Can't translate more than 3 languages?

[Benkiman]

Hello there!

I am a native Catalan and Spanish speaker, with good knowledge of English (I live in Australia). I also speak a couple other languages due to having lived in other places before. I do some translations in Catalan from time to time, and have done or fixed very few Spanish translations. A few days ago I fixed a single small string for a Japanese translation for the game Bandido.

I was translating A Fistful of Gold into Catalan and I noticed that the English version uses "he/him" when referring to a player. I went on to try and suggest a change to "they/their". I had similar suggestions many other times, and I think all of them were approved. This time, however, I got a surprising message: "You have already translated in 3 other languages. Reminder: you should only translate in your native language.".

Would it be possible to remove/relax this restriction? I would like to keep being able to suggest fixes to the English text. In particular with regards to using gender-neutral language, as unfortunately this seems to be a pervasive issue in board game rules/manuals.

[KongKing123]

Hello there!

I am a native Catalan and Spanish speaker, with good knowledge of English (I live in Australia). I also speak a couple other languages due to having lived in other places before. I do some translations in Catalan from time to time, and have done or fixed very few Spanish translations. A few days ago I fixed a single small string for a Japanese translation for the game Bandido.

I was translating A Fistful of Gold into Catalan and I noticed that the English version uses "he/him" when referring to a player. I went on to try and suggest a change to "they/their". I had similar suggestions many other times, and I think all of them were approved. This time, however, I got a surprising message: "You have already translated in 3 other languages. Reminder: you should only translate in your native language.".

Would it be possible to remove/relax this restriction? I would like to keep being able to suggest fixes to the English text. In particular with regards to using gender-neutral language, as unfortunately this seems to be a pervasive issue in board game rules/manuals.

I think a limit is reasonable to preserve quality (there are not that many people fluent enough in that many languages to be able to do translations for them), but English should not count. Suggesting fixes to English and translating it to your 3 best languages should be enough.

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

Hello there!

I am a native Catalan and Spanish speaker, with good knowledge of English (I live in Australia). I also speak a couple other languages due to having lived in other places before. I do some translations in Catalan from time to time, and have done or fixed very few Spanish translations. A few days ago I fixed a single small string for a Japanese translation for the game Bandido.

I was translating A Fistful of Gold into Catalan and I noticed that the English version uses "he/him" when referring to a player. I went on to try and suggest a change to "they/their". I had similar suggestions many other times, and I think all of them were approved. This time, however, I got a surprising message: "You have already translated in 3 other languages. Reminder: you should only translate in your native language.".

Would it be possible to remove/relax this restriction? I would like to keep being able to suggest fixes to the English text. In particular with regards to using gender-neutral language, as unfortunately this seems to be a pervasive issue in board game rules/manuals.

I think a limit is reasonable to preserve quality (there are not that many people fluent enough in that many languages to be able to do translations for them), but English should not count. Suggesting fixes to English and translating it to your 3 best languages should be enough.

I don't understand the logic here. We ought to limit how many languages someone can translate to preserve quality but English doesn't count for some unspecified reason.

I realise that with English as a global language a lot of people think they are good enough to translate into English but often they are not. I can understand the need for non-Anglophones to translate French or German into English because there probably aren't that many native anglophones with the ability or interest to do that. But tidying up awkward translations is something best left to native speakers.

[N_Faker]

There have been some mass translation incidents. I guess this limit was introduced to reduce such incidents.

[Benkiman]

Let me try and clarify my position. I understand why the limit exists, to "preserve quality" by avoiding users abusing the translation system to get Premium for free. (I don't know yet if I agree with the limit, but that was not the point of the post.) I disagree in how the limit is implemented.

I don't really care if it's English + 3 languages or 3 in total (which might include English) as this is an arbitrary decision in the end, but I found there's a couple things I'd like to bring up:

1. English translations on the site work differently than any other language. You can't change the text directly, but only suggest changes that need to get approved (by the developer or a site admin, I assume?). For this reason, I think it should probably not count towards a limit as there's a layer of approval. Moreover, as you don't gain any present-thingies for suggesting translations, there is no risk of "abusing" English translations.

2. I don't recall reading about this limit anywhere. I guess the place to display it would be in https://boardgamearena.com/translationhq the first time a user visits (maybe it was there, and I just don't remember).

3. English was not counted as a language until I did translations in 3 others. I had submitted many English fixes/suggestions when I had only done translations in Spanish/Catalan. The system let me do a Japanese translation with no problem. It was after the Japanese translation that I was blocked out of translating English. If there is a limit of 3 languages (incl. English), it should have kicked in when I tried to do the Japanese translation instead of locking me out of suggesting fixes for English.

I realise that with English as a global language a lot of people think they are good enough to translate into English but often they are not. I can understand the need for non-Anglophones to translate French or German into English because there probably aren't that many native anglophones with the ability or interest to do that. But tidying up awkward translations is something best left to native speakers.

The problem is that English is also the default language of the site. If something is not translated in whatever language you are using, it is displayed in English. Everyone are exposed to the English "translation" even if they have a different language setting. This (on top of English strings being the default "source material" on which the rest of translation are taken from) is why I think makes sense to (1) moderate its suggested changes and (2) allow everyone to make suggestions.

Moreover, "any improvement is an improvement". Even if the fix suggested is still not perfect, it will be better than the existing text. Maybe it will make the developer realise that a particular string (or set of strings) should be fixed or can be improved upon.

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

The problem is that English is also the default language of the site. If something is not translated in whatever language you are using, it is displayed in English. Everyone are exposed to the English "translation" even if they have a different language setting. This (on top of English strings being the default "source material" on which the rest of translation are taken from) is why I think makes sense to (1) moderate its suggested changes and (2) allow everyone to make suggestions.

Moreover, "any improvement is an improvement". Even if the fix suggested is still not perfect, it will be better than the existing text. Maybe it will make the developer realise that a particular string (or set of strings) should be fixed or can be improved upon.

I don't see how English being the default language or the one that everybody is exposed to alters the reliability of translation.

Not every "improvement" actually is an improvement. Fixes are not necessarily better than the original text especially when they are made by non-native speakers. Even professional translators get things wrong when translating from their native language into English.

This is why "tidying up" ought to be left to native speakers. English is not an obscure language with so few native speakers that we need to rely on people whose grasp of it may vary considerably.

[qwertasdfg]

Seeing the errors in the English source material which often are there for several years: yes, we do need more players than just the native speakers helping out fixing them.

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

Seeing the errors in the English source material which often are there for several years: yes, we do need more players than just the native speakers helping out fixing them.

The fact that those errors exist suggests that non-native speakers make mistakes when translating into English.

[qwertasdfg]

Nope. It suggests that game developers (who have to provide an English translation before the game gets released) sometimes don't know English too well. And it suggests that most native speakers don't care too much with the translation system that's in place

[Giordano Bruno 1974]

Nope. It suggests that game developers (who have to provide an English translation before the game gets released) sometimes don't know English too well. And it suggests that most native speakers don't care too much with the translation system that's in place

Even the BGA site itself has English mistakes though.