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From: isgi@ztivax.zfe.siemens.de (Oliver Rothe)
Subject: Re: A language problem
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References: <Cn4E1H.DIL@ztivax.zfe.siemens.de> <joedal.764508688@dfi.aau.dk> <neilg.764537608@sfu.ca>
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 1994 09:08:29 GMT
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Neil K. Guy (neilg@kits.sfu.ca) wrote:
> [...]
> to TADS. My German is quite awful, so I'm not sure what difficulties
> there may be in writing a German TADS epic. I know German tends to put
> verbs at the end of sentences where English would have them at the
> beginning... I don't know if that would pose a problem. (although does
> it do that with the imperative? I think it doesn't but I should
> probably shut up and let a German speaker comment on that)
> [...]

Unfortunately, the sentence "look at the wolpertinger" becomes
"schau den Wolpertinger an". Similarly, the simple sentence
"drop the pretzel" becomes "lass die Brezel fallen", so we have a 
problem here.

These sentences are also good examples for another problem:
They sound somehow stupid to an educated German. There _are_
German versions of the LucasArts games (Monkey Island I&II, and,
more recently, DOTT), but everyone I know likes to play
the original versions, because the German versions are so _silly_. 

It seems that it is far more easier to write good _and_ concise prose
(there is still some conciseness required even in today's games) 
in English than it is in German (Hmm, perhaps I should have used the
term "short" instead of "concise". Heinrich von Kleist's prose consists
of a lot of long and complicated sentences; nevertheless, it is also 
very concise.) 

I have received several e-mail messages telling me that my English is 
not quite as bad as I thought (thanks for cheering me up :-) ), so I'll
give it a try and write my game in English. I hope I'll find some
native speakers as betatesters who look after my grammar (this was 
suggested to me).

And I don't want to spend months and years writing a new ADV.T.
IMHO, this is a dangerous trap for every programmer: refining the tools
instead of getting the work done.

Oliver

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Rothe				isgi@ztivax.zfe.siemens.de
		also reachable via:	100265.1543@compuserve.com


