[Freeciv-Dev] New feature proposal: translated names for cities.

[Miguel Farah <miguel.farah@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've been thinking about this for some time, and this is what I have in
mind:

While many city names don't change from language to language, it's not
always the case. There are cities that have a different name in a
different language (most of the time it's alternate spelling, sometimes
the difference is bigger). Examples:

- "Paris" (french) is "París" in spanish.
- "London" (english) is "Londres" in spanish.
- "München" (german) is "Munich" in spanish.
- "Perpignan" (french) is "Perpiñán" in spanish, and "Perpinyà" in
  catalan (its original name, by the way).
- "Toulouse" (french) is "Tolosa" in spanish.
- "Donostia" (basque) is "San Sebastián" in spanish.
- "Firenze" (italian) is "Florencia" in spanish and "Florence" in
  english.
- "Mumbai" (indian) is "Bombay" in spanish and in english.

(yes, most of the examples deal with spanish names - being a spaniard
myself probably has something to do with it :-) )


Let's say I'm playing as the Spanish nation and waging war against the
french. After conquering a french city it should be automatically
renamed to its spanish name if it has one: Perpignan becomes Perpiñán,
Toulouse becomes Tolosa, etc.; on the other hand, cities like Grenoble,
Lille, Lyon and Le Mans should keep their french names, because there
isn't an existing spanish name for any of this cities [1]. Should the
translated name already exist [2], the original one will be kept. If
later the french conquer back one of their former cities, it should be
renamed again to its french name (Tolosa becomes Toulouse again. etc.).


I toyed with the idea of each player seeing each city with the
translated name all the time (i.e.: as the Spanish player, I'd always
see the city "Londres" instead of "London", regardless of who owns it),
but I think this might be overkill. Auto-renaming a conquest should be
sufficient.


How to implement this?

Keeping with my example, the spanish.ruleset file should contain a
section like the following one, where each line contains a
nation/original city name/translated city name tuple:

translated_names = {
  "basque",  "Donostia",  "San Sebastián"
  "catalan", "Girona",    "Gerona"
  "catalan", "Lleida",    "Lérida"
  "english", "London",    "Londres"
  "french",  "Marsaille", "Marsella"
  "french",  "Paris",     "París"
  "french",  "Perpignan", "Perpiñán"
  "french",  "Toulouse",  "Tolosa"
  "german",  "Berlin",    "Berlín"
  "german",  "München",   "Munich"
  "indian",  "Mumbai",    "Bombay"
  "italian", "Firenze",   "Florencia"
}

Whatever order the tuples are should be irrelevant, but it would be a
good practice to sort them by nation, then by original city name.


I'd like your comments on this idea before going on further with it. How
do you like it?




[1] This rule should be observed even if the city name can be easily
    translated. For example, no english-speaking person refers to the
    argentine city of Buenos Aires as "Good Airs". Some exceptions might
    be made - case in point: cities named after saints might be
    translated anyway (the french cities "Saint Nazaire" and "Saint
    Etiénne" could become "San Nazario" and "San Esteban" respectively
    anyway).

[2] This might happen frequently when two nations share many cities. For
    example, the spanish ruleset includes the cities of Gerona and
    Lérida, which are the same as the cities of Girona and Lleida in the
    catalan ruleset. If both nations are in a game, and the spanish
    (which already have founded Lérida) conquer the enemy city of
    Lleida, no renaming could take place.



-- 
Miguel Farah
miguel@xxxxxxxx