Adding New Languages to Wayfarer?
feliscybernicus-PGO
Posts: 95 ✭✭✭
Wayfarer is available in multiple languages, which is possibly the most vital part in making sure Wayfinders across the world can make sense of the criteria and the guidelines reliably. (One might even say that it's not always a simple task even for a native English speaker.)
How is adding a new language decided on and on which basis? Would you consider adding a new language if requested? How are the translators picked and can for example a Wayfinder volunteer to help? (Though imo this should be a paid position, but still.)
In the December 2021 AMA, @patsufredo-PGO requested multiple languages to be added, most notably
Greek
Hebrew
Arabic
Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Melayu (Malaysia)
Vietnamese
Afrikaans
I would like to add Finnish and Hungarian to this list. They are from an entirely unrepresented language family, and as the largest languages in the family and due to not being mutually intelligible, adding both would be the most logical conclusion. Since languages like Swedish and Norwegian are already available, I don't see why these couldn't be added as well.
This could help avoid misunderstandings, such as the -K12- criteria. Due to a false friend, it easily appears as "no ages under 12" to a Finnish speaker, which has even resulted in the addition of some High Schools as Waypoints in Finland. It could also help avoid discrepancies in how people interpret the criteria, as some things are just too easy to mistranslate sometimes, unless your language proficiency is top notch.
This wouldn't solve all issues, but at the very least it could help with some at least.
Comments
Lightship would probably need to throw it in Google translate, THEN ask trusted users to proofread it.
I'm sure many people here speak English AND some other language. Lightship might define "trusted users" as people with more than, say, 50 nominations accepted, and 1000 reviewed.
That would take a lot of effort and (gasp!) communication. But it would be worth it.
Only add any more languages (and get the existing ones brough up to date or corrected) if and when the various criteria are run through the Wayfarer forum for translation and correction by native speakers. If Niantic can crowdsource Waypoint reviews, then doing the same with languages woud catch the errors and prevent any "malicious" errors ("Oh yes - in this country all POIs on the walls or PRP are acceptable) creeping into the system.
Depending on where our 11/12 Wayfarer ambasadors are from, perhaps thismight be a useful thing for them to do to start of their 1 year contribution to the community.
Thank you for reposting this back!
Now that Bahasa Indonesia is now officially added in Pokemon GO (idk for Ingress and other games), can we have Bahasa Indonesia added to Wayfarer please? @NianticTintino-ING