And as a possible solution: if you really want to translate the boat names, make them female. 

 

 

What's male and what's female differs from language to language.

Polish "kot" is male but German "die Katze" is female. Both mean "cat".

 

"King Robert's Hammer" translated into Polish will be male. You'd need "King Robert's Mace" to have female name in Polish. And what if there's a language where "mace" is male or neuter?

 

Yea, different rules apply to different languages. For example, in Russian word 'Корабль' (Ship) has male gender, 'Лодка' or 'Шлюпка' (Boat) has female gender and 'Судно' (Vessel) has third, neuter gender. Also, 'Корабль' is generally used for military ships, 'Судно' for civilian ships and 'Лодка' or 'Шлюпка' for small boats. Go figure which one to use in localization 

Why not stick with the nominative case for ships, and refer to each ship’s captain or commanding officer in the text boxes as well to vary things and keep everything sounding elegant?

 

 

 

And as a possible solution: if you really want to translate the boat names, make them female. 

 

 

What's male and what's female differs from language to language.

Polish "kot" is male but German "die Katze" is female. Both mean "cat".

 

"King Robert's Hammer" translated into Polish will be male. You'd need "King Robert's Mace" to have female name in Polish. And what if there's a language where "mace" is male or neuter?

 

Yea, different rules apply to different languages. For example, in Russian word 'Корабль' (Ship) has male gender, 'Лодка' or 'Шлюпка' (Boat) has female gender and 'Судно' (Vessel) has third, neuter gender. Also, 'Корабль' is generally used for military ships, 'Судно' for civilian ships and 'Лодка' or 'Шлюпка' for small boats. Go figure which one to use in localization 

 

Interesting distinction between 'boat' and 'ship', though in English, boat generally refers to small craft and ships to large ones. 'Корабль' would easily be equivalent to 'warship', so, the distinction should translate easily.

 

 

And as a possible solution: if you really want to translate the boat names, make them female. 

 

 

What's male and what's female differs from language to language.

And that's why I specified italian on top of the post.

 

To be absolutely clear: it was made looking only at what people and media would generally use. 

What grammar rules and military tradition dictate can be quite different. 

Edited January 5, 20188 yr by Suen

 

 

 

And as a possible solution: if you really want to translate the boat names, make them female. 

 

 

What's male and what's female differs from language to language.

And that's why I specified italian on top of the post.

 

To be absolutely clear: it was made looking only at what people and media would generally use. 

What grammar rules and military tradition dictate can be quite different. 

 

 

So you're fine with changing ship names to fit gender? I didn't think about it.

So, just as a little feedback, if I was playing in German it would indeed bug me. A lot probably.

 

But I usually play my games in English only.

Fluffle old chap! You are German? Hohe Fünf!

 

Could have written all those past messages in German then, dammit.

 

It wouldn't bother me a lot to see weird translations concerning ship's articles in German. But that's mainly because I play on English.

Edited January 7, 20188 yr by Boeroer

 

P.S. If you go for proper localization, the best way imho is to ask the player to input the declined names himself.

Lol, you don't ask a player to work on localization within the game, it's developers job. The only input I think players should be allowed to do is to write their own ship's name if they so desire, which makes my suggestion the only viable suggestion. Or choose from a range of predefined names. 

 

 

I don't agree with this actually, there's nothing wrong with letting the player enter the various forms of a name, nor is it that weird or unprecedented.

 

For instance, older Civilization games let you do this for your empire even in English, specifying a different long name ("Roman Empire"), short name ("Rome"), adjective ("Roman"), etc.