[interface] Add a translator in to the chat?

[Jex]

often in games I want to understand what people are saying in languages that I do not speak.

I find myself opening google translate and having to re-type what the other player has written.

I suggest in future versions of Wesnoth that there be the functionality to highlight and copy text from chats.
Also, many chat functions now have built-in translators. It would be great if we could click a translate button in chat on wesnoth.

[Alarantalara]

Moved to the ideas forum.

[Xudo]

I suggest in future versions of Wesnoth that there be the functionality to highlight and copy text from chats.

This functionality will be very useful.

It was suggested many times before. FPI, but it worth implementing.

[Iris]

FPI

That’s not what FPI means around here. The idea is perfectly sensible but there is no-one willing to work on it at this time because the development team lost any previous semblance of momentum in the GUI department years ago.

[Xudo]

Spoiler:

FPI

That’s not what FPI means around here.

Though, it is that FPI means: Frequently proposed idea.

[Hulavuta]

Spoiler:

That’s not what FPI means around here.

Though, it is that FPI means: Frequently proposed idea.

Yes, but here "FPI" carries the connotation that it's something that will always be denied because of design philosophy or such, and shouldn't be brought up at all. This doesn't really fall into that category, and even if it has been brought up before, personally I don't see it as a bad thing, if it hasn't been on anyone's mind for a while.

[Astoria]

Copying text from chat would be a nice function and I believe it wouldn't be that hard to implement.
Adding an entire translator, however, is a lot more work, and will not benefit people that much, as it isn't that hard to open Google Translate and paste the text there. But a copy function would be really nice to have.

[Crendgrim]

I agree with bumbadadabum.
Creating Wesnoth's own translation service is not going to work, and relying on a functionality by an external provider always has its drawbacks as well. A simple way to copy from the chat, however, should be sufficient for everyone, useful for many and hopefully not too much work. If some developer finds time for it, that is.

[Jex]

I never thought of writing a new translator.
I dont see the problem with a 3rd party translator,
if its good enough for facebook to use bing,
why not Wesnoth use google translate?

and if no one is updating the gui, to add the highlight/copy functionality, then a built in function would be easier to implement


oh, and sorry for posting this in the wrong forum. I couldnt find the ideas forum

[Crendgrim]

To elaborate more on what I posted above: There are several concerns about using a 3rd party translation service.
The first one, which for some probably is important, while others won't care, is the fact that the open source Wesnoth communicates with some closed service. I agree, though, that this should be no problem if the translation service can be toggled.
The second one is that someone would have to spend time to implement a reliable way to communicate with the given service. And, especially, there needs to be someone who adapts this protocol once the service's API change — which, in case of a 3rd party service, might happen every time. With such an API change, in all old versions of Wesnoth the feature would become unusable. This is also the main reason why your comparison to Facebook/Bing does not work: Facebook only has one (current) version. They do not have to care about long-time support. Wesnoth, however, would have to be released again once the above mentioned case (API change, or whatever else) happens, and everyone on old versions would not be able to use it anymore.
Then there is the problem how to implement it best without giving the impression that it's part of Wesnoth's features, in which case Wesnoth would get bug reports for wrong translations and/or the given 3rd party service might be offended/even enforce copyright laws. The best way to do this I can imagine right now would be to open the translation in a browser window — which, however, is not that more convenient than to copy it manually.

Another problem is that especially in a game chat, people won't use proper grammar or even the correct words, but instead rather abbreviations and Wesnoth-context terms. These cannot be translated properly by a machine, and thus this would result in a lot of threads on these forums...

And finally, there is the question of "how much work is it", and especially who does it. A function to copy from the chat is generally needed: Say you want to share a link to the Wesnoth forums, or the wiki, ... As it is now, you always have to manually re-type it to your browser.
Such a copy method would be the first step, and I think it's not worth the extra effort (both code- and management-wise, as described above) to include such a translation.

[GunChleoc]

I think you make a good case. A copy/paste function is the reasonable way to go.

[Max]

google translate api is now a paid service (if used via api). and i think bing translate has an upper limit per license before you have to pay for the service.

[Xudo]

So... a lot of people agreed that adding "copy" functionality is good idea.
Thats why I think that it should be discussed deeper. It might ease work for someone who might be interested.

How to select text to copy?
Most obvious way is select some letters in the chat, assuming that whole chat is single textarea.
Other way (if it is easier) might be selection of whole chat message at once. In this case, chat is a list of several labels.

How to copy text?
Is ctrl+c hotkey is not assigned?
Will there be special context menu item?

[Iris]

Thats why I think that it should be discussed deeper. It might ease work for someone who might be interested.

I am sure any potentially interested coder would be able to look at their own desktop environment for inspiration. There’s plenty of precedent for this functionality everywhere.

[MetalKing]

I like the ROI of that Featuer but I refuse the Idea to use any Online-Service-Provider like Google-Data-Suck-Services to let Google always know when I'm playing Wesnoth and what I'm talking. So the Idea sounds fine but Implementation as Integration is problematical in my Eyes. If I know Wesnoth supports directly Google Analytics etc the Time for its Deletion on my Computer will have come as well. Yes, ROI of Chat-Translation sounds good to me but I don't accept my Chat mirrored to any Data-Sucker like Google automatically. The Point is now either clear or we live on different Planets and we don't talk the same Language. point! (of course you are free to explain that you come from a different but I won't explain more than already done why "auto-online-translation of chat is not ``good´´ but ``bad´´ and don't say you have to think about but say what that implemented would cause me to make then with the Game:Deletion.)