Re: Which "form of address" pronoun should be used in Freeciv in German?

Am 06.03.2022 um 14:31 schrieb Marko Lindqvist:

> On Sun, 6 Mar 2022 at 12:18, Mathias (GER, Freeciv)
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> There are three possibilities:
>>
>> Informal 2nd person singular „du“ or
>> Formal 2nd person singular „Sie“ or
>> Formal 2nd person plural „Ihr"?
>>
>> In the current Freeciv translations, it is a mixture of „du“ and „Sie“.
>>
>> Civ 6 uses „Ihr“.
>>
>> Who decides stuff like that? The (German speaking) freeciv users? Shall we make a poll? :-)
>   You, the translator? As we might make Alina the admin who handles
> your translation updates, she might have something to say too.
>
>> Examples:
>>
>> EN original:
>> * You pay no %s upkeep for your units.
>>
>>
>> DE „Sie"
>> • Sie zahlen keinen %s-Unterhalt für Ihre Einheiten.
>>
>>
>> DE „du"
>> • Du zahlst keinen %s-Unterhalt für deine Einheiten.
>>
>>
>> DE „Ihr"
>> • Ihr zahlt keinen %s-Unterhalt für Eure Einheiten.
>>
>>
>> - -
>> Mathias

My take on this is that there are basically two flavors of text: Stuff 
like helptext / rules explanation, where the game talks to the player 
out-of-character; and stuff like certain notifications, messages from AI 
players etc., where the game talks to the player as ruler of a nation, 
in-character.

For the former, "Sie" feels a bit too impersonal IMO; "Ihr" (as royal 
plural) might work if you run with it, might sounds out of place, idk; 
"du" would likely be the safer option, or "ihr", as in, talking to 
players as a whole. There's also, as Hubert suggested, the option to try 
and rephrase everything without the need for pronouns (#1 choice for 
people who feel that asking is too awkward ^^).

For the latter, I don't really have strong opinions either way (though 
"Sie" still feels a bit too sanitized); particularly for messages from 
the AI, it'd even be possible to use different ones for different 
messages, based on how respectful the message should sound anyhow.

In the end though, since I'm not the one making the localization (or 
playing it all that much, for that matter), I'll piggyback off what 
Marko said and leave it up to you.

Cheers,
~AVL