Create official translations of Game Terms & Conditions

Reading ban appeals by players who are obviously non-English speakers always makes me sad. Usually they break some of the less obvious rules like account sharing or vote abuse and get permanently banned.

I understand why the staff cannot be lenient on non-English speakers breaking the rules, since it's been stated multiple times that ignorance is not an excuse for breaking rules. I agree this is a necessary stance to take in order to prevent intentional rule-breakers from feigning incompetency in English to receive lighter sentences.

But I think one way to help these non-English players would be to provide an official translation of the Game Terms & Conditions. I observe that it has already been done in an unofficial capacity in Spanish and Chinese, but I think that this system could be improved. These translations are found in the subforums in the Other Languages section, which are not very active sections of the forums.

I would like to suggest that translations of the T&C be added/linked to at the top of the current T&C thread, and in any other places where new players normally see the T&C.

The goal is for non-English speakers to be equally exposed to the T&C of the game as actual English speakers, instead of needing to rely solely on Google Translate which is not only less convenient but may give bad or inaccurate translations of the rules. The translations should also be easily accessible, and not require the player to navigate through a mostly English forum into the language-specific sub-forum to read the T&C.

Benefits:
1) Fewer rule-breakers (hopefully), which lightens the load on GMs in the long run.
2) More long-term players, leading to higher donation revenue for the server
3) Increased diversity of the player base.

Spoiler: Practical considerations

How to get the translations done? That's the harder part, but I can think of a few ways. The budget way is to get volunteers from the community to help translate, and have it verified by a member of staff or a reputable community member that speaks that language. The better way would be to hire professional translators off Fiverr or other freelance sites, though it would cost real money.

After a quick browse through Fiverr, I estimate the upper bound of the cost of translation to be about $3 USD per 100 English words. The T&C is currently 4500 words, which is $135 per translation, which I admit is quite high.

To reduce cost, I suggest that the T&C could be shortened for the sake of cheaper translation. The Chinese translation on the forums already takes this approach with a short TLDR version at the top, which I'd argue is the most important part, rather than the nitty-gritty hard-to-translate lawyer speak that is most of the current T&C. I think the current wording could easily be shortened to about 500 English words that adequately cover the gist of the T&C, or at least enough to prevent a large proportion of accidental rule-breakers. So each translation of the 500-word version would cost about $15 USD, which I think is acceptable.

There are 12 languages currently listed in the forums, so making a translation for each of those would cost about $180 USD, which I don't think is that huge a cost. I alone have donated at least 1/3 of that amount to the server already, so I'm reasonably confident that it's within the budget of the server to commission these translations. In addition, this is likely to be a one-off cost, assuming the T&C remain mostly static in the future.

I'm aware the staff have lots on their plate already, and there are many other important features that are in the pipeline. But helping non-English speakers is something that I care about a lot, so even if it's not a high priority task, I think it's worth a mention here at least.

What do you think?

 

Could you share a bit more about your experience updating the Chinese T&C? Which sections changed significantly enough to warrant a re-translation? In particular, did the TLDR version require any changes?

I'm not in favour of translating the entire 4500 word document as I have no doubt those change regularly. Rather I would support maintaining the short TLDR version that reflects the spirit of the rules, even if not the precise wording. My guess is that it shouldn't change too much over the years, though I'm open to correction.

 

I think you raise a good point about the translation needing to be very precise in order to be considered an official translation.

What if the approach is changed slightly? Ultimately my intention is to let non-English-speaking players understand what behavior may be objectionable, in particular the less obvious infractions such as account sharing and vote abuse. What if the English version of the T&C remains as the sole official set of rules, but an unofficial TLDR in different languages is provided in convenient places as a rough guideline of what is and isn't acceptable, even if the details are excluded from the translated TLDR summaries.

This way the non-English-speakers at least have an accessible way of knowing approximately what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior on this server. If they have further questions about the T&C, they can still be directed to ask other players or perhaps staff for clarification or more precise translation of the official English rules if necessary, but at least there will be no excuse for them to be ignorant of the basic things like account sharing and vote abuse being bannable offences. Do you think this is a more realistic approach, or are there still remaining concerns?

 

Strongly agree on the vote abuse comments. I think the TLDR pack should make a point to clarify that double voting in those situations are not allowed. I think that at least a few bans could have been avoided with better communication. That said, those of the 3rd kind that you mentioned that try to exploit the rules will probably break the rules no matter how clear the TLDR is, but I think we should still do what we can.