Scholarship and Translation

[jonlevir]

So, this has been bothering me for a bit. In the game, you can't read certain texts until you have a way to learn the language. Makes sense, especially since you don't want to make mistakes in the business of eldritch powers. Once you are able to learn the languages, you should be able to read those books and learn their secrets, right?

Except, once you learn the language - to a scholarly level, no less - you still can't read the books. You have to translate them into your language, then read them. Which makes absolutely 0 sense. As someone who has some experience with translation, if you know the language well enough to translate it, especially at a scholarly level, you can definitely read it in the original language. It just feels like an extra timewasting step to have to translate it into your language before you can study it.

[Brassqund]

Here an idea:
They could make it so when you use the language + the book,
you read it directly but that would take more then 60 secondes.
You could also add your scholarly card, reducing the time needed
depending its level.

So:
Language card + book + scholarship (optional) = reading it

[Krutsi]

I agree. Letting the player just straight up read the books after having the language proficiency would make much more sense. As it is, the Study verb is massively overloaded compared to anything else. My board is completely filled with books and low level lores I just can't use because they'd take Study which I've been busy using for the past few hours of my game just upgrading the lores I need to actually win the campaign.

[Maina]

You can get the Lores you need to win the game from books. Studying books is also faster than combining/subverting Lores. You're generally better off reading books rather than combining/subverting, when given the choice.

That said, updates to the Scholar skill are on the roadmap. I'm sure they have something good planned for it.

[Krutsi]

Originally posted by Maina:

You can get the Lores you need to win the game from books. Studying books is also faster than combining/subverting Lores. You're generally better off reading books rather than combining/subverting, when given the choice.

I haven't found a lantern book in ages and my board is literally filled with other lores and unread books for them that I have no hope of clearing because in the time it takes to read one translated book I can finish an expedition and gain another 3.

[vindicar]

Well, when you learn Sanscrit it literally says that you only grasp the basics. So it less 'reading' and more 'translating with dictionary at hand'. Similarly, to grasp the matters man wasn't meant to know, you need to be able to read ahead nad back, compare parts, and so on. It's more than just reading from cover to cover.
But yes, Scholarship skill needs a use.

[jonlevir]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Well, when you learn Sanscrit it literally says that you only grasp the basics. So it less 'reading' and more 'translating with dictionary at hand'. Similarly, to grasp the matters man wasn't meant to know, you need to be able to read ahead nad back, compare parts, and so on. It's more than just reading from cover to cover.
But yes, Scholarship skill needs a use.

Again, the problem is that I have experience with translation. You can't just hand someone who took Spanish 101 a Spanish to English dictionary and an original copy of Don Quixote and expect to get even a close approximation of the original text. With "matters man wasn't meant to know", you'd have an even worse time. That's the reason why jobs in translation require someone to be fluent in both languages, not just "grasp the basics" in one of them.

If you know the language well enough to be considered a scholar, and enough to do accurate translations, then you know the language well enough to read the books in the original language.

[Total Oh No]

I agree that translating books is one of the most tedious things in the game. Whenever I receive an untranslated book in the game, I sigh because I know that if I want to read it, I will have to click my mouse like 10 times.
I guess though that it's possible that the devs actually intended it to be tedious because it's also a tedious process in real life. Maybe you're just not supposed to read every book you get.
I don't know. Generally I'm in favour of more automation. High "mouse clicks per decision" ratio typically ruins games for me. Translating books should AT LEAST be done by studying an untranslated book, which then auto grabs the correct language card with one of those magnet slots.

[JungleJollies[]]

Originally posted by Total Oh No:

I agree that translating books is one of the most tedious things in the game. Whenever I receive an untranslated book in the game, I sigh because I know that if I want to read it, I will have to click my mouse like 10 times... Generally I'm in favour of more automation. High "mouse clicks per decision" ratio typically ruins games for me. Translating books should AT LEAST be done by studying an untranslated book, which then auto grabs the correct language card with one of those magnet slots.

I agree with most of this sentiment. I can respect that it takes twice (at least) twice as long to read a book in a non-native language. From my perspective, the irritation is that I will need to perform a follow up action, that I already implicitly want to complete.

Let's talk about a fair tradeoffs:

Study (Language, Book, Reason) requires 120 seconds, but finishes the book automatically. We got a minor advantage from this, hence the reason cost, but this would complete an otherwise implicit action for us.

In the same vein, it would really nice if, when I spoke to a forge follower about repairing an item, I would be given the option to pay them upfront rather than wait 60 seconds in order to then give them funds or spintria. In practical terms, we'd know they would need material before they began the repair job.

[Bill]

I was wondering if anyone thought the same. It doesn't make a lot of sense that you not only have to manually translate the book into a more normal language even when you already know the language the book is written in but also that you can't just read it while translating it. It becomes very tedious after a while to wait 2 minutes (or 1 on fast speed) just to read one book, and it's not like you can actually sell the book later on for it to be worth translating, because it gets consumed. Scholarship is also criminally underused to this day, you can only use it to aid a little in upgrading lore, would love to see it being used for researching and reading faster (that isn't a mod).