German wiki translation

[SarahIsWeird]

Problem

I noticed that quite a few people join the #n00bz channel in-game that don't speak English very well. To help out these people, I think the wiki should have translations available. Adding this from a technical standpoint is quite easy.

However, while starting work on translating the wiki to German, I hit a few roadbumps that the community should decide together. This would also set some guidelines for other translation efforts, so I feel like it's important to set a standard.

While I know that the game itself does not offer translations, it might in the future (who knows!). Also, letting people read the information in their native language would help their understanding and cut down on questions.

German isn't gender-neutral.

I tried to use ungendered language where possible, but some sentences are very difficult to reword this way. One example I came across was in cron_bot_v1's article:

If user activity is detected, the cron_bot_v1's execution attempt [...]

In this specific case, the word "user" is the issue:

• "Nutzer" is masculine only
• "Nutzende" sounds unnatural
• "Nutzer*innen" personally is fine, but will lead to nasty comments towards ComCODE on how the wiki is woke/leftist/(insert thing here).
• "Charakter" (as in character) would work, but it collides with the naming of people in the lore.

In a similar vein, "player" will crop up a few times throughout the articles.

• "Spieler", "Spielende", "Spieler*innen", see above
• Maybe "Account" or "Konto" (meaning account) would work?
• Can be circumvented in the phrase "new player" as Neuling.

Referring to things that are printed in-game

The general style guidelines say that message should be inserted as-is. Should a translation of it be added? Should it be omitted?

char_count adds space for additional characters in every script.
char_count stellt Platz für größere Skripte zur Verfügung.

Unified translation methods and anglicisms

I don't think everything should be translated word-for-word into German, as it sounds pretty unnatural.

• Upgrade or Verbesserung?
• Architekt-Upgrades or architektonische Upgrades?
• Infiltrierungsupgrades?
• Scavenger-Upgrades or Aasfresser-Upgrades?
• Execution-Upgrades or Ausführungsupgrades?
• Guides, Leitfaden or Anleitungen?

Referring to things outside the German-speaking wiki

This includes things like the official Discord and the forums.

• Do we refer to that?
  • If yes, do we put a "(englischsprachig)" (in English) after the links?

[seanmakesgames]

Sarah! Thank you for putting together this issue.

The core of the problem statement: I have noticed that there are many players who don't speak english natively, could be an important problem for us to solve.

Creating translations of the wiki is one potential solution to this problem. But to solve this correctly, we'll need more information about the problem.

1. How many players have you encountered?
2. Which languages are their native language which are not english?
3. How are their challenges with english showing up?
4. Are there particular elements of the gameplay which are more difficult for them because of non-native english proficiency?