Translating GZDoom's text content. Read if you want to help

[Gez]

As an example from the Spanish text, "Are you sure?" can be
"¿estás seguro?" for a male player and
"¿estás segura?" for a female player.

Same in French.

♂: "Êtes-vous sûr ?"
♀: "Êtes-vous sûre ?"

Also French has no neutral gender: everything is either masculine or feminine, no third alternative. So that's a problem for ZDoom's "they" and "it" player pronouns.

[Graf Zahl]

The neutral one is also a problem in German, there's a reason why I wrote all obituaries in a way that avoids pronouns for the player.
The pronouns are really only a problem with obituaries, where liberties can be taken with the text. There's no need to do a literal translation for them. If all else fails, just do "Player was killed by a [insert monster name here.]", or if even that cannot be done gender-neutral, find another phrase that does.

Sometimes I really wonder how languages with such pedantic gender attribution will develop in the future. With computers that thing is a genuine hassle so it's a likely candidate of eventually getting phased out because it may prove too inconvenient. And let's not forget the feminists...

[wolfmanfp]

Fortunately, there is no such thing in Hungarian.

[Enjay]

If all else fails, just do "Player was killed by a [insert monster name here.]", or if even that cannot be done gender-neutral, find another phrase that does.

To be honest, I feel that would be the best way forward for as many languages as possible (including English). There is no need for those messages to be gender specific, it clearly causes problems and it also makes the "object" ones really weird.

If all of the player messages became neutral, then it would also have the spin-off that the player setup screen could have a "voice" option instead of "gender". That way the player could set their sprite and voice to be whatever combination of resources they wanted and the obituaries (and whatever else) would be correct for that combination.

[Graf Zahl]

You cannot make all player messages neutral. In some languages this gender stuff is far too invasive for it, sometimes even affecting the verbs in the sentence.

[Kostov]

I have no idea whether this can apply to other languages, but the way I got around all pronouns in obituaries was to place the word “Player” in front of the player’s name. In Russian, the word for player is “Игрок,” which is masculine. Therefore, any obituaries centered around players (particularly in deathmatch) take on a masculine past tense verb, while at the same time having no connection to the gender of the player themselves.

When doing obituaries for monsters, I changed the Player word into the accusative case: “Игрока %o убил монстр.” = “Player %o killed monster” (not really translatable into English without changing the word order, but it’s about the monster killing the player). This makes the monster the subject and forces the verb to center around it. Because of the word “player,” this also effectively eliminates any need to decline the player’s name in any way.

[Rachael]

How about this then... for the languages where it is simply inavoidable, make the Strife NPC dialogues as male as suggested earlier, and then in the language options create additional languages (can we base languages on another one?) for the feminine 2nd personing where necessary. That would include French, Spanish, etc - and the base languages can default to a masculine 2nd person.

[Graf Zahl]

“Player %o killed monster” (not really translatable into English without changing the word order, but it’s about the monster killing the player).

How about "player %o was killed by monster"? In a language like French that still wouldn't help because I think the 'killed' would be gender sensitive.

How about this then... for the languages where it is simply inavoidable, make the Strife NPC dialogues as male as suggested earlier, and then in the language options create additional languages (can we base languages on another one?) for the feminine 2nd personing where necessary. That would include French, Spanish, etc - and the base languages can default to a masculine 2nd person.

The problem here isn't whether this is technically doable but whether it makes actually logical sense in the context of the game. If I add a generic gender replacement feature it can be used for everything, even here.
The real issue is something else: Have you played Strife? If yes, have you ever counted the female presences in the game? Yes, right, there is only ONE, i.e. Blackbird. All NPCs in the game are male and the reason for this this is actually mentioned in the intro dialogue! In the context of the story a female protagonist makes no sense!

[Enjay]

Rather than the program trying to do this, would there be any merit in making two translations for languages where this is particularly problematic and people could select them manually. e.g. French masculine and French feminine? Or would that cause problems and too much duplication of effort?

[Graf Zahl]

The best way to deal with this is to let the TRANSLATION TABLE define replacements as macros and let the engine only have a generic macro replacer.
That way the system remains flexible, even if some really weird language comes along.

Doing two translation tables will eternally double the maintenance work.

[Graf Zahl]

BTW, Spanish texts are in. Obviously they lack more recent content and I had to find out that the intermission texts were never tested, nearly all lines are far too long.

But if someones wants to complete them, please ask for access. But look out for the macros that are needed for the gender stuff here!

[Rachael]

Keep in mind there are at least two versions of Spanish that will be needed, similar to English (which, really, should have a third version for the Australian continent).

[Graf Zahl]

According to the text file it is 'neutral'. Still, it is far more important to complete this than to account for the difference between different variations of the language.

[Master O]

Keep in mind there are at least two versions of Spanish that will be needed, similar to English (which, really, should have a third version for the Australian continent).

"A Secret's Revealed, Mate! Throw Another Shrimp on the Barbie! Dilligaf!"

[Gez]

How about "player %o was killed by monster"? In a language like French that still wouldn't help because I think the 'killed' would be gender sensitive.

That depends. French is a language full of complex subtleties.

The passive form would be gendered, sure.
"Alice a été tuée par un monstre."
"Bernard a été tué par un monstre."

But the active form, not necessarily. It depends on whether the past participle verb comes before or after the object*. (*Grammatical notion of object, by opposition to subject.)

"Un monstre a tué Alice."
"Un monstre a tué Bernard."

But if you use the active voice for this, you don't even need to use a past participle at all. You can also use this construction:

"Un monstre tua Alice."
"Un monstre tua Bernard."

No agreement required here.