CDV kaputt Bug

[reinald@berlin.com]

ok, ok. "Wenden" would be best. "Drehen" would also do. "Rotieren" in its physical sense is still correct, but, yes, common use puts it more somewhere near 'spin(ning)'.

As long as we don't have to read that our pixel-heroes' guns 'clamped'.

[Walker]

'Wenden' is not the best choice. Think of the German statement 'man kann es drehen und wenden wie man will' in which 'drehen is a movement on the x-axis and 'wenden' a movement on the y-axis. 'Wenden' for a vehicle is a forward-reverse-forward realignment. The 'rotate' command triggers a realignment on the spot though.

[Brightblade]

Can´t exactly say why, but "schwenken" sounds kind of wrong to me. That´s a fitting term for turrets, but not for vehicles as a whole.

Don´t know for sure what terms were used in WWII, but nowadays rotating on the spot is called "wenden (auf der) Hochachse". But that only describes how it is done, what the driver has to do; the order to rotate by the TC would be "eindrehen" (often "Wanne eindrehen", which means to bring the hull at 12 o'clock to the turret, but it can also be used for whole tanks, hull and turret).

Something which noone seems to have noticed up to now:

rotating on the spot would work only for full tracked vehicles with a special kind of gear (Wendegetriebe). It´s not a grave mistake in the game and I can perfectly live with it, but if you want to be realistic, any wheeled or halftracked vehicle would need to move a little back and forth (or forth and back) to face another direction. Full tracked vehicles without "Wendegetriebe" could rotate more or less on the spot by full stopping one track, but it wouldn´t be exactly on the spot. More interesting is that this measure has a higher chance to lose a track and becoming immobile this way.

[ December 19, 2002, 09:52 AM: Message edited by: Brightblade ]

[winkelried]

'Lauerstellung'.

I served also some time in the Swiss Army, with recon and armored troops (Pz57, Pz68 and Pz87) here the definitions as I remember them:

Lauerstellung - waiting position in a full cover to get into a "Feuerstellung" a (usually prepared) firing position. The "Lauerstellung" was not to be used for firing.

The "Feuerstellung" could be "offen" (open) or "teilgedeckt" (partially covered) or mit "Wannendeckung" (hull cover) which would be the same as "teilgedeckt".

Hope this helps and that my memory is still ok.

[reinald@berlin.com]

Thx for the informative post winkelried.

About "Schwenken": Would fit better to describe the traversing of the gun, not the whole vehicle. "Turm schwenken" -> rotate turret.

"Panzer schwenken" -> not really good.

[RMC]

Brightblade,

I made reference to a discussion that took place on this board over two years ago about the ability of the vehicles to rotate in place. BTS went this route because it was too difficult to determine exactly which vehicles had the ability. With so many vehicles in the game, they decided that it would be a reasonable abstraction to enable every vehicle this way.

That discussion is how I learned about "wenden auf der Stelle."

[Brightblade]

Thank you RMC.

Guess I simply didn´t think when I wrote that posting. Of course there are so many grogs around here, it had to have been noticed and discussed before.

As I said, I can perfectly live with the way it is handled in the game, much better than with some other abstractions.

Maybe it would be better not to ask, but I can´t hold it: If BTS couldn´t determine which full tracked vehicles had or had not the ability to turn on the spot, why not assume all tracked vehicles have it while all halftracked or wheeled vehicles certainly don´t have it? It wouldn´t be correct either, but it would be much closer to reality.

[RMC]

I think part of it may have been a coding issue. It must be easier to just let vehicles rotate in place. Even the infantry units in the game simply rotate in place. Getting a vehicle to realistically wiggle around may have just not been worth the effort despite allied tanker reports that the german panzers ( Panther and Tiger) had a tactical advantage against shermans in this regard. In any case, no game that I am aware of to date had ever tried to model this neutral steering ability by limiting it to certain models.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by RMC:

Chris,

the answer is "Wanne unten."

I downloaded the CMBB german demo.

Rotieren sounds silly to me.

I think "In Deckung gehen" is incorrectly used for Hide.

Before Moon gets any flak for faults in the translation - I did the manual translation for CMBB, and a substantial part of the command/in-game translations for it also. Moon checked them. ISTR that I actually translated all the terms in the command menu shown here, so things like 'Wanne unten', 'In Deckung gehen' and 'Rotieren' sind wahrscheinlich auf meinem Mist gewachsen .

Some background - I am not a tanker, so I used something that would make sense to me, on the grounds that it would also make sense to other non-specialists reading it. I must say that I quite like the ring of 'Wanne unten', still .

I agree that instead of 'Rotieren' 'Wenden' could have been used. I usually think of 'wenden' as a 180° turn though, and this is clearly not the case. I disagree that 'Schwenken' would have been a good choice 'Und dann habe ich meinen Tiger um 30° geschwenkt.' somehow does not sound right to me, while 'Und dann habe ich meinen Tiger um 30° gewendet.' sounds okay, but I also think 'Und dann habe ich meinen Tiger um 30° rotiert.' does not sound too bad either. The best would have been 'Drehen' I guess, but somehow my brain must have been clogged up that day.

'In Deckung gehen' has a military ring to it that 'Verstecken' to me simply does not have. I thought about it, but I had this mental image of a Kindergeburtstag, so I went with 'In Deckung gehen.' With hindsight, 'In Deckung bleiben' may have been an alternative.

Finally, no translation is perfect, and some are worse than others. I am not a professional translator, and I noted during the translation that after more than eight years abroad my German has become a bit rusty. That is no excuse for delivering imperfect work, just an explanation.

Anyone translating a text will bring their personal bias to things, and I found that when looking at my screen, I had trouble making the decisions on which words and turns of phrases to use quite often. It is one thing in a conversation or a private communication, but quite another when these words will be read by thousands of people who paid for them. Interesting process though.

If there are any further suggestions on how to improve the work, I look forward to them.

[RMC]

Andreas,

Some of us have been there before. Translation of cryptic military terms is tricky.

Originally, this thread was about CMBO's errors, not those in CMBB. We want to get the guy who picked "Wanne kaputt." That's not you is it?

[Brightblade]

Originally posted by RMC:

I think part of it may have been a coding issue. It must be easier to just let vehicles rotate in place. Even the infantry units in the game simply rotate in place. Getting a vehicle to realistically wiggle around may have just not been worth the effort despite allied tanker reports that the german panzers ( Panther and Tiger) had a tactical advantage against shermans in this regard. In any case, no game that I am aware of to date had ever tried to model this neutral steering ability by limiting it to certain models.

Probably your right, it might be not too easy to implement that feature. I thought to short in my way. Guess it would be easy not to allow a human player to rotate certain units on the spot, so he had to use some waypoints, but what about the TacAI, when the vehicle is being attacked from a side? So it´s probably best the way it is.

For infantry however, there might be another way. Now it takes quite some time for a squad or team to turn in the right direction. They won´t fire before they turned. It might be more realistic, if at least squads could fire at once, even while turning, though with reduced firepower, with firepower slowly rising until the squad has fully turned. That would take into account that one flank of a squad usually could fire more or less at once, while the rest needs some more time, opposite flank most of it.

[ December 21, 2002, 07:19 AM: Message edited by: Brightblade ]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by RMC:

Andreas,

Some of us have been there before. Translation of cryptic military terms is tricky.

Originally, this thread was about CMBO's errors, not those in CMBB. We want to get the guy who picked "Wanne kaputt." That's not you is it?

I like to think the, err, 'quality' of that CMBO translation was one of the reasons I got the job for CMBB

[Walker]

Don't worry about us, Andreas. We're just kicking around a few terms purely for fun and because we have nothing better to do .

And I can certainly confirm that translating 100,000 words under severe time pressure in a field one is not entirely comfortable with will unavoidably cause certain terminology choices to be not quite spot-on.

I reckon 'Wanne kaputt' can only have been created by someone who never bothered to play the game.

[Andreas]

Walker, thanks a lot - I am not worried at all though by the discussion. You show me a perfect translation, and I'll have an argument with you about it . I think the discussion is quite valuable to learn something about doing it better next time (if there is a next time).