Grammar in Paradox products.

[Akmatov]

The products of Paradox are quite unique in their historical orientation and they deserve our support in presenting their products in the best way possible. Sometimes the choices of nouns is odd and requires a moment or two of wondering, 'I just invented what?'. And sometimes I get confused as to just what is intended. Not to suggest that my Swedish is even on the map.

I think many of us would be willing to tackle proof-reading chunks of text if Paradox would incorporate the changes.

 

[qvcatullus]

I'd also love to help edit the text if someone wanted to organize something -- I suppose that I'm a bit of a professional, since I teach Latin, and the majority of my energy is spent on making sure that the students actually use proper English grammar to an extent that will allow them to understand grammar in other languages.

I also have to say that I am extremely bothered by the situation of the in-game text. It drives me crazy to have to figure out what the game is trying to tell me, and I'm one of those players who will read every pop-up box to tell me that my coffee has gone away every time that it comes up.

 

[Maximilian I]

there are too many germans in the betas that´s why...

 

[unmerged(10370)]

The most surprising thing is that bad grammar offends some people. :wacko:

sheesh.

 

[Aquitaine]

Please, let's not let this thread degenerate into a discussion of why grammar is good or bad or otherwise. There is a problem, which you may or may not agree is serious; people have volunteered to fix it. What remains is for Paradox to determine if they are at all interested in fixing this (with help), or if it will be some sort of mod.

 

[unmerged(10370)]

I remember reading about this quote at the urbanlegends site (snopes). Apparently, it is not on record at the nurenburg trials, but is actually a bunch of related quotes smushed together and taken from a military intelligence officers diary of interrogation.

Naturally the common people don't want war... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

the "orginal"

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

 

[Aquitaine]

I'm sorry -- I don't see the relevance of this quote...?

 

[unmerged(16585)]

[quote = kvlt 45]
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."[/QUOTE]

sounds familier.

[quote = Raczynski]
And I was learning English from Paradox games and forum Now I know why it suck [/quote]

try that on any other forum and you'll end up thinking the english language uses numbers as much as numbers, at least here you'll develop passable english


Anyways, "proper" grammer has only really been around for about 200-300 years, pretty new when you consider that English started developing long before the Saxons came to Britian. While it sometimes looks funny, its all pretty easy to understand, even if you have to read it twice.

And Johan, when I win the lotto, I'll give you guys a million $

 

[unmerged(16695)]

i've noted the grammar of some of the event texts as well, but i didn't want to be one of "those guys" to point it out. i just fix them myself with wordpad. it's not rocket science.

count me in the group if you need help polishing them up. i'd be glad to help.

oh, and i do use capitals in my regular writing. i just use all lowercase on the net, because we know it's an IQ siphon anyway

 

[Aquitaine]

Hehehe, don't worry, I knew it was impossible to bring this up without coming across as one of 'those people,' but the last thing I want to do is to be judgemental. I'm interested in a solution, and since my knowledge of history is limited to medieval years and the Crusades, this is the only way I can feasibly help out with something like this.

 

[Akmatov]

Just a point as we native speakers of English rush forward to disparage 'those people' who care about grammar. Most Indo-European languages, Swedish being one I assume, are inflected languages where the endings of nouns are changed to signal what part of speech the noun fulfills in the sentence. This is unlike English, which has dropped the endings in favor of using word order to key the reader to the meaning. The result is that mixing up the word order in English actually changes the meaning of what you are intending to convey, even though you can throw the words out there without having to tag them like you would in many languages. So in English, just as in all languages, grammar isn't an issue of nasty elistism so much as it is a matter of clear communiction.

 

[unmerged(16695)]

agreed, akmatov. although a lot of "those people" who point out poor grammar are nitpicking and seldom seem to take into consideration that the poster may not be a native english speaker, there is value in communicating correctly and they shouldn't be attacked for being "grammar police".

since the games do support such a varied, international audience, i think it's important that whatever language they're in be precise and correct. i say the same thing about the german, french, and whatever other versions may be out there. those users should be encouraged to correct any grammar mistakes in their versions as well.

 

[unmerged(16676)]

To tell the truth, I don't read most of the lengthy pop-up texts that accompany techs, the text is so damned small it's hard to read!

Any chance that this text could be enlarged for us old farts with fading eye-sight?

 

[Old Joe]

what a funny thread :rofl:

i'm also practice much of english reading this forum and playing original paradox games, and i think enlish language is most simple i had chance to use

about grammar, i'm somehow sure that majority of paradox consumers using english as only second language, so why criticize much about grammar and such things if most of us just didnt mention it anyway

and true english publishers must check all this, and i think they do, rather cant saw any five-grade mistakes too

...and yeah, i didnt recheck my spelling even one time here

 

[unmerged(15204)]

Are we really going to get into linguistics now? We can go on all night about semantically closed languages versus semantically open languages, etc. etc.; or we can all just learn to speak engrish :rofl:

http://www.engrish.com

Incidentally, Kvlt 45, that was an interesting observation about my sig. I've had it for a while and can't even remember where I got it from now.

 

[unmerged(16585)]

Engrish is the best, Dispite its association with Japan, I found much better engrish in Thailand, although the Ryokan (traditional inn) I stayed at in Kyoto had a sign on the fridge saying "Prease Take Walter" I thought about taking a picture and submiting it to the site but I figured my film had better uses.

And incase you didn't figure it out, "Walter" is Water.

 

[Carolus Rex]

All your base are belong to us!

 

[Aetius]

One thing that is a problem with the grammar and the language in general is the sheer amount of it. A lot of it is generated rather late in the beta process and there is a deadline to be met before it is shipped off the publishers. There should of course be no grammar errors in the same way there should be no bugs, but correcting them requires seeing the erroneous message, noticing an error, reporting it and then it being applied to the right version of the text. The earlier you have a text freeze in the development process the better the language, but the fewer the events and like in the game. So it is a bit of a tradeoff.

Second of all I think a lot the errors are probably caused by the natural sloppiness you get when writing things at 5 am. This probably applies both betas and paradox people. The betas who submit suggestions to Paradox are doing it their free time so this might explain some of it.

The best thing would be perhaps to have two or three people read through the text after the text freeze and two weeks before the shipping date to the publishers. Get one revision of the checking after a couple of days, correct the text and then get that reviewed, then correct it again and then get a verification.

 

[OriginalRafiki]

All your base are belong to us!

:rofl:

I guess it had to come at some point in this thread

And BTW, I guess I've officially become "one of those people" *sigh*

Rafiki

 

[unmerged(11929)]

And BTW, I guess I've officially become "one of those people" *sigh*

Don't worry, I've always been "one of those people" myself. Even in the languages that I didn't grow up with. If I have to go through hell trying to learn a new language properly, then the native speakers had better use it properly themselves!

Back to the topic, just to clarify something I read in an earlier post, this post is not attacking non English speakers who are posting in this forum, and I really doubt that the original poster wants to attack the game or Paradox either. It just happens to be a topic that a lot of us nitpickers feel passionate about.

Now, if only those damned eurosong contestants would sing in their native language...