Hello everyone, my name is Mariko or Zugi, a line and today we're going to talk about playing
a line games with our language barriers, I don't want to bother you, so let's keep into
it.
We're going to talk basically about three things, the first thing that you're supposed
to know is the source like the software that we use, that I use in order to make games,
then the actual server that I'm in saying where translations are super useful for us and
then our life basically changed between like before and after web late.
So I don't know if you know what everything is under CC bias, I don't know if you
are aware of what Luancy is, probably you are, if you're here, but it was formerly known
as Minecraft, sorry, not Minecraft.
Hi Microsoft, my test, but I can't read physically from here and is not a game is a game
platform, I don't know if you've ever played Roblox, have you ever played Roblox, you
know how, okay, so basically you can make your own games and publish them or play games
made by other people within the same software and how do translations work under the
who, yeah, this is Roblox.
And how do translations work under the hoods?
Well, we started our little adventure with a custom format that was called .TR, basically,
but we've recently switched to one of the interested standards at least which is POS-PFT.
This is very important for later.
Now, our server, well, is a mini game server that was born in 2020 and currently features
14 different languages thanks to contributors, I speak three, not 14 and the majority
of the staff is Italian, so that's one of the languages.
Language accessibility is very important because when you log in, the first thing you see is this.
Now, you probably understand what's written because, well, if you're here and you understand
me, you probably understand that as well, but when our user accounts really answer the
question that is like a bot, a voider, I don't know how to call it, but and they don't
know they had to put never because they don't understand what's written above, we have
a problem here.
So we don't want people that don't understand any language and supported on the server because
we can't really assist them and support them, but at the same time, you know, let's say
this is the Chinese and you don't understand Chinese.
Why are you supposed to write there?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You don't know, I don't know, I don't speak Chinese, and the same thing is for, like, we
have this mini game where you've gone classes, where every class has gone, it's own skills,
you can try or never every class, but if you can at least understand a bit of what's
happening before you actually play the class that is better, or maybe we also have, like,
a shooter game and the same applies, or we have skins, you can unlock, there is, like, on
hints, telling you how to unlock the skin, if you don't understand the hints, well, that's
going to be a problem.
And talking about hints and problems, we featured this event, like, last Halloween, where
you had to find this 10 ghosts scatter around the map, and every ghost was behind a
riddle, like you had to solve a riddle, and solving riddles, even if you're, even if you're
even if even in your, sorry, it's Sunday.
Even in your mother tongue is, can be very difficult.
Now imagine if you don't even know the language, and what do you do?
You just go trial and error, which is what a lot of users did, and the event was a failure,
but that's a horse of a different color.
The point is, you want people to understand what they're reading, and bringing up
weblades, basically, we used to, well, we didn't use weblades for, basically, four years,
and in four years, we had five languages, I speak three, so three, where just from me,
so let's say two new languages, people were forced to learn gits, like translators,
and also had to deal with a custom syntax, because the TR format was just something that Lonti
had, so that was an issue. After weblades, we reached the famous 14 languages, we got nine
in one year, we also had a handy interface, because that's what weblade gives to you,
it gives you the proper tools to actually translate something, and not just understand what
it is, like, what a PR, or an MR, it depends on the platform using it, so basically,
the only people that were, like, these people were devs who were also kind of able to translate
contents, and usually the quality of what's kind of pool, because they were, like, developers,
they were translators. With this, in stats, we have people that maybe don't even know how to
write a single line of codes, but we don't care, because they, they shouldn't do that, they
should actually translate contents, and we are currently hosted on translate.coldberg.org, thanks
to one of the Koibach's staff, which is not here, he is as an actor, I'm really grateful to him,
and we also started migrating like our server, started migrating to the industry standards. Why?
Because of this, so weblade supports a lot of formats out there, but it doesn't support TR,
because guess what TR is not, a format, I mean, it is just for us. So the closest thing is the
Google Web Toolkit, UTF8, but if your language contains apostrophes, like, are you from France,
are you from Belgium, are you from Italy? Well, that is good, okay, but when it goes into
weblades, due to the custom formats, this happens. So double apostrophes, and U, it just says,
there was, like, once upon a time, there was a duck, that's a resolution, it just, if you're curious,
but the point is, that's an issue. So we found a compromise for now, and we just put back
ticks instead of apostrophes, but as an Italian, I know that there is something wrong in that
sentence, because we don't actually use back ticks at all. So we also have to tell our French
translators, please do do that, do that, I know it's weird, I know it's bad, but it's better than that.
That's why we are migrating to a standard, because using a standard, it allows you to use third-party
apps or websites or whatever without incurring into issues, possibly. So, oh wow, I was super
French actually. Well, this is the last slide, but we can talk about, if you want,
short, duringvent the wheel, please, when we were using, well, when we created dot tr, it was
a dark time, probably, and it was just this niche project, we didn't think about reaching
this level. So, but just don't remember wheel, if you can use something, please use it, if it's like
tested and retested, a lot of times, please do. Also, translators shouldn't have to deal
with that environment, because, well, that should be quite straightforward. And translation means
accessibility, we have users that definitely don't speak English, but they can play whatever,
because maybe somebody translated the server in Russian, or in Ukraine, or in Portuguese, or in
I don't know, is Hungarian, whatever you want, even Chinese, we have the whole server, basically,
translated in Chinese. I don't know if the quality is good, because, again, I don't speak Chinese,
but the point is, if you don't speak English, that could be useful. And also, the most important
thing about all this is the agent sitting, because sometimes it happens that, well, once we have
this German player, he went to us and told us, have you like use a, like, deep L, or Google Translate,
or whatever, to translate contents in German? And I was like, no, why? Oh, because, well, it uses the
polite, like, formal pronoun when it speaks, like, Z, Z, Z instead of do, do, do, do. And,
you know, it's a game for kids, basically, you don't want to be super polite with kids, and
it was like, I mean, we have polite for me even in time, and so, yeah, it feels pretty weird.
And we were like, no, but, you know, I just picked German, so I didn't even notice, because I
playing Spanish, even if I'm Italian, because I want to be sure that Spanish works at the same time,
I started Spanish at the university, but the point is, you know, what? If you think it's bad,
this is a link, you just need to sign up, and you can fix it yourself, and they were like, what?
Yeah, you can do that. They fix it, and what you obtain is user not just being passive, like, just
being a player, having fun, yeah, whatever, great, but there can also be parts of the ecosystem,
like, of the making of the game. And, yeah, you can say it's exploitation, but it's also free,
like, even us, it's exploitation, we exploit ourselves, basically. So, and everything is
under AGPL. So, whatever they're doing, it can be reused, it can be modified,
or more people can actually modify their translations, like it happened with a ZZ case, and they're
very happy, basically, when they look in again, and they see that their translation is now the
official translation of something that is just a simple niche server on currency, which is
still kind of niche, if I must be honest, even if I represent it. So, yeah, that is, it's also,
since I have two minutes left, we also use an auxiliary library that's automatically, well, if you
check the accessibility option, when you play, you see the description of every time in the corner,
like, below, and the cool thing is you can translate all the accessibility messages, which is cool,
because people can both be deaf and not English, you know. So, it's double accessibility layer,
and that, I think, that is great, not just because we did it. If you want more information,
in general, launch it.org is the tool that we use, and that now we use this POS-POT. So,
you can use the industry standard and not have all the issues we have to deal with, like,
apostrophes, and if you want to know more, or if you want to check just if the translation of your
language is good, that is the AES website, which is the middle game website. I don't know if
there are questions, it's Sunday, again, afternoon, but thank you for listening, and that is it.
Yes, because the cool thing is, that's a very interesting question. Thank you. The cool thing
of Lonti is that is modular. So, our server is made of, like, 40 modules, and some of those
are very specific for our server, like the, like, the terms of service, it's something we
made just for us, but you can still take it, for kids, edit it, but I'd say the majority of
contents on our server is actually made to be generic, like, we used libraries. So, for instance,
the audio library is not specific for our server, or, like, being a minigame server, there are a lot
of messages about cues, like, okay, three seconds until the game starts, and if one single person
translates that string, everyone using everyone who wants to have a minigame server,
already has got that translation. Or, let's say, I want to have a server with animals,
and maybe, I don't know, I have ways to breed animals. It can be, I don't know, using Hags,
Hags, or, hey, or whatever. If that content is translated into Italian, for instance,
hey, it's like, Fieno. Everyone playing with the Italian clients,
on a game that uses the same mods, wouldn't read, hey, would read, Fieno, because you
translated once, and that's it.