southern Slavic brothers, sorry fot it... Help in it if you can, please!

I cannot understand all those reservations concerning writing letters with diacritics, or reading foreign names. What do you need writing them  for? But when using properly spelt names in the game you have no need to write them anywhere! It is the game which writes them for you (from its data files). And what concerns reading... It will not help you at all if you omit the strokes! For example, the well-known Polish surname Kościuszko (cf. a high mountain in Australia) is NOT pronounced even similarly to the accepted English pronunciation "Kuh-zee-uh-sko", it is more like "Kawshchooshkaw". It has nothing to do with the stroke above "s". If you are interested in the correct reading of foreign names, learn basics of particular languages rather. BTW, if you are interesting in Polish, be welcome to me personal website (https://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/gram/en/fonemy1.html (https://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/gram/en/fonemy1.html) and https://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/kurs/0.html (https://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/kurs/0.html)) where you will find a very detailed guide to the Polish spelling and pronunciation with recorded examples (it is me who speaks).

I would really appreciate corrected soldier names in German, French, Slovak, Hungarian etc. (sorry that I have omitted other examples). It would be very nice if they were available, at least as an option for the player. All that is needed for it are corrected .nam files.
Title: Re: Soldier names and glyphs
Post by: yrizoud on October 31, 2014, 11:19:46 pm
What do you need writing them  for? But when using properly spelt names in the game you have no need to write them anywhere! It is the game which writes them for you (from its data files).
The game lets you rename soldiers manually in Soldier screen... Or I misunderstand your question.
At the time I posted, the textbox did not let you enter special characters (probably anything above unicode 127), but nowadays you can type any character which exists in the game font, and it's a good thing.