UESPWiki:Archive/CP Other Language Versions

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Other Language Versions

At least Morrowind and Oblivion games were translated to languages other than English. Would it be possible to create some other language editions of this Wiki, as Wikipedia does? Remigiu

Anything is possible... as long as the knowledge and will are present. Personally, I speak English and a bit of French but nowhere near enough to start translating this sort of thing, and that's going to be the reaction of most contributors to the site. Wikipedia manages a reasonable number of non-English articles because there are enough people using that site capable of either writing or translating as required. If you feel up to the job of doing the same for UESP, I'm sure nobody's going to object! --Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 16:12, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

If we do get to it, I could do Russian. I'm sure my parents wouldn't object: I could use the practice. However, that is a massive project, and we have like what, over 10,000 articles now. Most are going to be easy to translate, as they are redirects or categories. There is also the problem of name translation. We don't have the "th" sound, so some names will be Romanized. (One example: the name Heath might translate to Хив (Heev)) However if we do do languages, I suggest starting with spanish/french as they are commonly learned in high school. If we really plan on doing that, lets compile a list of people who speak diferent languages and see what we can do. Vesna 17:41, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

There are several things that would need thinking about before a large-scale translation effort could be started. Three questions spring to mind:

1. How is it organised? Do we have a different namespace or an entirely different URL (ru.uesp.net)? Does it all run off the same server? Is that possible? Who pays for it?
2. How should consistency be maintained? What happens when a page in the English section changes? What happens when a page in the Russian (etc) section changes?
3. Who patrols it? Since it looks like you're well on the way to becoming a patroller that's not a problem in the case of Russian pages (except when you're not around) but what about other languages?

I'm not trying to pour cold water on the idea because I've often thought the same myself, and would have asked the question if my language skills weren't limited to asking my way to the library in French. It must be recognised, though, that changes on any large scale would be expensive in time, money and effort. It might be better to focus on the things we do well. --Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:56, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

I must admit, there is a lot I didn't think about. I know the URL would have to have .ru somewhere. Since I am on the site literally every day (even if I don't make edits I still check in so to speak), maintaining two languages wouldn't be a problem for me. I figured that when people from other countries find their respective language, at least some will start to edit, helping mantain that branch of the site. The people who speak multiple can check here (the original site) for any mandatory changes. But thats just me going on and on again. Sorry, I can be unrealistic and impatient at times. Thanks for pointing all that stuff out. :-) Vesna 18:14, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Nothing wrong with asking! The reason I suggested ru.uesp.net is that since Daveh already owns uesp.net, it's free. If you want to use uesp.ru you'd have to register it separately - and it might be tricky to get a Russian domain to redirect to a Canadian server (probably not, but you never know). Then there's the chicken and egg - I'd guess there would need to be some content before anybody would commit to doing the work to set it up, but it's tricky to get the content before we have the setup! There are other ways of doing the content though, tovarisch. --Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 18:35, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Oh, and I'm just curious, will there be a problem with some computers showing the Cyrillic alphabet as question marks? On many sites that translate from Japanese for example show the kanji as squares. Vesna 19:16, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Yes, there will. I have my PCs set up to handle as many languages as they can but from experience, you get strings of question marks if that is not done. I'd even say that - for western audiences - the vast majority will have that problem. --Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 19:30, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Although if you think about it - anybody who speaks enough Russian that they'd prefer to read this website in Russian rather than English will probably already have their computer set up to properly display the Cyrillic alphabet. English speakers might have display problems on the Russian site, but why would they be on the site in the first place if they don't read Russian? As far as the name translations, I wouldn't go about guessing what the Russian transliterations of the in-game names are, as you're likely to be wrong half the time. I'd double-check them against an actual Russian-language copy of the game (assuming one exists) to make sure they match what's in the game. Otherwise, you're bound to run into trouble when certain names don't match. Translating other stuff won't be a problem, most likely. But anything involving names or text that actually appears in the game, you want to get right, or there's just no point. As for figuring out which NPCs are which, my guess would be that the FormIDs are likely to stay the same even in foreign-language versions of the game. Though we'd need somebody with two different language versions to verify that, and either way, it's a lot of work. Wish I could help, but the US edition is all I've got, and I don't speak any Russian. (I speak a fair bit of French, but even then, I don't have a French version of the game, so there's not much I can do.) --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 22:32, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

I can get a game from Russia. Due to currency changes between countries it doesn't cost any more than 5 dollars there. One of my friends will be going there for the winter and I can ask him to get me a copy. (Maybe it costs less cause most issues are pirated...) If that doesn't work, I can always go to a site that hosts russian elder scrolls guides (many exist, and those were the ones I refered to at first) and email one of the people there. Or simply email my friends back in russia that have the game and ask them questions or get them to contribute to the site. The names wouldn't really be a big obstacle. Vesna 17:57, 3 November 2007 (EDT)