Suggestion: Languages on game page

Started by Sinitrena, Tue 01/05/2018 18:27:54

Previous topic - Next topic

Sinitrena

This thread got me thinking that there is absoluetly no way to tell what languages/translations are available for games, unless it's mentioned in the descriptions. It would be really great if this could be added at some point - on the games' pages as icons maybe and as a search function.

cat

+1 (I also wanted to suggest this when I saw the thread)

Monsieur OUXX

 

selmiak


AGA

Sure, why not.  In the Next Versionâ,,¢.

selmiak

http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/flags/
these are free to use, no attribution needed, used by many, already there, no need to make them in a forum contest or so.


I'd display these flags on the game page, on the game author side, I don't know if it is needed to display and load the icons, or just have some 2-3 letters for every language and display the full language name on mouseover or so.

For the usability we should make a poll or just scan through the database and check for the most used languages for translations, then offer these languages clickable with a checkbox on the "add new game" page, like list the 5-10 most used languages, which are probably german, french, italian, spanish, russian and some, then have all the rest hidden and revealed by some extra click just to not clutter up the add game form. :)

cat

I'd prefer text over flags, since languages and countries not necessarily match.
I think the most important think is searching for languages. This could be easily done by adding one multiline field to the game page (just like authors) and providing an additional search for it.

selmiak

Searching for games with a version in one specific language is a must have :)

but I don't get what you mean with text over flags, what should that text say instead of a flag representing a country and the common language spoken there that everyone knows about?
What I fear'is that it will be hard to decide of we use the uk or the us flag for english language... :P

AGA

I think cat's point is, what about countries with multiple common or official languages?  Switzerland, for instance, has four.  South Africa has eleven.  Even tiny Wales has two...  How are we to decide which languages most represent a country?

I'm planning on adding some sort of tag cloud thing to pages going forward, to allow people to add way more relevant custom info to their pages.  Maybe one generic one, or several different ones with one being languages.

selmiak

Quote from: AGA on Sun 06/05/2018 10:59:56
I think cat's point is, what about countries with multiple common or official languages?  Switzerland, for instance, has four.  South Africa has eleven.  Even tiny Wales has two...  How are we to decide which languages most represent a country?
I still don't get the point. If you are from switzerland and want to play a game in french you search for a french translation (reperesented by a french flag), if you want to play a game in german you search for a german translation (represented by a german flag), that's what I mean with "common language spoken there that everyone knows about?" There just won't be a swiss flag because of the 4 languages. This only adds confusion.
about wales, well, it might be possible someone does a game in welsh, or maybe there even is one I don't know about, well then please use the most common language from wales, or we should have a "dirrrty dialect" sign for something noone else beside 5 people understand. :P

Quote
I'm planning on adding some sort of tag cloud thing to pages going forward, to allow people to add way more relevant custom info to their pages.  Maybe one generic one, or several different ones with one being languages.
sounds interesting. please use some codemagic to add the tags to the html head description and keywords of that specific gamepage.

Snarky

Quote from: selmiak on Mon 07/05/2018 00:02:48
I still don't get the point.

What flag would you use for an Arabic translation?
What flag would you use for a Hindi translation (Hindi is spoken by 422 million people in India)? What flag would you use for Bengali (spoken by 83 million people in India)?
What flag would you use for a Spanish translation? What if it was typically Mexican Spanish? How Mexican would it have to be?

selmiak

#11
Quote from: Snarky on Mon 07/05/2018 06:53:12
Quote from: selmiak on Mon 07/05/2018 00:02:48
I still don't get the point.

What flag would you use for an Arabic translation?
good question! what about the flag of isil? :D
this makes me wonder if we also should note the charset used in the translation.



Quote
What flag would you use for a Hindi translation (Hindi is spoken by 422 million people in India)? What flag would you use for Bengali (spoken by 83 million people in India)?
I love being international, but how many hindi and how many bengali AGS games are there?
To be bland but useful I'd just use the indian flag for both options and wait until more complaints about this appear in this thread or somewhere else in the forums and then really start thinking about it :D
or ask the people complaining about it for their proposed solution, they'd know best!

Quote
What flag would you use for a Spanish translation? What if it was typically Mexican Spanish? How Mexican would it have to be?
with written out translations displayed, would you give authors the possibility to fill in whatever they want, so they can totally define that one mexican spanish dialect with some maya accents only spoken in that small indigenous village behind 7 lonley hills in the jungle of mexico, while the language is sacred and only used and spoken in celebration of the 7th bloodmoon this year every 18.980 days?



Quote from: selmiak on Sat 05/05/2018 11:33:42
For the usability we should make a poll or just scan through the database and check for the most used languages for translations, then offer these languages clickable with a checkbox on the "add new game" page, like list the 5-10 most used languages, which are probably german, french, italian, spanish, russian and some, then have all the rest hidden and revealed by some extra click just to not clutter up the add game form. :)
the definition of "and some" varies...

Sinitrena

There are some problems with flags, but text might clutter the game pages.

In the end, it's just important to make this information available and searchable.

cat

Then language codes are probably best.

Danvzare

Most games are just going to be translated into an European language, so I think flags would work. I don't think we need to plan for a whole bunch of exceptions until AGS becomes incredibly popular all across the world.
And everyone who dislikes the idea sounds like they're considering to include the UK flag, the American flag, the New Zealand flag, the Australian flag, and the Canadian flag for their games, just because they can. (laugh)

eri0o

Language codes like en, en-US, pt-BR, ... Look better, and possibly allow passing things like en in query and get en*.

Radiant


Danvzare

Quote from: eri0o on Tue 08/05/2018 15:16:57
Language codes like en, en-US, pt-BR, ... Look better, and possibly allow passing things like en in query and get en*.
Sounds brilliant to me. :-D

Stupot

Most games don't get any translations, some get two or three at most, so I can't see a problem with having just simple bit of text underneath the game description. Flags are unnecessary and there's no need to differentiate between US and UK English for example.

Another idea could be to have a simple “languages” icon somewhere on the games' page which brings up a box showing all the languages when you hover over it.

AGA

Yeah, I think you're way overthinking it.  A plain text tag would work perfectly well in this limited context.

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk