Intro
Seeing all the recent news about localization on Roblox and how Roblox is globalizing their platform and user base, it became simply impossible for me to ignore the fact that Roblox still doesn’t have automatically translated chats!
A Microsoft Implementation
Using current Roblox API’s, the feature I am requesting would be possible in Lua already; however each developer would need to purchase their own subscription to Microsoft’s cloud translation API and that can be too expensive for a single developer, especially for a feature that would usually be next to pointless for a single developer to implement, but incredibly useful for the whole platform to adopt!
This is an image I pulled from microsoft’s translator website. It incorporates a chat in its app where the original version of the text is shown underneath a translated version of the text in the user’s local language. I think this same functionality could be implemented into the roblox chat gui faily simply using Microsoft’s business API. Roblox is already working with Microsoft and Azure accounts for analytics purposes, so using the API from microsoft might even come at no extra cost to roblox.
Link to Microsoft’s API documentation:
Benefits of Implementation
A feature like this is so trivial to implement but yet so beneficial to the players of roblox. Being social and using tools like the chat give roblox it’s spark, and in less popular roleplay games where only a few people around the world are playing at a time, something like this might be the difference between the game taking off or flopping. Many games require online players to maintain the excitement of the game, but when those players speak another language, the benefits could be curbed.
This also helps Roblox gain a foothold in countries that have a small population and a specific language. Smaller countries will have less of a chance of other players being on who are also in that country (and therefore speak the correct language). With an auto chat translate feature, users from all around the world would instantly have their ideas translated to the local language, and thus increasing the amount of interest and therefore time that player in the small country spends on Roblox, meaning that there is more likelihood of them telling their friends about Roblox in their country at home.
The way I see it, something like this brings so much opportunity to the table and really gives Roblox a really good chance at expanding to other countries. It will strengthen the platform and enrich the user experience for everyone across the globe. It also wouldn’t be terribly difficult to implement.
Settings
Needless to say, the chat may become cluttered if the original language is displayed beneath the translation.
- This could be curbed by having the original text below the translated text (as shown above in the Microsoft image) be only Option one of three options to display the translated content.
- Option two would be a little tag underneath the text that says (translated) would be a good way to tell the player that this is an auto-translation, and may be a little different than the author intended it to be. When that tag is clicked, the original verision of the message is shown.
- Option three would be to completely ignore the auto translation filter, and display the original text as written (bilingual people might prefer this because they can understand the original text how it was intended). From there, the user could click a tag underneath the text to translate the text into their native language if they don’t understand it.
Conclusion
I think something like this falls in line with the idealized version of Roblox that the company seems to be working towards. A platform with no hiccups in social interaction, and the ability to truly unify the players who use the platform. Roblox is the only platform that can do this because of its unique position as a game engine, cookie-cutter game template, and game distribution platform.
