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

Hello Alina,

thanks for your detailed thoughts.

You made a very good point when differentiating between text „in-character“ texts and „out-of-character“ texts!! I hadn’t thought about that until you mentioned it. 

As I mentioned to Hubert earlier on, I quite like the plural „Ihr“ when addressing the player in-game as the leader of the civilisation. That sounds respectful, because the leader deserves respect. Well, as long as he or she is making the right decisions for the civilisation! ;-)

OTOH, in manuals, the tonality can be much more personal, so an „Du“ could be the way to go. Or the impersonal way. I’ll try that out.

Switching back and forth is an option as well, depending on the situation or message. But perhaps this should only be used as a special stylistic means to highlight unusual expressions (of the AI), such as irony, sarcasm, unusual praise or criticism, or maybe even a bit of silliness. Well, just thinking…

Thank you all for today’s tipps, tricks and hints!

Good night and have a good start tomorrow!

- - 
Mathias


> Am 06.03.2022 um 15:30 schrieb Alina Lenk <[email protected]>:
> 
> 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
> 
>