Board Game Arena

In Finnish we don't have many words that start with initial capital letter in the middle of the sentence. Due to how BGA translations work however some key words that have to appear in the middle of the text also get used for key buttons of the game.

Right now the obvious ways to work around this are:
- have tag start with capital letter but change the word order in the sentence so the problematic tag starts that sentence. This however can result in poor grammar (and sometimes you have to have multiple problematic tags in the same line so this wouldn't work at all then)
- keep all such tags in lowercase and accept your main buttons are also all in lowercase, but this just looks bad
- accept the key words start with capital letter and try to make it look like it's intentional, even if it's not proper Finnish

I'd rather fix this properly though so I'm asking if there's any existing way to force specific tags lowercase but only for that particular place?

If not, can I make request for this? I don't really know if requests like this should stay on the Translations subforum or go to the regular Suggestions.

What I'm asking could look something something like:

<lowercase>${tag}</lowercase> or {tag_lowercase} or {tag.lowercase} etc, whatever makes more technical sense for the implementation

it's not actually proper English to use capital letters the way they're used here on BGA, either. it's a style choice BGA has made to highlight what words are important.

i usually use lower case anyway, but don't let it bother me (much) when i see capital letters. but then, as you might have guessed, i like lower case…

I prefer using proper —in my case— Spanish, which means only using capital letters for proper nouns and at the beginning of sentences. We use capital letters less than in English, with some types of words that are capitalized in English not being so in Spanish (languages, demonyms or months to name a few, as they are considered common nouns).

I don't agree with the practice of putting "gaming terms" (sometimes it's not even that) in capital letters as it's done for many games. Often it's not even consistent within a game, where the same noun can appear capitalized in some strings while not in others.

Imagine if the base language was German instead of English and every noun was capitalized in origin. Would we keep all of that capitalization when translating to our own languages? Mostly not, but yet some people would still do it "because it's in the original". To me, every string in my language should be correct, regardless of whether the original is also correct or not. And that means using capitalization just for what's it's meant to be used.

As aghagh has mentioned, we have many words starting with a capital letter in German. For example, your first sentence would look like this:
"In Finnish we don't have many Words that start with Initial capital letter in the Middle of the Sentence."

I am not quite sure what you meant by this:

...force specific tags lowercase...
What I'm asking could look something something like: <lowercase>${tag}</lowercase> or {tag_lowercase} or {tag.lowercase} etc,

But if you suggest this to be part of the english original text, I have to veto. This would force German translation to write lower case (because we have to keep the tags), when capital letters are correct.

As it is now, each language can choose where to use lowercase or capitals. Why can't you just decide in your Finnish community, how to deal with this?

Maybe I didn't get you right, so please correct me, if so.

In French, game terms are written in upper case because that's how it's usually done in the original language, and also because it's often done in the French physical rulebooks.

But I agree with what has been said, the translation, with or without capitalisation, should be language-dependent.

Blacktango wrote: ↑04 March 2023, 16:12 In French, game terms are written in upper case because that's how it's usually done in the original language, and also because it's often done in the French physical rulebooks.

And it shouldn't be. That is either a translation error or an unfounded mimicry of english editorial use of emphasis. French has a set of typographic conventions, some may vary, but not this one, even for marketing reasons (I'd accept comedic ones). The main problem is that (game and book) editors employ less people than they should for correction. If we here have enough people who can do a proper job, I don't see any reason to make it voluntarily bad: for example when there's a typo in the game rules, the BGA version corrects it.

I'm not a professional of the typography, but it's a subject I'm interested in.
I don't know if there are any conventions in the French world of board games, but if you have any resources on the subject, I'd be happy to read some.

Personally, I like it when there's consistency in the way words appear in a document (same term for same thing, same typo for same thing), and I think it's easier to notice the specific terms of the game when they're written with emphasis.
Too much bold/underlined is hard to read, maybe italic is a good way to do this.

On BGA we are dependent on the game implementation, to use or not this emphasis. Use capital letters allow us to overcome this problem.