[Encore] metaphors in characters

[Daniel Jung]

Hi all,

Barbara F. McManus wrote:
> .... one cannot simply do a literal word-for-word 
> rendition in another language.  For example,  in VRoma the recording device is a 
> _scriba_, a scribe who "snaps to attention and begins writing down everything 
> that is said in the room" when turned on and whose "stylus and wax tablet slip 
> from his fingers as he dozes off" when turned off.

That's very interesting, and a very clever way to handle the situation. 
But is raises at least two very important questions:

(1) You are doing a translation into classical latin. This translation 
is designed to work in a setting two thousand years ago, where there 
were no tape recorders. Now, if this translation is going to be a 
downloadable package, and the Vatican is interested in using it, why 
isn't there a tape recorder, like I'm sure they do have ... you get the 
idea. So when you say

> challenging task that requires considerable thought about the MOO as well as 
> about the target language and culture.  

there is actually no "English culture", but India-English culture, 
UK-English, Australia-English. And there is Canadian French etc., South 
American Spanish, etc. Should these be packages of their own?

In a Spanish MOO I created some years ago, I made the Housekeeper a 
bird... "El condor pasa y toma lo que queda de Daniel" or something, I 
don't really recall, but the Condor comes flying and snaps the remaining 
shell of the player away. The thing is, this MOO was set in South 
America, so when translating the core, the Condor flying in the sky came 
immediately to my mind, and I doubt it would have done it if the setting 
had been in Spain.

(2) If a user sets the first language to Latin, and the second language 
to English, in order to have the yellow ALT-boxes display some help when 
the Latin language is too hard to understand. When the recorder says 
"Scriba" and refers to a person, with all the wonderfull cultural 
background and everything laid out, and the English help-version says "a 
little iPod-thingy", uhmm... that's not really much help, is it.

Should we then have a new package English-for-Latin, where Scriba is 
translated into English again?

I think (classical) Latin is a special case, in that there were no 
electric appliances back then, and one has to come up with those 
fantastic solutions you told us about, Barbara. But on a general level, 
we have to deal with these issues in all language packages.

- Daniel


PS Should the Scribe be handled as a person, thus be part of the people 
connected? We could program a (silent) bot to do recordings and thus 
serve as a "tape recorder". That would be cool. A bot like that could be 
set to follow you around and make notes (the Xpress Log). Instead of "a 
little red light flashes...", he could say "OK, master, here's my wax 
and stylus, I'm all ears".