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Instead of aimlessly directing a criticism, I’m actually going to make a point about spelling in a few main areas – games, SR and common mistakes.
Computer games, in general, have fantastic spelling (as in it’s all correct). You could walk through a series of RPGs or MMORPGs for years without encountering one spelling mistake. Yet, from time to time, there is one stumble. This is because of two main things – subtle incompetence by the programmer to spell check completely and efficiently and the fault of the games testers for not fully concentrating on the game. The most recent aspect I’ve found is on Phantasy Star Online ver.2 – on the end of the Donoph Quest it says ‘18000 meseta.@winend’. This I would expect to be bad programming and a lack of testing. Although it makes no difference to the Gameplay, it can get annoying that every time I do the quest I have to look at the same mistake. I’m not putting PSO ver.2 down, but because of this, the game no longer becomes as good as it was. One other problem emanates from translations and conversions from Japan and the US. A direct translation is like using AltaVista translator – full of grammatical errors. A conversion, however, contains spelling errors. Such errors are with words like ‘honor’ (which should be spelt ‘honour’) and ‘color’ – but the one that irritates me most is ‘ax’. Now blatantly in English it should be spelt with an ‘e’ – ‘Axe’. This occurs in a few RPGs (my favourite sort of game) and really bugs me when converters haven’t bothered to check these spellings.
Now here in SR, most prime posts are thoroughly spell checked, and most chat posts aren’t. This is because we’re generally ‘speaking’ to each other. Colloquially, most people don’t care, unless it’s illegible. Punctuation is sometimes lacking (hint!) in the places where it is needed – to make sense, you realise. Nevertheless, generally in SR spelling isn’t a major factor.
However, there are some phases that we all go through – the classic one is generally for fast typers, and involves a double capital letter – e.g. SOmetimes or COnsequently. Through ‘spell checking’, this can be eradicated, and in most Word versions, this auto-corrects itself. On the other hand, even the phase of the frequent use of punctuation, like the dash or the bracket. That is if you use punctuation.
And of course there are a few commonly misunderstood words, like their, there and they’re – or which and witch – which can be extremely annoying. Oh yes they are.
Basically, spelling depends on where it is used – whether it needs to be phonetic, colloquial or formal – and by mixing them it can get people (like me) really cheesed off. GRRRR.
JCSuperStar
Computer games, in general, have fantastic spelling (as in it’s all correct). You could walk through a series of RPGs or MMORPGs for years without encountering one spelling mistake. Yet, from time to time, there is one stumble. This is because of two main things – subtle incompetence by the programmer to spell check completely and efficiently and the fault of the games testers for not fully concentrating on the game. The most recent aspect I’ve found is on Phantasy Star Online ver.2 – on the end of the Donoph Quest it says ‘18000 meseta.@winend’. This I would expect to be bad programming and a lack of testing. Although it makes no difference to the Gameplay, it can get annoying that every time I do the quest I have to look at the same mistake. I’m not putting PSO ver.2 down, but because of this, the game no longer becomes as good as it was. One other problem emanates from translations and conversions from Japan and the US. A direct translation is like using AltaVista translator – full of grammatical errors. A conversion, however, contains spelling errors. Such errors are with words like ‘honor’ (which should be spelt ‘honour’) and ‘color’ – but the one that irritates me most is ‘ax’. Now blatantly in English it should be spelt with an ‘e’ – ‘Axe’. This occurs in a few RPGs (my favourite sort of game) and really bugs me when converters haven’t bothered to check these spellings.
Now here in SR, most prime posts are thoroughly spell checked, and most chat posts aren’t. This is because we’re generally ‘speaking’ to each other. Colloquially, most people don’t care, unless it’s illegible. Punctuation is sometimes lacking (hint!) in the places where it is needed – to make sense, you realise. Nevertheless, generally in SR spelling isn’t a major factor.
However, there are some phases that we all go through – the classic one is generally for fast typers, and involves a double capital letter – e.g. SOmetimes or COnsequently. Through ‘spell checking’, this can be eradicated, and in most Word versions, this auto-corrects itself. On the other hand, even the phase of the frequent use of punctuation, like the dash or the bracket. That is if you use punctuation.
And of course there are a few commonly misunderstood words, like their, there and they’re – or which and witch – which can be extremely annoying. Oh yes they are.
Basically, spelling depends on where it is used – whether it needs to be phonetic, colloquial or formal – and by mixing them it can get people (like me) really cheesed off. GRRRR.
JCSuperStar
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The_King wrote:
> Just reading through your posts quickly I have spotted numerous errors
> in the flow of the text, sentence structure and other such contextual
> inconsistencies
But I don't have a series of editors and testers that read through my posts 100 times before I post them. The fact that games designers, programmers and testers all see the text of the game, I would think that at least ONE would see a problem.
And which errors in the text? You want to see grammatical errors? Look at Dringos posts. While highly entertaining you can get lost without the correct emphasis as you read. He may be getting annoyed that when I look at some of his posts before he posts them that I correct him, but then again I suppose that we all have different styles.
> Just reading through your posts quickly I have spotted numerous errors
> in the flow of the text, sentence structure and other such contextual
> inconsistencies
But I don't have a series of editors and testers that read through my posts 100 times before I post them. The fact that games designers, programmers and testers all see the text of the game, I would think that at least ONE would see a problem.
And which errors in the text? You want to see grammatical errors? Look at Dringos posts. While highly entertaining you can get lost without the correct emphasis as you read. He may be getting annoyed that when I look at some of his posts before he posts them that I correct him, but then again I suppose that we all have different styles.
I think Venombyte snagged it on the head.
The_King wrote:
> Hmmm, a relatively interesting post. However, while you seem to have
> made sure that the spelling in your previous posts is quite good,
> although may I say not perfect, there is much more to writing than
> simply triple checking the spelling. As I’m sure you did when posting
> a topic such as this.
>
> Just reading through your posts quickly I have spotted numerous errors
> in the flow of the text, sentence structure and other such contextual
> inconsistencies
>
> Oh, and while I’m having a rant, you spelt the word ‘many’ (you spelt
> ‘meny’) wrong in your last post!
>
> So as you’ve just proved with considerable aplomb, mistakes can easily
> creep into a piece of text, even when you check, and double check a
> piece of work.
Yes but JCSuperStar doesn't charge you £40 to read it... The fact is we wait several months to get games and all we have is a simple PAL transfer, the excuse they give for the delay? It takes ages converting it into french/german etc... so if they are bothering to translate into these languages why can't they give the Uk our spelling. It really annoyed me looking at my Gameboy Colour with the words Color on the screen, how much would it cost to re-write it... pish an apparent childrens console teaching children the wrong spelling.
A $22 billion industry should be a little more proffesional.
> Hmmm, a relatively interesting post. However, while you seem to have
> made sure that the spelling in your previous posts is quite good,
> although may I say not perfect, there is much more to writing than
> simply triple checking the spelling. As I’m sure you did when posting
> a topic such as this.
>
> Just reading through your posts quickly I have spotted numerous errors
> in the flow of the text, sentence structure and other such contextual
> inconsistencies
>
> Oh, and while I’m having a rant, you spelt the word ‘many’ (you spelt
> ‘meny’) wrong in your last post!
>
> So as you’ve just proved with considerable aplomb, mistakes can easily
> creep into a piece of text, even when you check, and double check a
> piece of work.
Yes but JCSuperStar doesn't charge you £40 to read it... The fact is we wait several months to get games and all we have is a simple PAL transfer, the excuse they give for the delay? It takes ages converting it into french/german etc... so if they are bothering to translate into these languages why can't they give the Uk our spelling. It really annoyed me looking at my Gameboy Colour with the words Color on the screen, how much would it cost to re-write it... pish an apparent childrens console teaching children the wrong spelling.
A $22 billion industry should be a little more proffesional.
All the same, it wouldn't cost the Earth to run the text through some software to convert common American spellings into English - in fact a program to convert plain text (essentially a basic spellchecker) could be written in a relatively short space of time by any half competent programmer. If the text also includes markup languages, again that could be easily incorporated. The time delay to run text through such a program would be marginal.
If however, it's already converted into some complicated format specific for that game, and the plain text is no longer available, then yes it would be expensive to do. However, that just shows a lack of foresight and bad software design practice.
This only holds true for spelling, however. Grammatical converters requiring lexical parsing are much more complicated - though I can think of very few instances in which one would be required to convert between 'US English' and 'UK English'.
If however, it's already converted into some complicated format specific for that game, and the plain text is no longer available, then yes it would be expensive to do. However, that just shows a lack of foresight and bad software design practice.
This only holds true for spelling, however. Grammatical converters requiring lexical parsing are much more complicated - though I can think of very few instances in which one would be required to convert between 'US English' and 'UK English'.
JCSuperStar wrote:
> You can try to tell me as meny times as you like, but the dictionary
> in not valid in the UK! I don't go around, saying colloquial
> Americanisms. And I'm sure you don't too. And besides, it should
> cost the developers money if they did it while they converted from
> NTSC to PAL.
translating text requires two things.
1) qualified personnel
2) software
both of these cost money, and the former costs time. Sure, the american version of the english dictionary isn't valid here, but does that mean you can't understand what the text is saying?
No. There is no lingual stepping stone to overcome, and thus no need to pay for useless software and overqualified english Phd's to rectify spelling differences between two MARGINALLY different versions of the same language.
If they did that, they might as well start bringing out regional versions of the game. One for each regional accent in the country, because the local dialect is essentially different everywhere.
I do hope you can see why this would be a complete waste of time and money.
> You can try to tell me as meny times as you like, but the dictionary
> in not valid in the UK! I don't go around, saying colloquial
> Americanisms. And I'm sure you don't too. And besides, it should
> cost the developers money if they did it while they converted from
> NTSC to PAL.
translating text requires two things.
1) qualified personnel
2) software
both of these cost money, and the former costs time. Sure, the american version of the english dictionary isn't valid here, but does that mean you can't understand what the text is saying?
No. There is no lingual stepping stone to overcome, and thus no need to pay for useless software and overqualified english Phd's to rectify spelling differences between two MARGINALLY different versions of the same language.
If they did that, they might as well start bringing out regional versions of the game. One for each regional accent in the country, because the local dialect is essentially different everywhere.
I do hope you can see why this would be a complete waste of time and money.
Hmmm, a relatively interesting post. However, while you seem to have made sure that the spelling in your previous posts is quite good, although may I say not perfect, there is much more to writing than simply triple checking the spelling. As I’m sure you did when posting a topic such as this.
Just reading through your posts quickly I have spotted numerous errors in the flow of the text, sentence structure and other such contextual inconsistencies
Oh, and while I’m having a rant, you spelt the word ‘many’ (you spelt ‘meny’) wrong in your last post!
So as you’ve just proved with considerable aplomb, mistakes can easily creep into a piece of text, even when you check, and double check a piece of work.
Just reading through your posts quickly I have spotted numerous errors in the flow of the text, sentence structure and other such contextual inconsistencies
Oh, and while I’m having a rant, you spelt the word ‘many’ (you spelt ‘meny’) wrong in your last post!
So as you’ve just proved with considerable aplomb, mistakes can easily creep into a piece of text, even when you check, and double check a piece of work.
You can try to tell me as meny times as you like, but the dictionary in not valid in the UK! I don't go around, saying colloquial Americanisms. And I'm sure you don't too. And besides, it should cost the developers money if they did it while they converted from NTSC to PAL.
I'll say it again, in the hope it sinks in.
THEY ARE NOT SPELLING ERRORS, THEY ARE WORDS FROM A DIFFERENT DICTIONARY.
And secondly, I would be very surprised to learn that any game conversion from US to UK had any manner of spell check whatsoever on in game text. It's just not necessary.
besides
which
it
would
cause
delays
which
not
only
annoys
the
gamers
but
costs
the
developers
money......
THEY ARE NOT SPELLING ERRORS, THEY ARE WORDS FROM A DIFFERENT DICTIONARY.
And secondly, I would be very surprised to learn that any game conversion from US to UK had any manner of spell check whatsoever on in game text. It's just not necessary.
besides
which
it
would
cause
delays
which
not
only
annoys
the
gamers
but
costs
the
developers
money......
sorry, re-occur.
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