“Many argue that language, if used skillfully, can convey any human concept or emotion. However, I have often wondered whether or not language simply boxes concepts in, limiting them to preconceptions and association, rather than allowing the free transmission of pure thoughts and feelings.”
I disagree with Greg. The problem is not the limitations of language but the limitations of vocabulary. Most people just don’t have the vocabulary to adequately describe their ideas and emotions. Even if they do their audience might not. So what gets expressed is profanity and slang.
Interesting. Nice to know Sims considered Tagalog.
For Simlish to achieve a level of consistency in audio it must follow some substitution algorithm which is definitely reversible - to be at a level where it can be understood and for some idea be extracted.
So, should it reach good adoption level or gets adopted in other areas, what stops those who are not really in the know to create an auto-translator/translation/localization of Simlish to their native language?
I think we’d still be back at square one. i18n is challenging. No matter how technology advances, we humans are what’s finite. No one can amass all the knowledge, no one can pay anyone enough to do it, and no one lives long enough to see things through.
I feel the limitation is necessary. An extreme example would be: World domination can be toppled down, we can plan against dictators in our own little known dialects and transmit cryptic messages in local slangs. At a personal level, we can have our own sense of identity no matter how irrelevant that is to the majority of the world’s population. And it gives pride and a good living for others.
Dave: “I disagree with Greg. The problem is not the limitations of language but the limitations of vocabulary. Most people just don’t have the vocabulary to adequately describe their ideas and emotions. Even if they do their audience might not. So what gets expressed is profanity and slang.”
I disagree with you Dave, up to a point, and I agree with Greg, up to a point. I remember reading that indeed language shapes, “boxes” in his words, concepts. That is concepts that one is able to articulate in his mind. Not only I’ve red about this, it actually makes sense and I notice it myself. I speak/write two foreign languages beside my native. Among the foreign, I’m better with English and I can assure you that there are more than a few situation when I try to communicate in Spanish, the other foreign, but I was thinking in English at the moment, and some constructs and even concepts are simply nonexistent. The same happens when I try to communicate in my native tongue. The funny thing is that knowing all three fairly well allows me to think, at different times, in any of them and hence many times leaves me with difficulties trying to articulate what I think in the language that the conversation was being had. When I can afford to, for example talking to my girlfriend, I sometimes switch language mid-sentence, something that usually annoys her. Bottom line is, knowing all three of them, I often notice parts that are not overlapping. I consider the experience enriching. Please note the very strong resemblance with programing languages and conversions between them versus expressiveness of each and the blunt impossibility to translate certain concepts sometimes. It works exactly the same. The part about seeing the non overlapping parts being enriching also applies.
Unfortunately, not all localization issues can be solved by inventing a new set of semiotics. Alas, those of us who have to provide actual information are obliged to, you know, localize. Among other problems, people complain that it’s too bland:
What we need, “the holy grail”, is instant automatic (good) natural language translations that is incorporated into webbrowsers.
This is probably still at least ten or maybe even twenty years away since they havent made much progress in the area of artificial intelligence yet and true langauage translation needs that, as proven by babelfish and all the others that do horrible translations.
As others have noted, achieving “language independence” is an illusion.
The Sims only eliminate some problems with a limited set of languages, and does not really scale. It is a cool idea, saves some money, but it is not a solution:
Graphics are culturally-loaded in general
red octagon with a flat, white hand = open palm is offensive in some cultures
grocery store depicts a cornucopia = ok in western cultures, familiar with the Greek idea of cornucopia
shows a hamburger = bad in India
Text is left-to-right, books open the same way as the western ones (Arabic/Hebrew are right-to-left, Japanese of Chinese can be vertical, and books start “from the end”)
Speaking
“unrecognizable but full of emotion” = expressing emotion is a cultural thing. Think Chinese movies where actors “overdo it” (this is how it seems to a westerner)
“And yet it’s surprisingly easy to figure out what a Sim is talking about” and “The intonation and context of the sounds is enough to extract meaning” FOR A WESTERNER
some “words” in “Simish” can have obscene meaning in certain languages
litreally i have just searched EVERYWHERE on google to find out what the translation is for sim language is into english.
because my best friend has currently said i can look it up.
but everywhere has just said
"sims speak in gibberish language" bla bla…
i want an actuall translation…
so i can print it of what things they say mean
whilst playing my game…and looking at what they are actually saying by having the words they say printed out properly in english
get back to me,
I second the Sigur Ros recommendation. From Wikipedia: “All of the lyrics on ( ) are sung in Vonlenska, also known as Hopelandic, a constructed language of nonsense syllables which resembles the phonology of the Icelandic language.”
Also, the faux-language spoken by Cirque du Soleil (called Cirquish) performers is remarkably similar in tone and mood to Simlish.
So the lesson here is to use as many icons and images in our applications as possible, keeping copy to a minimum?
If the character is facing one way, he holds his sword in his right hand. If he turns and faces the other way, he holds his sword in his left hand.
I suspect the same thing could be done for books. Given that I didn’t notice the first for a year, and books only matter when you turn pages, nobody should notice that one unless they are looking for it.
The clangers discovered a universal language years ago It was a children’s tv show in which the script wasn’t read by actors - they played it on whistles. Worried mothers wrote in saying that their kids claimed to understand the words. It stunned everyone when they found that the kids were largely spot on.
(link removed by your spambot eater… clangers.co.uk will get you there, but not to the article)
Quote:
I did try it once, I took an episode of The Clangers to the 1984 E.B.U. conference in Germany and showed it to the participants without my voice-over. Afterwards I asked them whether they had been able to understand what the Clangers were saying.
“But of course,” they replied. “They are speaking perfect German.”
“But no.” said Gerd, “That is not so. They spoke only Swedish.”
The absence of language isn’t limiting; it’s liberating.
Your life is probably closed in all english universe for all your life. As a memeber of small language group You would have heard songs in some uninteliglible language since early childhood.
It was a children’s tv show in which the script wasn’t read by actors - they played it on whistles. Worried mothers wrote in saying that their kids claimed to understand the words. It stunned everyone when they found that the kids were largely spot on.