Regarding the recent modifications to the French translation of the game

[RedWine]

I didn't really want to make a whole thread just for this at first, but seeing that the pronoun/gender thread has been locked I decided to go ahead. I'll try to keep it short; there seem to have been a recent (more-or-less, I didn't notice it until today) patch for the french translation of the game that made the text more "inclusive", and that would be all well and good if the french language was not the way it is.

As you might know there is no neutral gender in french, or rather the neutral gender is masculine by default. Some people have tried making work-arounds to this for quite a while, but most of these attempts just end up sounding off or being really awkward to read, and none of them are officially recognized by the Académie Française.

I'll get to the point now: the changes to the french translation are really off-putting to read. For exemple, "iel" and "elleui", which are sometimes used to describe the rival, both come off the tongue awkwardly and feel really alien to read, and I'm sure most French people have never even seen them. You really have to understand that the french language doesn't have "they/them", and isn't really made to have it either. Trying to force a substitute in kinds of break french what with the way we gender stuff.
Then the game also uses inclusive/neutral writing, where for exemple instead of there being written "... a utilisé ..." you have "... a utilisé.e.es ...". Not only can this be really hard to read for dyslexic people (and I'd say even normal people when it's used often in the same sentence) but there's also another way to stay neutral that's much more commonly used which is simply done by using parenthesis. So you'd get "...a utilisé(es) ..." instead, which takes less space and is much easier on the eye.

A major problem with these additions is that it really breaks the flow of the game. You're not even meant to say "e.es" orally so having characters use it when they speak to you feels weird to say the least. As such normal dialogues can be off-putting to read or feel sluggish, and even comical when, for exemple, [spoiler, read at your own risk] one of the villains still uses inclusive pronouns and neutral writing after having killed someone in cold blood, in what's supposed to be a dramatic moment.

I feel like these changes really put a dent in the quality of the game, and I would very much like them to be rolled back, or at least for there to be an option to toggle them on and off. I'll end this by pleading the mods to not lock the thread, since I very well know this is a hot topic; but you have to understand that this "gender issue" is much, much more different and complicated in French than it is in Shakespeare's language.

[Sol]

I'm just jumping in for a second before discussion starts, we're not going to (and we don't generally) lock threads that discuss gender issues *because* they discuss gender issues, we do it because a lot of the times the conversation in the thread turns... well, you know what I'm referring to, and that's when we lock it. Feedback is fine as long as it's given constructively and this thread seems to be constructive criticism with the French translation and is worth a discussion.

[RedWine]

Yeah I know how these threads can get, I'm hoping this one doesn't go off the rails too much. I just wanted to make sure since some people can get pretty trigger-happy just when bringing this stuff up, I'm glad this isn't the case here.

[Shaesy]

Just so you know, Crema is a game studio based in Spain and it's just the same case in Spanish (except the difficulty to read). There is no neutral gender in Spanish. In the Spanish translation of Temtem, "Elle" is used as the neutral pronoun and the non binary adjectives end with "-e" but none of those things are officially recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy.

There were, as you said, recent modifications to both the French and the German translation. Crema wanted to include gender-neutral pronouns for those translations and asked the community for feedback back in summer. This is what they said:

"Bonjour dresseurs! Hallo Bändiger! French and German tamers, today we need your help.

In our journey towards making Temtem a welcoming place for everyone, we discovered not all languages are equally prepared for gender neutral speech, and we hit a wall on German and French.

Despite all our research, we were unable to find the right gender-neutral choice in those languages, so German & French came out without it. Since then, you guys have let us know it is indeed possible, so it's time we fix it. And we want to heed YOUR advice on the matter.

So, German and French tamers, LGTBI and NB peeps, we would like to hear you: which gender neutral pronouns would work best in Temtem? Which option do you feel comfortable with? What's the right choice to include such a diverse group?

What resources would you recommend for us to educate ourselves in this question?
Please help point us in the right direction so Temtem can continue improving and being a place where everyone feels seen and included"

Source: https://twitter.com/PlayTemtem/status/1277931725524545537

I don't think they will roll back to the previous translation but they might still listen to feeback on how to improve it. Crema is doing their best to use a gender inclusive language, even though there are languages that don't have a neutral gender.

In any case, I would recommend using the official forum to give them feedback (https://www.playtemtem.com/forums/forums/feedback-suggestions.12/) if you want to make sure they read it.

[Mahad263]

So I was actually thinking about this today, and now I see this post. My main language is french, but I still play in english and I was thinking about why "they" as a gender neutral pronoun confuses me so much, and came to the conclusion that this is because there are no gender neutral pronoun in french.

So think about this, if it confuses me in english, where it actually exists, how do you think someone like me will react if you decide to invent words in french as gender neutral pronouns. Pretty sure the first thing that would happen is that it would confuse me, and then I would think your translation is poorly made, which isn't a good look for you.

Also not to be rude, but trying to modify a language like this is pretty insulting to the actual people who speak said language. Just saying

[Sol]

Originally posted by Mahad263:

So I was actually thinking about this today, and now I see this post. My main language is french, but I still play in english and I was thinking about why "they" as a gender neutral pronoun confuses me so much, and came to the conclusion that this is because there are no gender neutral pronoun in french.

So think about this, if it confuses me in english, where it actually exists, how do you think someone like me will react if you decide to invent words in french as gender neutral pronouns. Pretty sure the first thing that would happen is that it would confuse me, and then I would think your translation is poorly made, which isn't a good look for you.

Also not to be rude, but trying to modify a language like this is pretty insulting to the actual people who speak said language. Just saying

These pronouns were chosen after a discussion with Enby/LGTBI people: https://twitter.com/PlayTemtem/status/1277931725524545537. We discussed this on socials and discord and asked the community for our help on this one. We didn't just make up new words on the fly for this.

[Tsukki]

We can absolutely gather the feedback here and send it to our translator for a revision, but given how recently the changes were made, and how slow the localization process can be, do not expect immediate changes. It's unfortunate that the OP didn't catch the tweet when it was going on haha. Please suggest alternatives so that we can forward them to the translators for that language.
However, we're adamant on having a gender-neutral choice and inclusive writing. That is not up for debate here, only feedback on how to actually do it. It can indeed be confusing to some, but with things that are confusing it just means it takes some time to get accustomed to it. Language changes all the time, anyways, it's a flexible thing. We deeply believe in being a nice home for everyone💕
We'll be keeping an eye on this thread to keep messages nice and friendly.

[Swimfan]

The idea behind their actions is really admirable and I'm all for it.

But yeah, French doesn't lend itself to stuff like that.

[Galroche]

a setting "i'd rather have a proper grammar than being trendy" would be usefull, forcing genderless or weird convoluted writing (like what is currently done in french) in text make it annoying to read for me. well ... luckily most of the text are pointless and can be skipped.

[Silver]

Originally posted by Galroche:

a setting "i'd rather have a proper grammar than being trendy" would be usefull, forcing genderless or weird convoluted writing (like what is currently done in french) in text make it annoying to read for me. well ... luckily most of the text are pointless and can be skipped.

It's not about being trendy. It's about recognising people who don't identify with the traditional binary genders and giving them an option they can identify with so they also feel welcome and represented in the game.

And I understand that French doesn't lend itself very well to this, but I'm fairly sure the Académie Française won't be the first to budge on this matter so really art and media need to create pressure on them, and that means in some cases communities need to create their own language and let it evolve, as language does, until it is recognised. This will lead to language that feels weird and out of place to some, yes, but eventually things will settle and find forms people feel comfortable with. Temtem is really progressive in this matter, but with being ahead of the curve also come growing pains.

I'm not rally sure the option would be a good thing. I'm not opposed to it, but at the same time I could see people seeing such an option as allowing non-binary people to effectively be erased at the press of a button by simply yeeting language that recognises them, which isn't really great either.

[RedWine]

Originally posted by Shaesi:

Just so you know, Crema is a game studio based in Spain and it's just the same case in Spanish (except the difficulty to read). There is no neutral gender in Spanish. In the Spanish translation of Temtem, "Elle" is used as the neutral pronoun and the non binary adjectives end with "-e" but none of those things are officially recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy

In any case, I would recommend using the official forum to give them feedback (https://www.playtemtem.com/forums/forums/feedback-suggestions.12/) if you want to make sure they read it.

Yeah I don't doubt Spanish also has this, though good for them if the translation is better then but I do have my doubts given how genders work in latin languages. I might make a post in the forum at some point too, thanks for the suggestion.

Originally posted by Mahad263:

Also not to be rude, but trying to modify a language like this is pretty insulting to the actual people who speak said language. Just saying

I don't doubt that it's french people that made the modifications, the stuff used has existed for a little while I believe. I don't think someone who doesn't speak french could really implement it without the text looking extremely silly.

Originally posted by Tsukki:

However, we're adamant on having a gender-neutral choice and inclusive writing. That is not up for debate here, only feedback on how to actually do it. It can indeed be confusing to some, but with things that are confusing it just means it takes some time to get accustomed to it. Language changes all the time, anyways, it's a flexible thing. We deeply believe in being a nice home for everyone💕
We'll be keeping an eye on this thread to keep messages nice and friendly.

That's unfortunate, because I really can't think of a subsitute for they/them in French. If it was up to me I would stick with the male pronoun by default since it's also "neutral" at the same time but I can get where you're coming from.
I do still hold my case for neutral writing though, it really looks clunky and feels out of place, and I'll repeat myself but it's something dyslexic people really have trouble reading. I really think it should get scrapped all together or replaced with the parentheses variant.