The Mana World Forums

I had a short talk with enarxe, and we both started out with some of our ideas (with main focus on translating the site), so here is our brainstorm.

Brainstorm:

Enarxe:

1.We could make a subforum for each language
2.We could buy a domain for each country

GonzoDark:

1.We could translate the whole WIKI into different languages, and important parts of the forum (mainly thinking about news)

We then discussed the pros and cons;

Starting with Enarxes first Idea:

Pros:

1.Would make non-English speaking people feel welcome
2.Subforums can make a more living and active community

Cons:

1.Would move the discussion from the main forum to the subforum, and that would in due time lead to the death of the forums “action” with our current amount of users.

Then Enarxes 2nd Idea:

Pros:

1.Would make non-English speaking people feel welcome
2.Would make it easy to find a native tmw community

Cons:

1.It would take a lot of time and money to get a site for every language.

Then moving ahead to GonzoDarks first idea:

Pros:

1.Would make non-English people feel welcome
2.Would enable the non-English reading person to understand the WIKI, with the backgroud history of the game, and under progress info.

Cons:

1. Someone would need to make the entire WIKI available on launchpad, or is there another way to do it?

So to sum it up, I and Enarxe want to translate the whole WIKI and news – and future submitted news plus info on the wiki.


// GonzoDark

I know that making it available is the important thing.. but I wish there were a more "in-house" way to handle the translations than lauchpad. If themanaworld.org has unlimited subdomains, (and I have no idea if it does) maybe the translated sites could just use those. Web space would be the only issue.

If each language does end up needing its own domain, I'm assuming each community will be made responsible for raising funds for their translation's domain registration. ..?

If neither of those options work out, perhaps a single site like: "translatetmw.org" or "themanatranslations.org" could be built as a portal to the various languages.

Regarding language-specific subforums: We talked about this a hundred times in the past and we always came to the same conclusion. We won't do it because:

1. We will only allow forums which are moderated by people we trust and we don't have such people who speak the languages that are requested most frequently.
2. The focus of themanaworld.org is development. Development can't work without proper communication and the lingua franca of the development team is english. Thus any development discussions in other languages are unproductive. Player communities are free to create their own forums in their own local language.


Regarding translating the wiki: There is only a handful of articles which is interesting for players. I estimate 95% of all articles are game concept proposals, documentation and development guidelines which are only interesting for people interested in taking part in development. And as I already statet: When you don't speak english you can not really take part in the development efficiently.

Edit: Here are the number of articles in different categorys (Note that not all articles on the wiki have a category label)

Art development: 10
World Development: 10
Development Reference: 23
Gameplay Conceptualisation: 44
Player information: 11

I think you misunderstand us, we do NOT want to make subforums or new domains. But we want to translate the wiki/the news, and nothing else. (and only the important stuff)

And we do not think that launchpad is the best solution, but what should we do that?

Translate it directly from raw text and post it on the forum?
Or is there a better way to do this?

We are open to suggestions.

// GonzoDark

Part of my concern is the abundance of minor changes that gradually take place on the wiki. If you can find a routine to automatically keep the wiki and its translated counterparts synchronized, great.. but like others, I'm guessing that in the long run, this will be a much more troubling task than it's worth. ..and though I enjoy the idea of working around the language barriers, to work with people I wouldn't normally be able to even speak to, I will reluctantly have to concede to what has been pointed out before (and just now, by Crush) that realistically, it wouldn't be effective.

Maybe some of the serious translation of the web site material should be held off for a time. Especially the wiki, which frequently goes through periods of stagnation and rebirth. When something changes on the wiki, it's hard enough to keep our english speakers up-to-date; I can only imagine the amount of catch-up we'd be playing with non-english speakers, when large changes are made, to any of the complicated and/or messy articles.

To reiterate, I do think the idea has merit.. maybe just a bit premature to consider putting it to action, any time soon.

About working with other language teams. I can understand trying to accommodate non-english speaking programmers, who want to help develop the software, but the more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems to have separate languages all trying to conceptualize a single game world. One of the coolest things about TMW is that it will eventually allow anyone to start their own game world.

Instead of trying to make a gajillion translated clones of our default server, other language teams could strive to develop concepts for their own game world. They can run in it their native language, using TMW's software.. and when their games become cooler than ours, WE'LL be the ones trying to get a translation.

If we had a more professional handle on the distribution of work, maybe it'd be another story.. If there were mountains of clearly worded explanations for each concept that needed to be developed, maybe it'd be easier to outsource.. (graphics would be a good example) ..until we fit that bill, I doubt it'll work very well.