Board Game Arena

Something strange happens at the start of a game in the Dutch language.

EN : The colors of ${players} have been chosen according to their preferences. ${change_preferences}
NL : De kleuren van ${players} zijn gekozen overeenkomstig hun voorkeuren. ${change_preferences}

If the last person in ${players} is female, the dutch word "zijn" is automaticly changed into "haar" (trying to change "his" into "her"). Resulting in the incorrect translation :

De kleuren van ${players} haar gekozen overeenkomstig hun voorkeuren. ${change_preferences}

In this particular case the word "zijn" is a verb, meaning "have been", (and not a posessive, meaning "his") so it should not be replaced.

That's a tough one.

Following player feedback, we added some replace function to match pronouns to gender (when indicated by the player in his/her profile).
So "zijn" is changed into "haar" for women.

But I didn't know that "zijn" can also be a verb, and don't think there is a failsafe way to evaluate if the word is a verb or a pronoun in the sentence. So maybe just blacklist this specific string from the replacement and hope there are not more of the same sort? What do you think?

Yep... this one is complicated.

I think the 'blacklist' solution will be sufficient for now, but i'm almost sure that one or two similar cases will pop up in the future.

An alternative might be to implement some sort of 'switch' command with the translation of the male, female and plural form of a word. But this might make it too complicated.

example :
The ${"color", "color", "colors"} of ${players} ${"has", "has", "have"} been chosen according to {"his", "her", "their"} preferences.
De ${"kleur", "kleur", "kleuren"} van ${players} ${"is", "is", "zijn"} gekozen overeenkomstig {"zijn", "haar", "hun"} voorkeuren.

I'll go with the blacklist for now, but thanks, the switch idea is pretty neat. But I still hope it won't be necessary

This problem still exists. Is there a solution yet?

On this subject, please see this post: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=21387
(zijn is not replaced anymore, only zijn/haar by convention)

Een wrote: ↑05 July 2021, 09:38 On this subject, please see this post: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=21387
(zijn is not replaced anymore, only zijn/haar by convention)

Sorry for topic digging, but someone has noticed a problem with a new string on the main page where this doesn't seem to be the case: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 2&p=100013

"Zijn" is still replaced by "haar" in this string, making it incorrect for female players. The current translation should apply to all genders:

<a href="/player?id=${friend_id}" class="playername">${friend_name}</a> en <a href="/player?id=${subject_id}" class="playername">${subject_fullname}</a> zijn nu vrienden.

Thanks, indeed it looks like we had also a specific case for replacement for the newsfeed system and it was not updated at the same time as the games replacements. I'll work on adjusting that for the next release.