Auto-Translate Expansion

[Byrth]

Hello!

I was wondering whether Adoulin would include an expansion of the Auto-Translate function to include the many new game terms, Key Items, Job Abilities/Trait, and so on. There have been many terms introduced since level 75 that have not been added. It drives the different language communities even further apart when we cannot communicate properly.

If I recall correctly, the reason for the terms not being added had something to do with PS2 memory limits. Inferring one step beyond that, it seems obvious that this is a limit placed on the active translate list (accessed with [Tab]) because the game is capable of translating something like 15000 item names. Could you guys just fix this system somehow? If it's not possible to do it on the PS2, that's fine. PS2 players will still be capable of displaying the autotranslated terms even if they can't access them (as they can see any of the >15000 autotranslate terms that I randomly say now). This would be a perfect component of the new UI, though I would like it to come out a little sooner. Hopefully it would come out with Adoulin to make mission coordination easier.

Thanks!

[Seyomeyo]

From what I remember, they were going to take out some terms in order to make room, and they had a thread going to see which terms were useless. What happened to said thread I have no idea.

[Alhanelem]

They can't expand the auto translate due to ps2 limitations- this means to add new terms they have to delete old ones, from what the community team has said in the past.

[Byrth]

Guys, try reading the second body paragraph. Here it is again, longer this time:

They've added a few hundred autotranslatable items to the PS2 since they last told us that they'd have to delete terms to add more. This makes it obvious that what they can't do is add things to the lexicon you access with Tab, but they can add things to the total autotranslate lexicon in general. The item lexicon (which you access through Tab) is normally limited to something like your last 100 most recently viewed/translated items, so adding autotranslatable items to the dictionary doesn't affect its active size. Adding things like "Game Terms", Job Traits, Job Abilities, etc. does affect its size because they'd have to be accessible all the time due to the way it is currently designed.

There are various solutions to this problem that would also work on the PS2 (like limiting your job ability autotranslate lexicon to the ones you currently have access to), but a more satisfying solution would simply be to leave the PS2 in the dust and expand it on the PC. Because there's no notable limit to the number of autotranslate terms that the PS2 can receive/display*, expanding this list for the PC will not have an impact on compatibility between the clients. PS2 users won't be able to say the newly added terms, but as it currently stands no one can say them.

* Remember, I can only tab for 100 items but I can see 15,000 items.



tl;dr:
1) If they're willing to change the UI exclusively for PC (not PS2)
AND
2) There's no limit on dictionary size even for PS2 (there isn't, just active dictionary size)
THEN
3) There's no reason to limit the PC Autotranslate dictionary because it isn't going to cause compatibility issues.

[Alpheus]

I do hope they respond to this. I do miss having Voidwatch KIs translatable. Shame they no longer were once they were given their own category.

[SpankWustler]

If auto-translate is expanded...

I would like to petition for the phrase "Are you wearing any leg equipment?" to be added, because "Are you alone?" doesn't let me fully and properly convey my creepiness to Japanese people.

[Alhanelem]

Guys, try reading the second body paragraph. Here it is again, longer this time:

They've added a few hundred autotranslatable items to the PS2 since they last told us that they'd have to delete terms to add more.No, they haven't. There hasn't been one new term added without something being removed.

Items don't count -- they're not part of the autotranslate dictionary -- hence why they're not always available- An item's name has to be loaded in before you can translate it with the tab key (which happens when you use the /translate command.)

To add more terms in this manner would mean having to push items out of the 100 item history- And this would make them inconvenient to access because you'd first have to see someone else use it or use the /translate command yourself before you could say it, instead of it coming up just when you hit tab. To me, that's not an acceptable solution.

[Byrth]

Herp derp derp herp?

Read the post.

[SpankWustler]

Maybe this example will help, although I thought Byrth's point was really clear:

Let's say you're playing on a PS2. You just finished logging back in after crashing during a cut-scene or an ill-fated attempt to walk through Whitegate.

You receive a /tell from a Japanese guy who mistakenly thinks you are a ten-year old girl. He asks "Are you alone?" and informs you that he is wearing a "Clown's Subligar".

You receive a /tell from another Japanese guy who mistakenly thinks you are a ten-year old girl. He asks "Are you alone?" and informs you that he is wearing "Feral Trousers", and tosses in some more moon runes to convey his feral lust.

You receive a /tell from another Japanese guy who mistakenly thinks you are a ten-year old girl. He asks "Are you alone?" and informs you that he is wearing a "Ucn. Subligar +1", complete with HQ horn.

This process continues until every Japanese person on your server has conveyed to you both his misplaced desire and his specific leg equipment using auto-translate. You've just seen thousands of auto-translated terms on PS2 even though, much like the engine of the Starship Enterprise, it's memory cannot take anymore and is about to blow.

A bunch of new terms added to the PC's Tab-Dictionary would work similarly for PS2 players; they could be seen when used but not easily accessed otherwise.

For PC users this would not be the case; it would be much simpler. They could just access these terms normally from the Tab-Dictionary because the average PC has more memory than a really fancy toaster made in late 2012.

[Lokithor]

I would be happy if they just added "Abyssea" to auto translate. Seems pretty basic to me that all world regions should be translatable.

[Alhanelem]

Maybe this example will help, although I thought Byrth's point was really clear:

Let's say you're playing on a PS2. You just finished logging back in after crashing during a cut-scene or an ill-fated attempt to walk through Whitegate.

You receive a /tell from a Japanese guy who mistakenly thinks you are a ten-year old girl. He asks "Are you alone?" and informs you that he is wearing a "Clown's Subligar".

You receive a /tell from another Japanese guy who mistakenly thinks you are a ten-year old girl. He asks "Are you alone?" and informs you that he is wearing "Feral Trousers", and tosses in some more moon runes to convey his feral lust.

You receive a /tell from another Japanese guy who mistakenly thinks you are a ten-year old girl. He asks "Are you alone?" and informs you that he is wearing a "Ucn. Subligar +1", complete with HQ horn.

This process continues until every Japanese person on your server has conveyed to you both his misplaced desire and his specific leg equipment using auto-translate. You've just seen thousands of auto-translated terms on PS2 even though, much like the engine of the Starship Enterprise, it's memory cannot take anymore and is about to blow.

A bunch of new terms added to the PC's Tab-Dictionary would work similarly for PS2 players; they could be seen when used but not easily accessed otherwise.

For PC users this would not be the case; it would be much simpler. They could just access these terms normally from the Tab-Dictionary because the average PC has more memory than a really fancy toaster made in late 2012.

The PS2 is the lead platform. They generally can't make something work mechanically different on one platform from another. Otherwise, they could do various things like give PC users more inventory in one space while splitting it into seperate spaces on the PS2- but they can't do these sorts of things. They can do things like provide higher quality textures as long as the asset itself is the same, because that's purely cosmetic and doesn't affect inner workigns of the game. The New UI will be able to display some information the old UI doesn't, but this information that's already being sent to the clients- it's simply not being displayed on screen, making it a cosmetic issue on a technical level (even though more information is functionally useful).

[Byrth]

There are three explanations in this thread of why it's possible for us to easily deduce that SE is capable of making this feature work differently on PC than PS2. Read one of them and understand it. This thread wasn't even supposed to be about discussing the technical viability of the idea because it's so blatantly possible. I just wanted to show support for the possibility.


So here it is:
Hey SE, I'd like to be able to autotranslate new zones, new abilities, new job traits, Abyssea terms (Cruor, Proc, Abyssea, the different light colors, etc.), Voidwatch NM names, and so on. It would also be nice to get some game mechanics terms in there (Augment, Enchantment, Critical Hit Rate, Dexterity/Strength/etc.) The autotranslate system doesn't let us communicate when all the nouns from the last two years are missing. Due to your failure to add terms to autotranslate, I have attended precisely two JP Voidwatch runs out of the ~400 I have gone on.



One more example:
Imagine that SE adds a bunch of unobtainable armors to the PS2 version of the game. One of the armors could be named, for instance, "Cruor". If someone autotranslated it and said it in party chat, PS2 users would be able to see it as they are able to see all new armors. With this particular implementation, they could also use /translate to temporarily add it to their tab lexicon. This is a ghetto work-around specifically designed for PS2, but one assumes that the PC version would not need it.

[Alhanelem]

This thread wasn't even supposed to be about discussing the technical viability of the idea because it's so blatantly possible.Except it is extremely presumptuous of you to claim even that. You'll undoubtedly continue to collect likes for saying what people want to hear, but that doesn't mean you actually know. I'm not ruling it out, either- but you're declaring something "blatantly possible" when you don't actually know anything about how possible or not possible it is, since you didn't design the engine or system code.

[Demon6324236]

While he may not be correct, his logic is sound, and there is reason to believe it is the case. If its not then oh well, but the suggestion is sound in principle if it works in the way he claims, which sounds accurate.

[Zirael]

Herp derp derp herp?

Read the post.
You've been trolled. Just saying~

[Zirael]

Except it is extremely presumptuous of you to claim even that. You'll undoubtedly continue to collect likes for saying what people want to hear, but that doesn't mean you actually know. I'm not ruling it out, either- but you're declaring something "blatantly possible" when you don't actually know anything about how possible or not possible it is, since you didn't design the engine or system code.
It is possible. Prove me wrong.

[zataz]

It is possible. Prove me wrong.

burden of proof falls on the person making a positive claim <,<

and yes its me endu tell alybrand i said hi and did u give up on your rdm? lol

[Byrth]

Yeah, except that there are four logical justifications in the thread that satisfy that requirement. My proposal relies on four assumptions:
1) The PC needs to be able to handle a larger active autotranslate lexicon than the PS2. - How could it not?
2) The PS2 needs to be able to handle a slightly larger number of incoming autotranslate terms than it currently does. - Probably can, unless Adoulin isn't going to have any new items in it. I mean, we're talking 16200 vs. 16000 here.
3) SE needs to be willing to release updates that benefit PC users but don't benefit PS2 users directly. - New PC UI, higher resolution icons/text, test server is only accessible from PC, etc. Might as well not even be an assumption anymore.
4) That this is worth doing. - Considering how aggressively many JPs avoid us, it's arguable that any effort put in to the autotranslate system is somewhat wasted. It really would have been excellent to have autotranslate Voidwatch names, though, considering it's a pickup alliance event that generally isn't too difficult and they probably would have accepted any NA/EUs that tried to join.

Al just didn't understand what was being proposed because I didn't specify in the OP that I was talking about the PC version and now he has spent the last three posts saving face by being Captain Contradictory. There's really no debate about technical feasibility to be had here if you accept the three above technical assumptions, and the only reason to reject any of the three above assumptions is if you're quite a silly fellow.

Beyond that though, I'm fairly sure that this isn't going to get a response and it isn't really worth pursuing. It is one of the things that SE should (have?) fast track(ed?) before Adoulin, but I doubt they did and the language-based communities will continue to grow increasingly isolated from each other.


Edit: I noticed that FFXIDB has an item counter now: http://www.ffxidb.com/
Looks like there are almost 20,000 translatable items, not the 16,000 I was estimating.

[Yrusama]

Thing about auto-translate is that all versions of the game (PS2 included) are programmed to gain access to a term if you see it in a /tell. Like if I were to /tell someone an item term like "Jeunoan Flag", it would thereafter appear in their list. Even if they restrict PS2 users from using these terms innately, they'd also encounter the problem of a term like "Blade: Hi" entering their dictionary through /tells.

To me the auto-translate is probably the biggest hit XI is taking due to PS2 limitations. I mean new races would be a luxury, but when PS2's failings restrict our ability to communicate....

[Byrth]

Thing about auto-translate is that all versions of the game (PS2 included) are programmed to gain access to a term if you see it in a /tell. Like if I were to /tell someone an item term like "Jeunoan Flag", it would thereafter appear in their list. Even if they restrict PS2 users from using these terms innately, they'd also encounter the problem of a term like "Blade: Hi" entering their dictionary through /tells.

This is only true for items, so it wouldn't necessarily be true for "Blade: Hi" or any of the other things I've suggested.

[oliveira]

lol guys ... The PS2 dictionaries on the Japanese version of the game are downloaded MANUALLY through POL viewer and "equipped" like you do with a piece of armor in game.

This is the screen where the dictionaries are "equipped".
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-5pJM8hj66OU/Tl5T3wDYp8I/AAAAAAAADs8/89b9n82LHBY/s800/TV2011083112311700.jpg

You have an alloted space of 256 blocks and you can see I have four dictionaries loaded, two for FFXI and two for PlayOnline Viewer and still have 41 blocks free.

To be fair with SE, Japanese is a phonetic/ideogram based language where you can most times fit a whole word in just two to four bytes of computer memory, meaning their dictionaries usually end a lot smaller in Japanese language than what it does on western languages. Still, they can SURELY burn the PlayOnline specific commands and auto translate terms to gain some space.

Also, the limitations come from how the current system works (it takes in mind the ATOK Input Method Editor used by the Japanese PS2 version) and obviously a PC don't have problems with it since it does not use ATOK as input method.

Point given, considering that PS2 support might be on it's last two years you PS2 haters are certainly close to the point you all will be able to blow your crackers ... lol

Even if the hate is unjustified ... lol

P.S.: The number shown on the top of the screen is nothing account-compromising. It's called Handle Name ID and is used to find people through the search function at POL Viewer.