As a non English speaking user, learning and using ‘Grasshopper’ is extremely inconvenient and unfriendly. Therefore, it leads to extremely high learning costs and is not conducive to localized promotion. Looking forward to the official release of the Chinese patch program.
I don’t think mcneel will release a Chinese patch for gh any time soon and even though you could use the Chinese version of gh, I don’t think that doesn’t make your steep learning curve of gh any shorter either.
I’ve been experimenting with a new kind of localisation approach, however the current proof-of-concept doesn’t scale to many users and we won’t make this feature public until we have ways for human translators to change and improve auto-translated strings.
Here’s an automatic translation into Korean for example. I have no idea how to read it, but I’m sure the words and sentences are absolutely awful and probably often quite wrong too. But I guess it beats looking at a language you don’t understand at all.
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Grasshopper like programming languages must stay in english, but the help should be translated
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Why? I mean, I know it’s a nightmare trying to debug a screenshot send in by a user featuring Polish error messages, but that’s not the immediate problem.
Imagine having to use software in a language and alphabet you just don’t understand. That’s the end of the road, you’re not going to be able to get anything done.
It’s just an opinion. Many programmers who don’t understand English can use English programs easily, and if the documentation of any software is available in multiple languages, that makes learning faster.
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[Citation needed?]
I know a lot of French and Italian users would not be able to really use Rhino if it wasn’t available in their own language. McNeel invests quite a lot of money in localising Rhino not out of the goodness of our hearts but because the additional copies we sell make up for the cost.
And yes, documentation is probably the most important to translate, but it’s also the most work. Plus I’d argue that tooltip content definitely falls under ‘documentation’ and when component names are self-documenting, they too stay dry under the documentation umbrella.
There are thousands of languages in the world, making it impossible to create a program that can handle all of them.
If someone has Grasshopper in the Chinese language and takes a screenshot to ask for help, they will not be able to receive assistance from many people. And many others -who don’t understand Chinese- will not benefit from the question and answers.
This is my opinion, and of course, the developers have the final say and decision.
It doesn’t have to handle all of them. Finns and Norwegians all pretty much speak English, so there’s no need to create a Bokmål or Suomen kieli version of GH. Also very few Xhosa or Kimbundu speakers amongst our prospective users.
If someone uses Chinese because they don’t speak English then the issue of them asking for help in Chinese is moot at present because those users have self-selected out of our user demographics.
You’re not wrong about different languages causing confusion, it’s absolutely a problem. A problem which doesn’t exist at present. But it doesn’t exist in the same way that headaches are unheard of in those who’ve undergone a guillotine treatment.
The proof-of-concept I’ve created allows for real-time switching between languages (no restart required), so at least going back to English for a screenshot is not that much of an ordeal.
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Yes, in the short term, it is likely that the official will launch it. In the end, I don’t think your reason is valid
In China, “Grasshopper” has been translated into Chinese by many third-party enthusiasts (unofficial). The software translation ratio is as high as 99%. These translations have more or less built-in advertisements for translators (without affecting the operation and use of the software), and are not pure official products.
What I want to express is that the official does not need to invest a huge amount of manpower and resources to solve the problem of software localization. The official should mobilize local software enthusiasts to work together to complete localization work, so that the software can serve more users of different languages.
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Your questions and concerns can be well avoided, refer to the Autodesk Multilingual Forum. If the official is truly willing to support and promote the localization of the software, the official should open forum services for the corresponding language version, which may increase the official’s cost expenditure.
What do you mean by “the official”?
Sorry, this is our expression habit in Chinese context, referring to “Grasshopper” software developers.
There is a fallacy that those who know software development may not necessarily know a certain language, and those who can translate a certain language may not necessarily use GH. Just like I don’t know English, I can only rely on online translation to reply to your messages.