Author Topic: Soldier names and glyphs  (Read 21819 times)

Offline Falko

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 802
    • View Profile
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #15 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 if i cant read it seems difficult

Offline Solarius Scorch

  • Global Moderator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 11408
  • WE MUST DISSENT
    • View Profile
    • Nocturmal Productions modding studio website
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #16 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

Offline Aldorn

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 750
    • View Profile
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #17 on: May 22, 2014, 01:42:29 am »
How can you translate a name? Pierre Morceau to Peter Piece? :P
Congratulation for your French

Offline Solarius Scorch

  • Global Moderator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 11408
  • WE MUST DISSENT
    • View Profile
    • Nocturmal Productions modding studio website
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #18 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 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.

Offline winterheart

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 180
  • Fellow Squaddie
    • View Profile
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #19 on: May 22, 2014, 04:38:46 am »
No, I meant write names in alphabet of current language. Not translated, but transcribed.

Offline Solarius Scorch

  • Global Moderator
  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 11408
  • WE MUST DISSENT
    • View Profile
    • Nocturmal Productions modding studio website
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #20 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.

Offline winterheart

  • Colonel
  • ****
  • Posts: 180
  • Fellow Squaddie
    • View Profile
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #21 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.

Offline yrizoud

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1014
    • View Profile
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #22 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 ?

Offline grzegorj

  • Captain
  • ***
  • Posts: 87
  • grzegorj and Sherlock are my nicknames...
    • View Profile
    • X-COM
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #23 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 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 and 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.

Offline yrizoud

  • Commander
  • *****
  • Posts: 1014
    • View Profile
Re: Soldier names and glyphs
« Reply #24 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.