[Official] Language specific boards - Roadmap and feedback

[Twill]

Conquer club is growing very rapidly and we are looking to accomodate all a farther-flung audience.

This means that we're looking to open language specific boards and later localise the game menus.

The roadmap for this endeavor looks something like:

We are currently here

• Determine need/want for language groups [Oct]
• Launch language specific boards as a new section on the CC Forum [Nov]
• Identify language group leaders/mods and translators [Early 2007]
• Co-ordinate basic site translation and localisation (community based or otherwise) [Mid-2007]
• Full localisation and addition of new language groups [Sometime]

We are giving ourselves a fairly long term time line as this will add a significant amount of workload to the site staff and team updating the language files and doing translation work, so dont expect a fully localised site in 27 different languages any time soon, but we want to get started now. We also have to actually grow the communities to at least a critical mass before we can work with them

If you havn't already seen it, we do have a player map at Frappr and will be using this as well as suggestions and IPs to determine what language groups we are working with.

We need your help to suggest what languages we should start with - i.e. which communities would benefit the most from having their own boards.

So...Questions, thoughts, comments, suggestions are all welcome.
Where would you like us to start?

Twill

[Lupo]

If you refer only to latin languages, I would suggest to start with a Spanish language group first and a Portoguese, French and German language groups after.

If you refer also to non latin languages i would think to Mandarin first, and Hindi, Arabic and Russian after.

Have a look here: http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html


By the way, I suggest to make a poll between CC users to decide with what language starting first!

[ZawBanjito]

I believe that Norwegian and Portugese are the most urgently needed...

Off the top of my head, it'd then be some of the other Scandanavian languages, and whatever the guys living in The Low Countries want (French?)

[Bad Speler]

French is the second most common language, if we implement that we might get more lots more French people to join.

[ZawBanjito]

Oh, right! Quebec! Easy to forget you guys, you're only like one in every two...

[Bad Speler]

Somehow I think your assuming im from Quebec. Im from Ontario, but back on point, quebec has a large population we could get on this site.

[ZawBanjito]

No, I was just generally referencing any Quebecois (Quebecee? Quebecer?) who might have been offended by my persistent display of absolute ignorance regarding everything to do with them, up to and often including their existence...

So, French, Norwegian, Portugese...

Question: Are these being set up partially in an attempt to recruit more people from those language groups? So, would there be a minimum number of participants necessary to create a group, or would just two or three suffice in the anticipation that more would follow?

[Marvaddin]

If any help needed with portuguese language, contact me. Im up to help.

[gavin_sidhu]

...so to beat ur competitors ur going for different languages...

Will all the people have the same "Join A Game" section? because if so I think this is a bad idea. Cheating would skyrocket with people having an alliance in their own language and the chat would die away. Language converting programs would not work if people type other languages like we do in english (eg. lyk instead of like, r instead of are etc.). Also if you get into languages like Mandarin and Hindi that require different writing scripts how do you plan to change maps?

I think you should do something like Hattrick (people of different languages dont mix unless they want to.)

Also i think you should expand into French.

[Twill]

...so to beat ur competitors ur going for different languages...

Will all the people have the same "Join A Game" section? because if so I think this is a bad idea. Cheating would skyrocket with people having an alliance in their own language and the chat would die away. Language converting programs would not work if people type other languages like we do in english (eg. lyk instead of like, r instead of are etc.). Also if you get into languages like Mandarin and Hindi that require different writing scripts how do you plan to change maps?

I think you should do something like Hattrick (people of different languages dont mix unless they want to.)

Also i think you should expand into French.

This doesnt really have much to do with beating competition, just making the site more accessible to its users

The other point is well taken and indeed one which needs to be addressed, and may well be done by adding an option for "primary language" in the game creation menu but restricting games only to those who can speak the language fluently would be a distinct mistake. There are plenty of other options such as language flags next to usernames indicating languages spoken (so that you can choose who you play with when you are joining games) and others which aren't coming to mind right now

Part of the reason for adding langauge boards is to make it easier for others to come and interact here, but obviously polarization is a potential problem. The last community I worked with was 300,000 people when I left and was localised in 5 different languages with a separate site for chinese. Obviously there was some degree of "groupiness" but there was a surprising amount of cross-flow and once people were in-game, you would be suprised at how quickly people learn to communicate.

Thanks gavin, I'd be interested to hear other thoughts on the polarisation issue if people have any.

[lackattack]

If you refer only to latin languages, I would suggest to start with a Spanish language group first and a Portoguese, French and German language groups after.

If you refer also to non latin languages i would think to Mandarin first, and Hindi, Arabic and Russian after.

I'm going to experiment with non-latin languages on the test site, but I think I'd need to change the forum's character encoding to make it work.

So let's start off with latin alphabet languages first.

How about we title each forum with the translation of Conquer Club? So the French forum would be Club Conquête. Good idea? Any one know how to say Conquer Club in Norwegian?

[Twill]

put a little [FR] next to the club conquete - because some people have troubles recognizing things like that

[Haydena]

Cheating would skyrocket with people having an alliance in their own language and the chat would die away. Language converting programs would not work if people type other languages like we do in english (eg. lyk instead of like, r instead of are etc.).

How about something in your profile that lets you choose which country you are from? Then depending on which country you are from a flag will appear next to your name, and you would be able to tell who spoke what language and maybe stay away from games with people who don't speak the same language as you.

As it is I don't think cheating will "skyrocket", because there will be no change at all in how people communicate in the game chat. And besides, translators usually pick up words like "alliance" and "don't attack", and if you ever spotted something suspicious, maybe after these "translator" people have been added you could report it to them for them to have a look at and they can tell you what is being said?

Just my two cents. I don't really speak any different languages apart from incredibly basic German .

[misscrystal]

I'll help if I can.

I can speak a little Dutch - but mostly tourist-y things, so I'm not sure if it will help that much.

I'm very good at French.

I'm effing fantastic at Portuguese.

I've got Tex-Mex Spanish.

And I'm working on German, but I'm not quite there yet.

(My life's goal is to be able to say "NO! I will not tolerate ANY of your excuses!!" in every language in the world. )

[lackattack]

How about something in your profile that lets you choose which country you are from? Then depending on which country you are from a flag will appear next to your name, and you would be able to tell who spoke what language and maybe stay away from games with people who don't speak the same language as you.

I was thinking of adding country flags to the profile. I already know where everyone comes from their IP address, so you won't have to set it.

Based on CC's population we should probably have forums for Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and German.

Anyone know how to say "Conquer Club" in those languages??

[cramill]

I can speak spanish well. I lived in Chile for two years. "Conquer Club" would be something like "Club de Conquista."

[happysadfun]

French Conquer Club: Conquérir le Club, i think, but I am very basic in French.... But wait, lack would know that already... darn. But French, Portuguese, and Norwegian are MOST urgent. Y'all could hire translators to make the same boards avaiable in every language, the map foundry especially...

[Scarus]

Boy, you are a glutton for work....lol

It would be great for people to have their own language forums, although I think these will not be overly popular. For the same reason that people do not get too excited about posting in their private usergroup forums. People want to post somewhere where their posts can be appreciated and responded to by a greater audience. Would be quite something though if it ever got to the point where we had active boards using the asian languages.

I used to play RiskII using the cd. It always interested me that when I was playing against some european players that they were seeing the gameplay menus in their own languages. It used to really surprise me sometimes when people would post screenshots for reason or another and I got to see that people I was playing with in the same game were seeing something different than me.

[wicked]

uhh some usergroup forums are quite active.

[P Gizzle]

uhh some usergroup forums are quite active.

like the Gridiron gang's. we post all the time

[wicked]

well Scarus probably only has the xi one here to compare it to, which is pretty lame, since they have their own forum off-site.

[P Gizzle]

how often do the other usergroups post? the Gridiron Gang one is like 15 or so posts a day, not including me

[happysadfun]

how often do the other usergroups post? the Gridiron Gang one is like 15 or so posts a day, not including me

one a week on a normal week, two or three when someone says something competent