Messages

[<SomeonesRoom>{0}'s {1}</SomeonesRoom> <DiseaseGrowthModeChanged_Growing>{0}'s {1} is now growing.</DiseaseGrowthModeChanged_Growing>]

In the resource files there are some template strings that have argument on the first place:

  <SomeonesRoom>{0}'s {1}</SomeonesRoom>
  <DiseaseGrowthModeChanged_Growing>{0}'s {1} is now growing.</DiseaseGrowthModeChanged_Growing>

As we know, each sentense should start with a capital letter. So, if the first argument is a name
"Ray's bedroom",
the phrase is correct for English language. In contrast, some other languages use the different word order. For example, the same phrase in Rissian is:
"cпальня Ray" (analog in English: "bedroom for Ray")
In the game this phrase starts with lower-case letter which is not correct (see the attached screenshot).

The other example:
"Ray's carcinoma is now growing"
It's ok, but Russian language requires a different word order:
"карцинома Ray прогрессирует"
The message starts with non-capital letter which is wrong.

Someone may say that translators may find different workarounds for problems like this. But I don't think that distorting natural phrases is a good approach to the translation. It significantly spoils the feeling from the game.

We need your help! Please make such kind of messages force-capitalized.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

[male]

So, where does this leave the issue?

There are "male"/"female" value usages I have found:
1. Psychic drone event letter label: "phychic drone (male)"
2. Psychic drone event letter: "Every colonist of the male gender winces in pain!..."
3. Human description: "Male colonist of Crashville, age..."
4. Animal description: "Male muffalo". Can be overriden for some animals, e.g. "rooster"
5. Animal description in trading dialog: "Male muffalo". Cannot be overriden.

For English language all these structures are OK, but for Russian... it was a terrible headache to find a minimally appropriate "male"/"female" translation that fits most cases. For case 1 it seems completely impossible in current implementation.

["Males]

Perhaps using a plural for male/female here would help?

This requires adding a new label to resources. This is exactly the solution I suggested:

Maybe the better solution will be to move "male"/"female" entry (for psy-drone event) to a different location.

As I metioned before, "male"/"female" values are used on many different places. If you fix them for one place, other contexts will be broken. For example, if you replace "male" entry by "males", your colonists will be described like:

"Males colonist of Crashville, age..."

The only way to change "male" to "males" (or to anything else) for psychic drone event is to introduce a specific keyed value for this purpose.

Maybe the better solution will be to move "male"/"female" entry (for psy-drone event) to a different location.

Now "male"/"female" values are taken from "Keyed/Menus_Main.xml" file. These values are used in different contexts and meanings (as nouns and as adjectives). This makes translation diffucult.

So, we can use the same "{0} ({1})" template. But the text for {1} could be taken from another location. Advandages of this approach are:

1. Translators can place there whatever they want to provide better translation for their language.
2. They can also translate the original "male"/"female" in Menus_Main.xml better, because there will be one context less.
3. This approach doesn't require making the template modifiable.

What do you think about that?

[psychic drone]

Hello, Tynan.
Thank you for moving this post to the more appropriate location.

We have "psychic drone" entry and separate "male"/"female" entry. I thing the clearer message can look like:

  "psychic drone (affects male people)"

For this case the template will look like:

  "{0} (affects {1} people)".

This template needs to be translated, of course, but on the other hand, the result message will be much clearer for players.

You say that there are some reasons not to make format messages modifiable, but translation files contain a lot of such lines. Maybe one single line will not be such a big deal?
If i'm wrong, maybe there are some other ways to do it?

The correct translation of "drone" is not a main problem. Of couse there is a russian analog for "buzz" or "rumble".

The main problem is that in any case the result string will be like "buzz (male)", which is not correct either. The main problem is that this template with brackets doesn't allow to make the message clearer. In any translation.

["Psychic drone (male)"]

When the "Psychic drone" event happens, the message "Psychic drone (male)" (or female) occurs. A lot of players find this message confusing. They often think that it is a some kind of drone aircraft which has male gender somehow.

We (the official Russian translation team) tried to find a solution of this problem, but this string cannot be significantly modified in translation files. Strings that are responsible for "Psychic drone" and "male/female" parts can be easily found and modified, but the format string:
"<Psychic drone string> (<gender string>)"
seems to be hardcoded in the game scripts.

The best solution may be to move this format string to translation files (e.g. "Mods\Core\Languages\<Language>\Keyed" directory) so we can modify it and make the resulting message more clear for players.

Steps to peproduce:
1. Create a Psychic drone event with developer tool.
2. Look at the message on the right-bottom of the screen.

Looking forward to your replying.