Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Rowanas]

The Germans have a crazy death rule. I know that Battlefield 2142 had to replace the people with robots in order to get past German censoring. It's weird, because German kids can go onto any site on earth and watch all the mutilation they want.

[Bricks]

The Germans have a crazy death rule. I know that Battlefield 2142 had to replace the people with robots in order to get past German censoring. It's weird, because German kids can go onto any site on earth and watch all the mutilation they want.

And someone would change goblins to Nazis, and then Germany's censorship brigade would freak out and only allow its citizens to download the game if modding was totally impossible.

I think Australia has some VG censorship that could also lead to issues, considering how violent DF can be.  All of this is dependent on someone with too much power actually giving a damn, which is pretty unlikely.

[Stargrasper]

I think Australia has some VG censorship that could also lead to issues, considering how violent DF can be.  All of this is dependent on someone with too much power actually giving a damn, which is pretty unlikely.

Okay, in America, alleged land of freedom, if Congress isn't trying to make elements of games illegal, then the general populace is...There's ALWAYS some politician that thinks this is the most important thing to worry about...take a look at a bit of the news.

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-137330840/violent-images-adults-only.html

http://www.examiner.com/x-28759-Atlanta-Video-Game-News-Examiner~y2009m11d7-Visually-Impaired-Gamer-Sues-Sony-Online-Entertainment

And just because it's mildly relevant...

http://tigerweekly.com/article/10-14-2009/12679

[Rowanas]

Wow. The second and third links are just downright stupid. The world has so many stupid people, it's a wonder there are enough smart people to look after them all.

[Bricks]

Okay, in America, alleged land of freedom, if Congress isn't trying to make elements of games illegal, then the general populace is...There's ALWAYS some politician that thinks this is the most important thing to worry about...take a look at a bit of the news.

No doubt there, but your sources are 1) the most nanny-state state in the country, 2) miserable people insisting everyone else be miserable instead of getting on with their lives, and 3) OK, yeah, not a smart person.  America has the admitted benefit of not cramming everyone into the same square meter, so we are free to move about and reduce the friction that causes the crazies to up and ban anything tangentially upsetting.  Not sure what Australia's deal is.  I'm very pro-fundamental rights, so this crap scares me pretty badly from time to time.

Anyway, I think DF is safe in its obscurity.

[Sabre_Justice]

I don't think censorship would be enforceable at all, given that DF is a freeware game from the US.

And Australia has problems with apathy, most people don't give a damn about the government and there's not quite enough activist gamers to make a difference yet. Most of the country doesn't even seem to know about the planned internet filter, but everyone who knows about it is against it.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It's impossible to censor DF because DF is not sold in stores.

[Squirrelloid]

Well, you can translate the raws (most of them are translated on the french wiki), but all the interface, dialogs etc.. stay in english, so it's weird at best and crashy at worst.

I'll be pleased to translate it in French if translation support is ever implemented, because it's another roadblock for foreign new players. When you're already struggling with the interface and graphics, you don't want to do it in a language you barely understand.

...

What computer-game playing french speaker doesn't also speak english?  Doesn't france teach english starting in something like 1st grade?  And of course Quebec is dual language (assuming you can call what they speak french, I remain unconvinced).  Seriously doubt there's much demand for DF in, say, Cote D'Ivoire, given the *rampant civil war* that seems to start every 'election'.  ...I'm running out of French speaking areas of the world here - who needs a french translation of something in English again?

[Halconnen]

Germany (I am German) is pretty uptight about violence in videogames, but that only applies as far as selling the stuff in stores and publicly marketing it is concerned, as for that it'd need an age rating. No one important gives a flying shit about violent indie games from Australia.

Also, quite a few of my friends play Dwarf Fortress, and they all speak English well. I can think of only one person who would be interested in the game who will not play it because of the language barrier.

Nevertheless, translation support is always a good thing.

[Rowanas]

Indeed. While I could happily play this game in German, I''m glad it's in English because it wouldn't take a translation every time I did something. Translation for the win!

[Timst]

Well, you can translate the raws (most of them are translated on the french wiki), but all the interface, dialogs etc.. stay in english, so it's weird at best and crashy at worst.

I'll be pleased to translate it in French if translation support is ever implemented, because it's another roadblock for foreign new players. When you're already struggling with the interface and graphics, you don't want to do it in a language you barely understand.

...

What computer-game playing french speaker doesn't also speak english?  Doesn't france teach english starting in something like 1st grade?  And of course Quebec is dual language (assuming you can call what they speak french, I remain unconvinced).  Seriously doubt there's much demand for DF in, say, Cote D'Ivoire, given the *rampant civil war* that seems to start every 'election'.  ...I'm running out of French speaking areas of the world here - who needs a french translation of something in English again?

You'd be surprised, but the level of English of the french population (at least in metropolitan france, I guess Canadians speak english too) is very, very, very low. Waiters at restaurants seldom speak english (even in Paris or big cities like that), shopkeepers are basically helpless when they meet an english-speak(except maybe for tourist stores, or professions that need to deal with strangers), every single sign or text is written in plain old french (once you leave the airport, no english for you !), and speaking about school the level is very low, even if it's probably better than what it used to be. I mean, I'm 18 yo, and most of my classmates are not able to handle a proper discussion in english. And they're all college students...

So yeah, France is probably the European country with the less English speakers. The language barrier, while still a small inconvenience, is a bigger one than, say, in Germany or Sweden.

[qwertyuiopas]

However, there still is the whole "translation, just because!" aspect that brought you the google translations of

• pirate
  
• klingon
  
• hacker (technically, leet, not "hacker")
  
• elmer fudd
  
• sweedish chef
  
  Even if external fonts aren't supported(or at most one other is allowed as a language-font), making it possible to reword the contents of the menus would be nice.
  
  Mostly for the fan translation to dwarf potential.

[Dae]

Yep, French educational system sucks. Massively. I've had English teachers with an appalling accent. Fortunately, we had american/english/australian assistants who got us back on rails.
There's also this kind of useless pride that politics set up 30 or 40 years ago. Every single movie, show, or whatever is dubbed before being broadcast, whereas in most other european countries they're just subtitled. Really doesn't help learning other languages.

Even though, I consider my English as pretty good, and DF has probably played a good part in it. When I started playing, I spent half my time with some translator trying to understand what the hell was a "kiln". Every now and then, I still check (last time being for "thrush"). You have to admit it gets a part of immersion off.

[Squirrelloid]

I may be slightly biased by anecdotal experience.  The one time I was in France (2 weeks, spent 6 days with a host family) I couldn't get anyone my age to speak *french* with me.  They all wanted to speak english!  (That their english was better than my french didn't help).

[Timst]

This is because French is a ridiculously overaged language, with a fuckton of exceptions, double entendre (hé) and other flaws.

To take an example, the word used to say "more" is "plus". And the word used to say "no more" is also "plus". Yep. Although to be honest, they haven't the same pronunciation, but it still can cause headache.. for instance, some time ago I was reading a poster resuming the opinions of a political party, and there was a line : "Plus de prison.". For any other party, I would have though immediately "More jails !" (French prisons are crowded) , but this was a far-left party, so the "No more jail" option wasn't unrealistic also.

So really, French might be a great language for literacy, but for everyday use it sucks. There's like a dozen  of tenses, half a dozen of moods, and that's a miracle we don't have some sort of declension too. There's plenty of double letters or other silent letters, and grammar rules take years to understand and maybe a decade to master. No wonder why almost no one is able to write it correctly.

Oh, and also, some people might struggle with "there / their / they're", but you'll be appalled by the number of people who have trouble choosing correctly between "est / er / ai / ait / ais / aie / aient / et / é / è / ê / ë / ae / es / ..." simply because they all sound the same (minus some subtlety) but must be placed according some bizzare grammatical rule.