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Allow "Foreign Characters" in Dragon Names

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A pretty simple suggestion/request, really.

 

As I come from Estonia, I would love to name some of my dragons in Estonian. Estonian uses an alphabet with umlauts, as do many languages around the world. I think it would be nice for people to be able name their dragons according to their native languages, if they wanted to. And i'm sure I wouldn't be the only one wanting to do so.

 

I understand that we could just forego the letters with umlauts, but in some cases, doing so can actually mean an entirely different word. :/ Plus, in my opinion, I prefer it to have correct "spelling"

 

So, all i suggest/request, as said, is the ability to be able to use these characters in dragon names, anyone else think this is a good idea, or a bad idea?

 

 

 

happy.gif

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I think I've seen this, but not sure if it was just mentioned in some other thread or if it was a suggestion on its own unsure.gif

 

I'd like that too though I wouldn't personally use it as I prefer to use mock Latin and Dovalzul instead tongue.gif

 

And since the names can't be voulgar etc. it would be easier to actually translate & moderate a foreign word if the correct spelling was used.

 

actually what I'd like to see even more would be the IPA alphabet - the one that's used for phonetic transcription and has characters for sounds of all languages from what I know, it could be an additional thing aside of the name

especially for sth aside of the actual name(additional line that is visible on the dragon's page under its name, to be added separately but not required) - useful for those who have names that would read much differently than an English speaking person would most likely assume.

 

Eg. Wacław (ł is a Polish character for /w/ sound, the word is a Polish name), you'd probably read it as /Wa:[or another vowel]sl[schwa]w/ instead of /Vacwav"/ it is:P (I used underline to mark the word's stress)

It get's more complicated with the sounds for e.g. ü ö (e.g. German, Estonian), ę ą(nasal vowels!) ś ć ź ż (Polish) tongue.gif I used a word that could be transcribed using regular alphabet while the above just can't be transcibed without using special symbols:P e.g. gęś (goose) I bet you're reading it all wrong xd.png and I've never heard of any way to write 'ś' alternatively... ^^; and the IPA alphabet's sounds can be pretty easly found:)

Edited by VixenDra

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Personally, I prefer that things stay as-is. There are just too many symbols I don't know and have no clue how to pronounce, and I'd really feel put out by someone naming all their dragons with Asian symbols, for example. (Because, to be brutally honest, they look all the same to me.)

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about 'we need mods to know all these languages" I dont' think it's true.

https://translate.google.pl/?client=firefox...%8C%AB%E5%92%AA or https://translate.google.pl/?client=firefox...%81%84%E9%AC%BC

It's soo easy...

while with the romanized spelling: https://translate.google.pl/?client=firefox...Xiao%20Mao%20Mi it translates NOTHING plus romanized versons may have alternative spellings. I believe these are actually much more pain to moderate for 'bad' words

-using the samples from the other thread

Edited by VixenDra

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I recall someone with some appalling names - as well as a post here with an EXTREMELY rude phrase in Dutch (unfortunately for them I was able to translate and report.) I think this would open a large can of worms. Much as I'd like some accents, myself biggrin.gif

 

ETA @ Vixendra. Some day, put something through that translator and then put it back. You may be startled. It is NOT reliable. We used to have to put out info leaflets at work, and google translate was banned because it was so dodgy.

 

Goodness. I just accidentally put something through English to English - and it came up with a totally garbage sentence !

 

I just put through a sentence:

 

Some day, put something through that translator and then put it back. You may be startled. It is NOT reliable.

 

Then I put it back to English:

 

One day, something an interpreter, then put it back. They may be afraid of. It's not reliable.

 

It may be easy. It isn't good !

Edited by fuzzbucket

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I'll quote what I wrote in the other thread:

 

If I, a native English speaker, went to a Japanese site to play their game, I would expect that the language would be Japanese and would not try to add English to the site.

 

Just like I won't go to, say, Japan, and demand that they speak English! That many probably do is irrelevant. It is their country, it is their language, and if one happens to speak mine great, I might actually be understood, but if they don't.... Its their country, and I'm a visitor.

 

So. This is an English speaking site. I ask that those who speak a Foreign language grant me and the rest of us who only speak one language the same courtesy I'd give you on a site / country that spoke your language.

 

So no, sorry, don't support non-Romance characters. And.... I think I'd rather the expanded alphabet also not be used. While it will be used for some names in other languages, mostly it'll be used to get around the "one name per dragon on the site" for English names. And you better believe that I, for one, will be using it for just that purpose.

 

Cheers!

C4.

 

Other points brought up were the issues with many non-Romance languages not showing up properly.

 

I'd be ok with umlauts and such as they can already appear in English words and almost all computers already have native support for them, and even if you don't know how to pronounce the word in its native language.... you can still recognize the distinct letters. But even those often end up with..... some really strange representations on some computers without the proper font.

 

However, other than the accents I do NOT support any other alphabets on DC. Reason being, they do not display right on many user's systems, and even for those that do, many users would not associate those symbols as having some form of meaning (when I see Japanese I think they look like strange almost-identical etch-a-sketch drawings). But when I see a ü, I think "a u!" with some funny dots. But its still a letter I recognize as a unique symbol which carries meaning. Same with random codes: taken together they may not form words, but for every single person who was physically able to sign up for the site, they recognize each letter and number as distinct individual characters with their own meaning, and what that meaning is.

 

English site, English only language... and everyone here can read the romance alphabet (or they wouldn't have been able to sign up).

 

Also be aware that even with the accent type things.... The majority of users will badly abuse your native language to get around the one-name-per-dragon requirement. Expect it, accept it.... because that's gonna be the normal state of affairs. tongue.gif Far, far more people would use it that way than to write names correctly in foreign languages.

 

So while I'd happily abuse accents for my own naming purposes, so would be glad for them.... the line needs to be drawn at the romance alphabet for the reasons I stated above, and I lean toward leaving things as they are now.

 

 

Edit:

VixenDra.... there's youtube videos showing what usually goes wrong with Google Translate. In those music videos.... they are hilarious. For someone who reads the languages that have been royally scrambled? its painful.

 

Search Google Translates after going to YouTube. My personal favorite is Cayleb Hayes rendition of "I'll make a man out of you!" Actually I strongly suggest those Google Translates for anyone in need of a laugh. xd.png

 

Cheers!

C4.

Edited by cyradis4

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One problem with the "just put it through a translator" thing, people get around the English filters by misspelling the bad words or running them together. Someone who understands English (and slang) can understand what they meant, but a translator would tell me it's gibberish. So someone could name their dragon something -very- offensive in, say, Estonian, but play with the letters just enough that a translator would tell me it's gibberish. So in that respect, adding the real characters to allow people to spell things correctly wouldn't do much to help identify offensively named dragons.

Edited by Pokemonfan13

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I think the translation talk is all kinda moot because we already allow non-English names without the use of 'special' symbols. Since translating problems are already an issue, I wouldn't weigh them too heavily in choosing to support this idea or not. Yeah, adding characters will add to non-English names, but I don't think any of us are prepared to support non-English names being not allowed (what a modding nightmare!).

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I would have to ditto Cyradis' reply. I couldn't possibly word it better.

 

As an additional note: While it would be extremely humorous to me to see someone using Zalgo text to name a dragon, I would have a hard time tying to read the names of the dragons either below or above it in a list. I also wouldn't appreciate having to see a dragon whose name has one of those characters that spans the entire page. I am pretty sure there are people on the site that will use it. It's a tad obnoxious.

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I'd LOVE to be able to use other characters, and I am a native English speaker smile.gif

 

As someone who studied Spanish, without the accented vowels you can lose and change meanings entirely, which is very disappointing if you want to use such words, names or phrases.

 

+1 to different characters!

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I'd support adding accent character support, but largely because many English words actually use them in their 'correct' spelling; see "naive" versus "naïve," "cafe" versus "café," and "deja vu" versus "déjà vu." As someone who feels those spellings look cleaner, I'd like to be able to use similar characters on site.

 

Non-Romantic characters, however, don't really belong on an English-speaking site IMO, for the reasons brought up by C4.

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I have to admit, google translate isn't a good tool to translate, (@cyradis4... APPENDIX DOMINATING DEATH!!!! xd.png)....and in that unfortunate case, we would have to hope that someone out there, if they saw any "vulgar" names, would report them. I know I would, I'm a speaker of Estonian, Finnish and German, mostly fluently. I should be able to pick up curse words, if I saw them.

 

When i said "foreign characters" I did mainly mean Umlauts, as they are still part of an "English Looking Alphabet" and would be somewhat readable to most.

 

If people wanted to name their dragons in Korean, or Japanese, ect, they can use romanized versions of the words, and it would still have the correct translation, especially if Umlauts were available (as Chinese Pinyin and Japanese Romaji I know both use Umlauts) happy.gif

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Given that this suggestion is only for adding the accent mark characters in the same alphabet family (rather than allowing everything from Greek to Kanji), I am neutral to tentative support. I agree that people will abuse the heck out of them to allow new versions of taken names, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Especially since to someone coming from a language without accents etc something with a special mark is just a given letter with a funny mark, while to someone who speaks a language that uses that character, it's pronounced completely differently, which is the whole purpose of the special mark.

 

So someone wants to name their dragon Edward Elric, but it's taken because of course it is. So they (extreme example), name their dragon Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ, which is guaranteed to be a mishmash of characters from different languages and no way is pronounced like they intend. (and after enough people use that trick to get popular names, I'm sure someone is going to be forced to do something almost that extreme)

Edited by Pokemonfan13

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I support this entirely. My native language is Spanish, therefore many of my dragons' names are in said language. I usually refrain from using names/words in spanish that have accents because technically they would sound differently as well as being misspelled. I hope it's something plausible to incorporate this in the future since it would be a pretty awesome thing for us foreign speakers.

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So they (extreme example), name their dragon Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ, which is guaranteed to be a mishmash of characters from different languages and no way is pronounced like they intend. (and after enough people use that trick to get popular names, I'm sure someone is going to be forced to do something almost that extreme)

Can we not trust that people can choose for themselves if they value look over pronounciatuon?

 

As for the parenthetical I think that person wouldn't be in any worse position than they are now.

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It's possible to programmatically "normalize" names to remove the accents.

 

I would like to propose that, if this were to be added, that normalized names would still need to be unique. i.e. Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ and Edward Elric are the same (after normalization), so if someone names their dragon Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ, you can't have another dragon named Edward Elric.

 

Problems this solves:

  • Searchability: You don't have to remember the exact sequence of accents (or perhaps worse, how to reconstruct that sequence with whatever form of keyboard you have in front of you) in order to find a dragon. If you look for "Edward Elric," the site would display "Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ."
  • Names are still allowed to use their more "accurate" versions (e.g. café).
  • People adding spurious accents to get around name uniqueness limitations, making names look spammier (see: the example above).

Problems it doesn't solve:

  • Increasing the total number of possible names: Since names would still be normalized, the total available name set isn't expanded. I don't see this as a huge problem; there are millions (or billions) of valid, pronounceable names as-is.
  • Moderating non-English names. It doesn't really make the problem any worse than it exists today. Naming my dragon "Hommage à la forêt" vs "Hommage a la foret" is more correct, but if it were an inappropriate phrase, the extra accents don't really change how intelligible it is to someone who doesn't know the language.

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It's possible to programmatically "normalize" names to remove the accents.

 

I would like to propose that, if this were to be added, that normalized names would still need to be unique. i.e. Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ and Edward Elric are the same (after normalization), so if someone names their dragon Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ, you can't have another dragon named Edward Elric.

Works for me.

 

Problems this solves:

Searchability: You don't have to remember the exact sequence of accents (or perhaps worse, how to reconstruct that sequence with whatever form of keyboard you have in front of you) in order to find a dragon. If you look for "Edward Elric," the site would display "Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ."

Names are still allowed to use their more "accurate" versions (e.g. café).

People adding spurious accents to get around name uniqueness limitations, making names look spammier (see: the example above).

That does it for me. The searchability is VERY important to me, too.

Problems it doesn't solve:

Increasing the total number of possible names: Since names would still be normalized, the total available name set isn't expanded. I don't see this as a huge problem; there are millions (or billions) of valid, pronounceable names as-is.

Moderating non-English names. It doesn't really make the problem any worse than it exists today. Naming my dragon "Hommage à la forêt" vs "Hommage a la foret" is more correct, but if it were an inappropriate phrase, the extra accents don't really change how intelligible it is to someone who doesn't know the language.

I can't see these as problems NEEDING solving, to be honest. Thanks, TJ.

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I must admit that that's a compromise I'm fine with. Especially if searchability still works.

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It's possible to programmatically "normalize" names to remove the accents.

 

I would like to propose that, if this were to be added, that normalized names would still need to be unique. i.e. Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ and Edward Elric are the same (after normalization), so if someone names their dragon Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ, you can't have another dragon named Edward Elric.

 

Problems this solves:

  • Searchability: You don't have to remember the exact sequence of accents (or perhaps worse, how to reconstruct that sequence with whatever form of keyboard you have in front of you) in order to find a dragon. If you look for "Edward Elric," the site would display "Ëďŵåŕđ Ĕĺŗĩĉ."
  • Names are still allowed to use their more "accurate" versions (e.g. café).
  • People adding spurious accents to get around name uniqueness limitations, making names look spammier (see: the example above).
Problems it doesn't solve:
  • Increasing the total number of possible names: Since names would still be normalized, the total available name set isn't expanded. I don't see this as a huge problem; there are millions (or billions) of valid, pronounceable names as-is.
  • Moderating non-English names. It doesn't really make the problem any worse than it exists today. Naming my dragon "Hommage à la forêt" vs "Hommage a la foret" is more correct, but if it were an inappropriate phrase, the extra accents don't really change how intelligible it is to someone who doesn't know the language.

I'm quite good with this, myself, as well. So I support this idea for the accents with TJ's modification. smile.gif

 

Cheers!

C4.

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Support from me as well, TJ's suggestions make sense.

 

I've wondered about other punctuation marks also-- could this be something else added? I would love to have exclamation marks, question marks, and periods, for example. Heck, rappers have names with dollar signs in them now.

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I'd love to have some Spanish names. My mother taught me spanish from a young age, so I know it well, and I'd love to name some of my dragons with special spanish characters. There aren't a lot, but just changing a simple mark can mean something else entirely. blink.gif

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I am Polish and I really miss my Polish letters smile.gif There are so many amazing human names containing them, it's a shame I can't name my dragon Żaneta or, yeah, Wacław.

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I am someone that speaks/reads Japanese, and I would love to name my dragons in Japanese instead of just typing out the words in letters. Would be nice.

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