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Why is adding pronouns difficult?

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  • Renato10Renato10 Posts: 472 Member
    I totally want pronouns in the game but as a portuguese speaker, we don't have any neutral word for the pronouns. As much as I want them to be included we need to find a way to do it. Spanish and other languages are the same. We can't just made up new words like that!
  • Simmer_chiyenSimmer_chiyen Posts: 362 Member
    It is very interesting reading all these discussions about localization as I am a Traditional Chinese translator myself.

    In Traditional Chinese, there is currently a minor movement to remove “gendered” pronouns. It is quite complex, actually, Mandarin (the spoken language) does not have any gendered term unless gender is stressed onto a noun (e.g., 男/女護理師; male/female nurse). Ancient Chinese (the written language) pronouns were not gendered until Latin languages were introduced to Chinese writers. For the sake of easier translation, the original neutral, all applying s/he pronoun 他 was morphed into gendered pronouns he/she/it (object)/it (non-human)/it (divine power) 他/她/它/牠/祂.

    Nowadays, newer generations of Traditional Chinese translators are trying to reverse this change—we’ve gone a full circle XD. I am not sure about the Simplified Chinese side though.
  • CangwenCangwen Posts: 220 Member
    It'll take years before gender neutrality is cemented into every language. That being said, I'll be glad when they do add it to the game.
  • MagdaleenaMagdaleena Posts: 973 Member
    edited May 2021
    Yeah, the issue is definitely the multitude of languages. And workload. It's obvious.

    Look, I'm literally nonbinary myself, and while I'd obviously love to have gender neutral pronouns in-game, I know it wouldn't be easy. I also speak three languages, am vaguely familiar with a bunch more, and one thing I can say is that the way every language handles pronouns really differs a lot. Grammar is a huge variable here, you know.

    Some examples off the top of my head:
    • Norwegian, being a germanic language, has a similar situation to English, and I don't see too many issues implementing the unofficial but commonly used hen pronoun. I also see people using de/dem, which is like a direct translation of they/them in English. That one wouldn't be too difficult either, as it doesn't really twist the words around it the same way they/them does. (And yes, our nouns do have genders, three of them; but they don't grammatically affect personal pronouns at all, so that's not a worry. It's really just an indicator of what way a word conjugates, and even that is variable between dialects.)
    • Finnish has no gendered pronouns whatsoever! Hän works for any gender, or if finns feel like that's too formal, it's not uncommon to just call people their equivalent of "it". I love that. But I also wonder what exactly they would be doing with the Finnish localization if they added pronoun options everywhere else. Gendered pronouns simply don't matter with this language. It's not a thing.
    • Meanwhile, romance languages such as Spanish and French push the gender binary really hard, and they're also quite strict about it, as they do not like the addition of new words and grammar. :/
    • I heard from a friend that Czech is also extremely gendered; the words being used literally depend on the gender of the speaker apparently?? But don't quote me on that. It's just another example of how strange languages may get.

    And I do admit I know nothing about any Asian languages, but I see a simmer above me has good insight into Chinese, so hey. Yeah. Listen to that person.

    If The Sims only existed in English, I'm sure this change would have been implemented a long time ago already! Possibly around the same time as the gender options update, as they really would go hand-in-hand.

    But we're not in that universe, and the fact of the matter is that they can't just roll out such an important update in a singular language, while leaving everyone else behind. That's just not a fair thing to do.

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  • ForgeronForgeron Posts: 272 Member
    mirta000 wrote: »
    greydonn wrote: »
    They said in the stream why it's difficult. The game has like 70 languages in it and not all of them lend themselves to adding/choosing/optional pronouns. Do I know why these languages are difficult? No, but I'm willing to believe them.

    Where are you getting 70 languages from? Quotes say "18 languages". All of which function either on the same model, or if the language itself can't have gender neutral pronouns, you need to just leave that off, as you can't force it into a language. Therefore you roll out the English update and then consult other language specialists on can those 18 languages support more than just male and female from choices. If not, then you just let the user pick from male or female (not tied to sex), if yes, you repeat the same system as in the English one, as you can add customizable pronouns.

    @mirta000 they have to study if each language has alternatives for pronouns and if not... if they have alternatives like not using pronouns at all, but I don't think this would take 5/6 years... no. They just heard us now and only now started to work on this, probably.
  • lboosmommylboosmommy Posts: 42 Member
    Maybe I'm just adding on to the problem, but right now I can't play my "My Family" save as I have a child who is non-binary. That includes that I would play the crap out of Snowy Escape as we spent 3 years in Japan. Said child rejoiced when I could add a pansexual pride flag to their 'in game' room. But, now, any mention of their previous pronouns in game dialogues makes me cringe.
  • OrianasSimSOrianasSimS Posts: 17 Member
    > @Renato10 said:
    > I totally want pronouns in the game but as a portuguese speaker, we don't have any neutral word for the pronouns. As much as I want them to be included we need to find a way to do it. Spanish and other languages are the same. We can't just made up new words like that!

    I was going to say this. I do believe it's important to everyone to be included, but it's not as simple as adding new pronouns to the game. The massive amount of strings needed to be worked are incredibly difficult.
    Also, they can't simply change everything to "they/them" because that wouldn't be inclusive.
    Pronouns are very important in the game, and they said they are researching options to do that, especially because some languages, like Portuguese, don't have neutral words for genders. We have female and male versions for "they" and the one that could be a little more neutral, is only used in formal communication, and not at all appropriate as a pronoun.
    I truly hope they manage to do this, not for myself, I'm ok how the game is now and I do create my own storylines in my head, but I do understand that some people need this to feel more included in the game, and that's totally valid.
    But unfortunately, it's not as simple as it seems...
    If they should have done this before? Yes, they should have. But at least they are working on finding a way.
  • ncisGibbs02ncisGibbs02 Posts: 2,019 Member
    hunniboo1 wrote: »
    This is something that it would need time to be added into the game if it is added into the game. I honestly believe that since TS4 has been out so long and instead of rewriting many of their scripts they should just add it into TS5.

    EA already receives a lot of hate whether they add new features in or not.

    Also this is one of those times where it is danged if they do and danged If they do. People will still criticize them for it.

    I think it would be a lot easier to start with a fresh game engine, so that would be TS5. All the texts would be made at the start without the need for mass editing.

    However it depends how long TS4 is going to be around, it’s outlasted Sims 3.

    I started playing Sims 2 in 2007, so I don’t know how long 2 was out before 3 exactly.

    Now alternating between Sims 2,3 and 4! 😊☕️🌞
  • Renato10Renato10 Posts: 472 Member
    hunniboo1 wrote: »
    This is something that it would need time to be added into the game if it is added into the game. I honestly believe that since TS4 has been out so long and instead of rewriting many of their scripts they should just add it into TS5.

    EA already receives a lot of hate whether they add new features in or not.

    Also this is one of those times where it is danged if they do and danged If they do. People will still criticize them for it.

    I think it would be a lot easier to start with a fresh game engine, so that would be TS5. All the texts would be made at the start without the need for mass editing.

    However it depends how long TS4 is going to be around, it’s outlasted Sims 3.

    I started playing Sims 2 in 2007, so I don’t know how long 2 was out before 3 exactly.

    The Sims 1 (2000-2003)
    The Sims 2 (2004-2008)
    The Sims 3 (2009-2013)
    The Sims 4 (2014...) It outlasted every other sim game and yet it stills the most disappointing to me
  • TriplisTriplis Posts: 3,048 Member
    I want it to happen, but yeah, the challenges of different languages is probably the biggest hurdle, since they can't necessarily apply a one-size-fits-all solution. The way it is now, the tokens for stuff like he/her are, to put it one way, a stand-in, like a keyword for where the proper thing is placed. And IIRC, those tokens are typically set up the same for every language string table, so that the actual token itself doesn't need to be modified for a different language, just what the token gets turned into. That's probably gonna present some complications if one language says "they" is valid and another can't accommodate. Like if {M0.his}{F0.her} has to become {M0.his}{F0.her}{NB.their}, what happens with {NB.their} if the language doesn't support it. If they can't support it, are they supposed to then selectively disable the option to set a sim as NB for that language?

    There is also the consideration of how just about every mod is going to have messed up or incomplete strings if they change the tokens.

    I'm sure it's doable one way or another and there are people who know way more about it than I do, I'm just scraping at the surface of the technical side to try to put that in perspective, but yeah, not the simplest endeavor ever. It seems to me that the languages difference is far more of a problem than the technical side itself and can get into weird ground of compromising by being inclusive for one language, but not another (marketing would probably tell them that's a no-no). The technical side would be a pain, but probably not *that* hard if they could just give every language a simple he/she/they equivalent, which doesn't seem to be a straightforward ask, based on what the knowledgeable people in languages have said about it.
    Mods moved from MTS, now hosted at: https://triplis.github.io
  • shailaputriishailaputrii Posts: 64 Member
    just add ' it ' for everyone, after all, they're sims not real people lol
  • NushnushganayNushnushganay Posts: 9,418 Member
    If a modder can do it, so can the franchise and a mod does exist for that.

    As for all the things we have been told were so hard to implement, I was shocked to find they had been done successfully in sims3 years prior. Working bunkbeds, toddlers, even platforms. Also, I was stunned to see that a lot of things looked lifted directly from Sims3 like the laundry line with dripping clothes, and that what takes like 4 separate packs in sims4, was all in one pack in sims3.

    It blew my mind once I discovered how much better Sims3 was, and still remains to this day, than Sims4 is!

    Racism is EVERYONE's fight #BLM #StopAsianHate
    Let's make Liberty and Justice For All a reality.

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  • logionlogion Posts: 4,712 Member
    edited June 2021
    Because of the massive workload it would take because the sims4 supports so many different languages. It's not as simple as just adding they/them to everything.

    This is one feature where I have to be blunt and say I don't think it's worth it. Better to make the sims5 support it instead. I don't want Maxis to spend the next year rewriting text.
  • lifeofdaydreamslifeofdaydreams Posts: 44 Member
    > @bizuktag said:
    > From the tehnical side, it's not quick. Here's an example of a text string from the game, for one of the writer career levels:
    >
    >
    > You can see that the options were added in as "him" or "her", and the game is going to look for whether the sim is designated "M0" or "F0" in order to match which text should be displayed. It's like that all throughout the game, which has many thousands of text strings. The files aren't set up to use one variable for gender, it's got the pronouns hard-coded in. And with that many text strings, it's probably a long job to go adjust them.
    >
    > There's also the question of what pronoun choices are appropriate for localized language translations. Based on the recent shrine controversy and the children-hating consent controversy, Maxis is probably being overly careful about including anything that could be offensive.
    >
    > I think the guru talking about the issue said they're investigating the issue. Which probably means trying to determine whether a respectful solution exists, what resources (time and money) it requires to complete, and whether it's viable based on those elements.

    Thanks for sharing, that's very interesting.

    I also think it's hard for languages like Portuguese where we don't have neutral pronouns. People still can't agree on what to use when they wanna say something in a gender-neutral way, there's still not a clear way to phrase things. Many nouns and adjectives are gendered (words like teacher, doctor, friend, etc. are all gendered, same as "purple", "skinny", "enthusiastic", etc.).

    I hope they find a solution but I can appreciate that it's harder than it seems.
  • Renato10Renato10 Posts: 472 Member
    just add ' it ' for everyone, after all, they're sims not real people lol

    There are a lot of languages that don't have their own pronoun for "it"
  • Horrorgirl6Horrorgirl6 Posts: 3,170 Member
    mirta000 wrote: »
    bizuktag wrote: »
    From the tehnical side, it's not quick. Here's an example of a text string from the game, for one of the writer career levels:
    The fans love {M0.him}{F0.her}. The critics hate {M0.him}{F0.her}. {0.SimFirstName} might be churning out sub-literate dreck, but {M0.his}{F0.her} books sell like crazy, so {M0.his}{F0.her} publisher keeps paying {M0.him}{F0.her}. And that’s the real measure of literary success. Right?

    You can see that the options were added in as "him" or "her", and the game is going to look for whether the sim is designated "M0" or "F0" in order to match which text should be displayed. It's like that all throughout the game, which has many thousands of text strings. The files aren't set up to use one variable for gender, it's got the pronouns hard-coded in. And with that many text strings, it's probably a long job to go adjust them.

    There's also the question of what pronoun choices are appropriate for localized language translations. Based on the recent shrine controversy and the children-hating consent controversy, Maxis is probably being overly careful about including anything that could be offensive.

    I think the guru talking about the issue said they're investigating the issue. Which probably means trying to determine whether a respectful solution exists, what resources (time and money) it requires to complete, and whether it's viable based on those elements.

    Major OOF here. I swear pronouns were a thing in 2014. So were trans people. Why would you ever write it like that?!

    It really really sounds like they need a new base game.

    This game was not made in 2014.It was released in 2014.
  • SindocatSindocat Posts: 5,622 Member
    Renato10 wrote: »
    just add ' it ' for everyone, after all, they're sims not real people lol

    There are a lot of languages that don't have their own pronoun for "it"

    And in English, using "it" to refer to a person is a slur, implying that they are less than human, so no - kindly don't.
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