Hi - comment from a German user:
Please do not force Genre names to be German in German language !
This may sound strange … but some genres get a different meaning translated into German !
Every German listening to early Dylan will - also in German - call this “Folk” or “Folk Music” - but NEVER “Folksmusik” !!!
The German “Folksmusik” does mean something completely different - and does not fit at all with any artists that fit into the English Genre “Folk” !
You - correctly - do not try to translate “Blues” or “Country” into German - so I would strongly suggest to leave ALL Genres in English - or AT LEAST give the user the option to do so !
I agree generally but of course “Folksmusik” should never be used at all in German, even if someone prefers translated genres, because this word doesn’t exist in German
It might be “Volksmusik” and that, I agree, is something completely different than Folk.
I am wondering, though, how you get German genres. Is your Roon running with German user interface? And if you go to the album editor and scroll down to the genres, what is your setting for Localized Genre Names (which has been a new switch since the localizations have been introduced)
I guess this was the related announcement:
(My bold emphasis)
I am running Roon in English, though, although my native is German, and so I am not seeing how it behaves with a German user interface. As Mike wrote in the announcement,
others remaining in English based on feedback from users like you!
So I hope they take the Folk vs Volksmusik conundrum into account.
This exists in the other direction as well. In English, I have genres like Swiss Folk (in International > Western European Traditions, which is also a bit strange (is it Folk or Volksmusik? I don’t have any albums in that one, so I don’t know)
“Folk”-alike genres are a bit over the place anyway and it’s difficult to make sense of it, but I’ll leave it here for consideration There are many others, of course, that I haven’t listed.
However, there is a separate “Volksmusik” even in English, so no need to conflate it incorrectly with Folk
Some examples to illustrate that it’s generally difficult as far as I can tell
Folk
International > European Folk
International > Central European Traditions > Volksmusik (which would normally be a specific German/Austrian/Swiss genre, in part Northern Italian and Slovenian, which is not exactly the same as the English Folk in the sense of Dylan but somewhat similar in a sense to “Asian Folk” or something like that, as being a specific local folk tradition)
International > Central European Traditions > Hungarian Folk (makes sense I guess)
International > Folklore (not quite sure what this means / how it differs from Volksmusik as above or various international Folk as below)
International > International Folk
International > Traditional Europan Folk
International > Western European Traditions > Italian Folk (but Italian Music is on the same level in Western European Traditions, while Mediterranean Traditions is directly in International)
International > Western European Traditions > French Folk (but French again is on the same level)
International > Western European Traditions > Spanish Folk
International > Western European Traditions > Swiss Folk (difficult where to put Switzerland, Central European like Germany and Austria or Western European like France or Italy. Nothing’s quite right)
Yes of course it is “Volksmusik” … In any way this really looks awful to me as genre name in front of a Dylan face …
Yes I am on German settings.
But I switched artist/albums to English as first choice … but this seems to have no effect …
And Folk in this Dylan sense really should never be translated at all to Volksmusik, just like you mentioned for Blues. It’s a really difficult topic, though, because Volksmusik has this double meaning for us German language users. On the one hand, it’s the specific German/Austrian/Swiss kind of Lederhosen-Music (I don’t even know how to describe this in English ), on the other hand it is also a generic term for general folk music, and “Asiatische Volksmusik” is not wrong for what in English might be “Asian Folk”.
Which, I notice, occurs in English as well, where Folk can be the Seeger or Dylan thing, but nevertheless also a generic term for Asian or whatever folk music.
I don’t know what this does. It sounds as if it would turn the localization of genre names on or off Sure, it’s placed in the album editor, but it wouldn’t make sense to me if genre localization had to be switched for each album.
And indeed, if I go into one album and switch it off, it is off in all other albums as well. So doesn’t seem to be album-specific.
Edit: I recalled that I discussed this before:
But rereading this, I am still not quite sure that it does. FWIW, I already brought up German localization of genre in the posts further up in this linked thread
PLEASE STOP THESE GENRE TRANSLATIONS or at least give the option to keep them in English, also when running the client in German !
Many of the current translations are complete nonsence ! Please see screenshost below.
Most German users would use English Genre Names anyway.
It’s comedy gold, I am laughing my backside off but only because I don’t have to see that. While you pointed out the most ridiculous ones, even in the genres you have in your screenshot you already missed some more: “Australische Rock” (bad grammar), “Bühnenrock” (what?), “Neo-Programmusik” (bad spelling), “Westliche Revival-Swing” (bad grammar and just terribly awkward anyway), “Bandit-Country” (what?).
I don’t want to imagine what atrocities hide in other lower-level genres.
FWIW, keeping all of this independently configurable from the user interface language is what I suggested immediately when translations were announced because this outcome is exactly what I feared:
And when localized genre names where announced I pointed it out again:
My favourite so far is “enge Lage, enge Stellung” …
I hope someone from Roon is reading this here. But maby they have to put this in the final release first to get more response from various users and finally notice that this does not make sense at all …
Yeah that’s the best one. I can’t even imagine what it could mean in English!
@danny You have to fix these German language genre names or you will have the mother of all [poop flying in strong winds] from German-speakers when released to production.
I didn’t insist when I was told that the developers had done the opposite of my suggestions “just” for genres because, well, I’m just a user and everything. I didn’t test it because I always run everything in English - I can’t bear German translations in software at all. When no other EA user complained, I figured that Roon must have done something right and my initial concerns were not justified.
But now I wonder if there is no other German-language user but @Olaf_Mueller in Early Access. I don’t understand otherwise how nobody noticed earlier. The screenshot above is completely ridiculous and terrible. I don’t believe that a German speaker came up with stuff like “Sumpf-Pop” for Swamp Pop (?) or “Wurzel-Rock” for Roots Rock. Someone who is not a German speaker probably can’t even imagine just how ridiculous this is. Google Translate does it better even without context. (Well, at least for this example, not so much for others)
Not to even mention “enge Lage, enge Stellung” which means nothing at all but sounds like some vague sexual innuendo. And it’s not possible to translate the Bubblegum genre to “Kaugummi” just because bubblegum means Kaugummi in German. This is simply not how this works. “Volksmusik” for Dylan-Folk was already discussed. Each of the genres that @Olaf_Mueller marked in red is a total fail, plus the others I pointed out in my reply above. And probably there are more because there’s a lot of genres in Roon.
Maybe I should add that after WW2, Rock, Pop, Folk and related genres were brought to Germany and Austria by the English-speaking liberating armies and are tightly related to a young generation trying to forget / ignore / fight / overcome the remnants of German national socialism. Hence, using English-language terms has become an intrinsic part of the reception / discussion of these kinds of music. They can’t be translated to German in a totally tone-deaf manner as if Hitler had won after all (“Britische Invasion” ). “Folk” in particular is seen as the polar opposite of traditional German “Volksmusik” although both are a type of folklore.
And then there are other languages than German, I have no idea about the genre translation question in these.
Fellow native german speaker and EA user here. I didn’t test these localizations, because, like @Suedkiez , I run roon (and most other pieces of software) in english. Some of the translations are very funny, but some are borderline ridiculous, without any meaning in german and simply completely wrong.
Now…do I want to listen to Vormittags-Pop or do I treat myself to a Britische Invasion?
I have Roon in Dutch and I don’t have the fantastic translations you have in German.
Some genres are in Dutch and are correct but most of them are the English versions. So it looks like they make different choices for different languages.
What you are seing is the result of a machine translation. This machine translation has apparently not yet been reviewed by a German translator.
From what I have seen Dutch, Polish, French have been entirely reviewed are good for roll out.
More info here, and a link to contribute if you wish.
My experience with French translation of genres/credit roles/composition forms:
about 3000 lines of automatic translations to review
about 2000 lines correctly machine translated
about 500 were OK but benefitted from fine tuning
about 500 were not appropriate, sometimes ridiculous or laughable as you rightly pointed out with German
With experience : it’s better to revert a line to the English term if no obvious translation comes up.
As stated earlier to @mike , I am not recommending to push a given translation to production until a (competent) native reviewer gives the go.
Thank you for the reassurance. I guess I may have been overly dramatic after being freaked out by these screenshots However, in my defense, the 1254 release notes spoke about make a few tweaks before releasing to production next week…
Thanks for the feedback here @Olaf_Mueller. Our goal here is not to translate every genre without any context or input from German speakers – ideally the only genres we would be translating would be those users would expect to see in German (or Japanese, or Russian, etc).
Translators in other languages have done a pass on these genres and in many cases they’ve changed a number of genres back to English, which is perfect! This delivers a more native experience to users around the world without translating any genres unnecessarily.
Unfortunately it sounds like we haven’t seen similar effort from German translators yet. But the good news is that it’s not too late!
Improving Genre Translations
If you’re willing to help out, I’m guessing it will take 15 minutes or less to update the examples in your post back to the original English, or to improved German translations.
I will send you an invite now. @Kopftelefon@Suedkiez or anyone else who wants to help improve genre translations can sign up here.
We really do appreciate this feedback. We’re confident that translations will continue to improve over time but it would be great to have some help getting these right before these changes go live for users around the world!
The “Localized Genre Names” switch
As for the switch on the album editing screen that @Suedkiez was asking about, I can see thats confusing people, so let me clarify.
Genres are complicated in Roon because they can come from your files or edits (which cannot be translated by our systems) or from Roon metadata (which can translated depending on what translators have entered into the system).
Since these two kinds of data can be interleaved in a single collection (or even a single album) it’s important that a user who is editing genres is able to clearly see which genres are translated and which are being displayed “as is” from file tags. This switch allows transparency during editing options, but it’s not supposed to turn translations on or off once you’re done editing.
Any more questions, please let me know -- I will check back on this thread a bit later. Thanks all!
Thanks, I have signed up now and will have a go over the long Easter weekend if I’m approved soon
Question to people who use the Roon UI in German @Olaf_Mueller or have previously contributed German translations to Roon: For consistency, are we using new or old German spelling here? E.g., would the genre be Programmmusik or Programmusik? (I’m not a fan of all new rules, e.g., the consonant triplication, but most importantly it should be consistent)
And @mike are there any other guidelines regarding complicated genres like Folk? The problem I see here, as I tried to explain further up, is that there can be different genre assignments in different languages. I guess German is the most complicated here for historical reasons. E.g.
English >> German
Folk (tradition of Seeger, Dylan) >> Folk
but
Spanish Folk (traditional Spanish) >> Spanische Volksmusik
The problem with assignment starts when a particular album in German translations would have to be under Deutscher Folk if it is, say, an artist writing folklore music in a political tradition under Dylan influence, or would have to be under Deutsche Volksmusik if it’s traditional German folklore. While I suppose in English they might both be under German Folk.
No clue how to solve this, just wondering if there are any guidelines to follow maybe
but only because I don’t have to see that. While you pointed out the most ridiculous ones, even in the genres you have in your screenshot you already missed some more: “Australische Rock” (bad grammar), “Bühnenrock” (what?), “Neo-Programmusik” (bad spelling), “Westliche Revival-Swing” (bad grammar and just terribly awkward anyway), “Bandit-Country” (what?).
). “Folk” in particular is seen as the polar opposite of traditional German “Volksmusik” although both are a type of folklore.
