[BTS] Issue with Cyrillic symbols with use of CP1251

[kviten]

Greetings, folks. I'm currently working on Ukrainian localization mod for Civ4, including BTS and Warlords DLC + custom scenarios.
I have next testing environments: Windows 10 Ukrainian Home edition (CP1251) + main machine Arch Linux, where I'm launching Civ4 with Steam Proton and enforced commands args: "LC_COLLATE=uk_UA.cp1251 LC_CTYPE=uk_UA.cp1251 LC_ALL=uk_UA.cp1251 LANG=uk_UA.cp1251".

Mostly, all texts in Civilopedia (which uses something like Courier font) are OK, it renders all fonts correctly. But, unfortunately, in main menu font "Sylfaen" renders text wrong. The same situation happens when I try to load russian localization as mod: letters "Я", "I" rendered not correct. It seems it takes wrong character instead of correct one.

I also had an idea to integrate "We the People" UTF8 trick into my CvGameCoreDLL.dll (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/we-the-people-development-diary.638777/post-15278402) (keep in mind this trick was made for Colonization, not BTS). But it seems it has no effect on my localization files.

BTW, I use number representation (HTML numeric entities) for CP1251 encoded characters in XML. So my XML files mostly look like this:

<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_UNIT_TREBUCHET</Tag>
<Ukrainian>&#210;&#240;&#229;&#225;&#243;&#248;&#229;&#242;</Ukrainian><English>Trebuchet</English>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>

I would be very thankful for any help. Screenshot of menu attached. It is the same issue on Windows 10 and on Arch Steam Proton as well.

 

[Nightinggale]

The game can draw characters in 2 ways: the font and GameFont (GameFont is then split into two for supporting two different font sizes). Since some text is correct, I suspect it might be a GameFont issue. Way back when I added Cyrillic support to Medieval Conquest, the GameFont was copied from a mod, which translated vanilla into Russian. Turned out that this mod was missing ч, which caused issues, so I added it manually. It then got redrawn by a Russian, who (unlike me) knows how to read Cyrillic so now I'm told it looks decent. When a Russian translation for We The People turned up, we copied the GameFont characters from M:C.

Pure speculation for your issue is that you have problems with lines printed using the GameFont characters. Since there apparently is a version, which renders the font incorrectly, it's possible that is the one you got. It's not just that a character is missing, it creates an offset issue for other characters and since Я is the last character, it is the most prone to be hit by offset issues. The last character in the title misprint is certainly from GameFont. The issue I have with this theory is that it's my understanding that GameFont is only used for signs and city billboards. However strictly speaking it should be possible to use it everywhere.

I propose you copy the character part of the 1251 GameFont from WTP and see if that fixes the issue.

It should be noted that WTP has more GameFont files than vanilla. That's because WTP has modded xml reading code, which picks a GameFont file based on what codepage the currently selected language is. This way the mod supports both western European(1252) and Cyrillic(1251) without modifying the files. It does however require restarting the mod when switching GameFont, so using Russian requires starting the mod in English, switch to Russian and then quit the game to start again (at least I think so. I'm not using it myself). Since it's a one time setup, it seems to not cause issues, or at least if it does, then I'm not told about it.

CIV4ArtDefines_Misc.xml can be used to switch between GameFont and text rendered billboards while CIV4ArtDefines_Interface.xml specifies which GameFont the game is using (this is the one WTP modded).

WTP currently has a problem with Russian not working on signs. No idea why. I assume that if it's a civ4 engine problem, Ukrainian will be affected too. Do tell if you encounter this and figure out a solution.

Scenario files only supports signs in ASCII, not even full range codepage-1252. It's possible that this is fixable, but I'm not aware of anybody looking into this issue.

I also had an idea to integrate "We the People" UTF8 trick into my CvGameCoreDLL.dll (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/we-the-people-development-diary.638777/post-15278402) (keep in mind this trick was made for Colonization, not BTS). But it seems it has no effect on my localization files.

It shouldn't affect this issue, but it should make editing the xml files a whole lot easier. I highly recommend this, particularly for languages where all characters needs html escapes (Cyrillic, Greek etc). This is only affecting how the text is stored in xml, not how how the game views the text.
It should be noted that I later made a change to the reading code, which makes the loader works on computers where windows is set to a language using two bytes characters (Japanese, Chinese and a bunch of other Asian languages). Probably not a concern if it is assumed all players use Ukrainian, but still worth keeping in mind if Ukrainian is just one of many languages in a mod.

Spoiler rant about how being political neutral has caused me problems as a modder :

While on the topic of Cyrillic translations, I will add that the reason why Medieval Conquest never finished the Russian translation is because the translator got harassed in 2014 for being Russian and he decided to completely leave the forum and modding as a result. Nobody in the modding community has any saying in geopolitics so if I ever again encounter anybody being poorly treated due to geopolitics, I will report it. I feel very strongly that gaming and modding should be refuge from real life problems regardless of where people happen to be born. Russian and Ukranian both happen to use the same codepage, so in my point of view, for modding purposes that's one group of people working together towards a common goal (getting Cyrillic working). I will also make it clear that WTP will not drop the Russian translation for political reasons (somebody was fishing for that without saying it directly). No we will not change the mod to confirm with some modern day race politics just because the mod happens to have a slave unit and you can't use our discord server for promoting your favorite present day US politician even through the server is called "We The People". No not picking a side in whatever topic you talk about doesn't mean I don't know what is going on or that I don't have a private opinion about it. It just means I have a professional neutral public approach to it while keeping me as a person private. I can also add that there is no political message in having a Russian translation and no Ukrainian translation. WTP has the translations people made and by chance somebody made a Russian translation while to my knowledge nobody even started a Ukrainian translation.

Sorry about the rant, but I'm still pissed about losing my first Russian translator due to something like that. He was a nice guy and quite skilled. Also I have no idea why, but people have started wanting WTP to make political moves. Not many people, but it has happened multiple times by now. I modded for around 10 years before that started to happen, so what changed?

Anyway my stance is clear: I see no problem in me assisting in getting both Russian and Ukrainian translations working. If anybody has a problem with that, then screw you. I won't listen to you.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

From my understanding, the actual font from GameFont.tga is used in one place and one place only in Civ 4 - billboards on the map (such as city names). So GameFont issues shouldn't be manifesting in the title screen or pedia headers at all, as those all use proper windows fonts.

Have you tried using different fonts (in Civ4Theme_Common.thm)? Might it be a problem with Sylfaen itself?

 

[Nightinggale]

Have you tried using different fonts (in Civ4Theme_Common.thm)? Might it be a problem with Sylfaen itself?

Let's assume Sylfaen is corrupted, that still won't explain how the pedia header contains a GameFont icon. Something is wrong here. The issue seems to be that the string contains wrong char values or the correct value somehow uses the wrong graphics.

Actually writing this, I have to ask which character become that GameFont icon? Also is it one or two characters, which turned into that icon? I have a hunch of what to investigate (unicode values vs GameFont IDs), but I need the specific character as mentioned in the xml in order to do that.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

It must be the letter "Я" mentioned in the original post and in yours, &#1071;, as "CIVLIOPEDIA" Google-translated to Ukrainian goes "ЦИВІЛОПЕДІЯ"

 

[Nightinggale]

It must be the letter "Я" mentioned in the original post and in yours, &#1071;

Yeah probably. Doesn't make it anywhere near the 8000 range where the GameFonts are located. This means either there is a typo in the xml file or the issue is that correct character values are handled incorrectly.

I still wonder if the GameFont file is somehow formatted incorrectly and then the really late entries in it (in this case 0xFF) ends up with a latter icon. This then confuses some code somewhere in the exe. That's the only explanation I can think of. No amount of broken font should make the exe pick GameFont instead of Sylfaen characters.

 

[kviten]

Anyway my stance is clear: I see no problem in me assisting in getting both Russian and Ukrainian translations working. If anybody has a problem with that, then screw you. I won't listen to you.

I see no problem with any other Cyrillic translations, this is ridiculous. Civ4 has official Russian localization from Russobit, issued in early 2000s. Since I can't stand new mechanics in Civ7 and Civ6 I decided to go deep into Civ4 like it was in good old times. For now, Civ4 is the only Civ in series which doesn't have Ukrainian translation.

From my understanding, the actual font from GameFont.tga is used in one place and one place only in Civ 4 - billboards on the map (such as city names).

Correct. This was also a reason, why I decided to leave city names "as it" or just to transliterate Ukrainian (cyrillic) to latin variant. There is also very specific variant of Ukrainian writing which looks like Polish or Czech (latynka), but I guess it's suitable only for names of cities.

I'm going to do something with fonts and will definitely give you a feedback. Thanks.

 

[Nightinggale]

I see no problem with any other Cyrillic translations, this is ridiculous.

First of all, I wasn't assuming you specifically would have an issue with it. In fact most of the people with issues tend to not be mod creators. Funny how people with mods to work on won't have time to make such silly complains. Secondly in my rant I forgot the newest complain. Stop using the word rapeseed because the first half of the word looks unappealing. Well sorry for using the English name of a plant in the English version of the mod.

I really wish I knew why WTP suddenly gets those ridiculous complains.

Civ4 has official Russian localization from Russobit, issued in early 2000s

Interesting. I didn't know that. I wonder if that's the original source for the GameFont characters in the Colonization translation. Probably not considering that ч was missing. I know of commercial screw ups, but I will at least assume an official translation to have support for the full characterset.

This was also a reason, why I decided to leave city names "as it" or just to transliterate Ukrainian (cyrillic) to latin variant. There is also very specific variant of Ukrainian writing which looks like Polish or Czech (latynka), but I guess it's suitable only for names of cities.

So if you skipped updating GameFont, then the GameFont in the pedia header becomes even more strange. Now I'm curious and want to know how the game messed up that badly. I'm out of ideas other than the xml file containing incorrect character escapes, but I would imagine that would be the first to check before making a post about it.

 

[<Nexus>]

For now, Civ4 is the only Civ in series which doesn't have Ukrainian translation.

AND2 has a lot of Ukrainian translations:

Feel free to fish anything from my mod if it helps anything in your work

 

[kviten]

AND2 has a lot of Ukrainian translations:

Feel free to fish anything from my mod if it helps anything in your work

Jesus Christ, love you guys. Was it made by someone or mostly AI?

 

[<Nexus>]

Jesus Christ, love you guys. Was it made by someone or mostly AI?

Maybe you can give the text some proof reading to find out but AFAIK it was before AI.

 

[kviten]

It seems somehow it actually takes font from TGA files instead of new placed TTF. That explains why on 4 picture in initial post we see Oil icon in the end of title. Maybe there is some way to tell engine do not use it for such purposes?

 

[<Nexus>]

Now that you mention this I vaguely recall something dbkblk reported something similar (?) in AND2 forums when he was collecting translations from here and there.

 

[Nightinggale]

It seems somehow it actually takes font from TGA files instead of new placed TTF. That explains why on 4 picture in initial post we see Oil icon in the end of title. Maybe there is some way to tell engine do not use it for such purposes?

The civ4 engine will use font for values 0 to 255 and GameFont for anything higher than that. This is why you need to rely on on using the codepage, which changes which characters are stored as 128 to 255. If you let the game use the characters as GameFont, font size stops working and so does text coloring and switching to uppercase. It will just look bad.

Using GameFont text will in some cases be unavoidable, like city billboards and signs. For this purpose the TGA file needs to have the font section updated to match the codepage. As mentioned in my first post, WTP already did the work so you can copy the top part of that file. WTP switches TGA file based on currently used codepage, but if you intend to drop support for western European languages, you can just edit the one file provided by your mod/vanilla. Only the one with large icons will be needed as the font section of the TGA is not used in the file with the low resolution characters.

Mod/Assets/Res/Fonts/GameFont_1251.tga at develop · We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod

This is the repository where the mod resides. . Contribute to We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

How you end up with character IDs in the GameFont range instead of the codepage range is currently a mystery. I have no clue without access to the string as it is written in the xml file.

Jesus Christ, love you guys. Was it made by someone or mostly AI?

I would not fear AI. The quality it can provide is no more or less trustworthy than translations done by an unknown person on the internet. In other words I would recommend verifying that the translation is accurate. I have seen translations done by people where AI or even pre-AI google translate would do it better. I once had an argument with somebody, who claimed the words mansion and mission looks so similar that they must mean the same. Don't blindly trust anything just because it's made by humans.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

WTP switches TGA file based on currently used codepage, but if you intend to drop support for western European languages, you can just edit the one file provided by your mod/vanilla. Only the one with large icons will be needed as the font section of the TGA is not used in the file with the low resolution characters.

I'd argue for a translation mod that's overengineering - if someone opts to use a translation mod, they obviously want to use that particular language.

I would not fear AI. The quality it can provide is no more or less trustworthy than translations done by an unknown person on the internet. In other words I would recommend verifying that the translation is accurate. I have seen translations done by people where AI or even pre-AI google translate would do it better. I once had an argument with somebody, who claimed the words mansion and mission looks so similar that they must mean the same. Don't blindly trust anything just because it's made by humans.

As a former translator I can vouch for modern AI actually translating better than the average person at this point (this speaks more ill about the average person than good about the AI though), with one very important caveat - when translating small snippets of text, AI often lacks context, and thus can misinterpret - and that is exactly the case with translating Civ 4 stuff (as a simple example, a single word "Замок" can be translated from Ukrainian to English as "Castle" or "Lock", and AI wouldn't be able to recognize which of the two is needed). So AI is very good at translating, but in cases like that only when supervised by a person who is at least somewhat understands the language in question. If I were to machine translate Civ 4 to Korean, I am certain the translation would be filled with nonsense, as I'd have no way of weeding it out.

 

[<Nexus>]

As a former translator I can vouch for modern AI actually translating better than the average person at this point (this speaks more ill about the average person than good about the AI though), with one very important caveat - when translating small snippets of text, AI often lacks context, and thus can misinterpret - and that is exactly the case with translating Civ 4 stuff (as a simple example, a single word "Замок" can be translated from Ukrainian to English as "Castle" or "Lock", and AI wouldn't be able to recognize which of the two is needed). So AI is very good at translating, but in cases like that only when supervised by a person who is at least somewhat understands the language in question. If I were to machine translate Civ 4 to Korean, I am certain the translation would be filled with nonsense, as I'd have no way of weeding it out.

I agree.
Personally I don't like and never liked Hungarian translations of games - though I'm not sure whether because the translation was so bad or just the feeling is different.
I think such AI translations can be further improved if you feed the AI with all related text at once and/or even extra languages if availibale.

For example:

Please, expand this Civ4 text xml with Hungarian and Ukranian translations
Use <Ukrainian></Ukrainian><Hungarian></Hungarian> tags.

<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_UNIT_RAFT</Tag>
<English>
<Text>Raft</Text>
</English>
<French>
<Text>Radeau</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>0</Plural>
</French>
<Italian>
<Text>Zattera</Text>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Balsa</Text>
<Gender>Female</Gender>
<Plural>0</Plural>
</Spanish>
<Polish>Tratwa</Polish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_UNIT_RAFT_PEDIA</Tag>
<English>
<Text>[TAB]A raft is any flat structure for support or transportation over water. It is the most basic of boat design, characterized by the absence of a hull. Although there are cross-over boat types that blur this definition, rafts are usually kept afloat by using any combination of buoyant materials such as wood, sealed barrels, or inflated air chambers (such as pontoons), and are typically not propelled by an engine. Traditional or primitive rafts are constructed of wood or reeds. </Text>
</English>
<Italian>
<Text>[TAB]Un'imbarcazione primitiva.</Text>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>[TAB]Una embarcaci&#243;n primitiva.</Text>
</Spanish>
<Polish>Wczesna jednostka wodna.</Polish>
</TEXT>
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_UNIT_RAFT_STRATEGY</Tag>
<English>
<Text>The [COLOR_UNIT_TEXT]Raft[COLOR_REVERT] is the very first unit than can go on water.</Text>
</English>
<Italian>
<Text>La zattera č la prima unitŕ in grado di attraversare le acque costiere.</Text>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>La Balsa es la primera unidad que puede atravesar el agua.</Text>
</Spanish>
<Polish>Tratwa to pierwsza jednostka nawodna.</Polish>
</TEXT>

<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_UNIT_RAFT</Tag>
<English>
<Text>Raft</Text>
</English>
<French>
<Text>Radeau</Text>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Plural>0</Plural>
</French>
<Italian>
<Text>Zattera</Text>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>Balsa</Text>
<Gender>Female</Gender>
<Plural>0</Plural>
</Spanish>
<Polish>Tratwa</Polish>
<Hungarian>Tutaj</Hungarian>
<Ukrainian>Пліт</Ukrainian>
</TEXT>

<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_UNIT_RAFT_PEDIA</Tag>
<English>
<Text>[TAB]A raft is any flat structure for support or transportation over water. It is the most basic of boat design, characterized by the absence of a hull. Although there are cross-over boat types that blur this definition, rafts are usually kept afloat by using any combination of buoyant materials such as wood, sealed barrels, or inflated air chambers (such as pontoons), and are typically not propelled by an engine. Traditional or primitive rafts are constructed of wood or reeds. </Text>
</English>
<Italian>
<Text>[TAB]Un'imbarcazione primitiva.</Text>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>[TAB]Una embarcaci&#243;n primitiva.</Text>
</Spanish>
<Polish>Wczesna jednostka wodna.</Polish>
<Hungarian>[TAB]A tutaj egy vízen úszó, lapos szerkezet, amelyet szállításra vagy átkelésre használnak. Ez a hajózás legegyszerűbb formája, mivel nincs teste (hajóteste). A tutaj általában fából, hordókból vagy levegővel fújt kamrákból készül, és általában nem rendelkezik motorral. A hagyományos tutajokat fából vagy nádból építik.</Hungarian>
<Ukrainian>[TAB]Пліт — це пласка конструкція, що використовується для пересування або перевезення по воді. Це найпростіший тип човна, який не має корпусу. Пліти зазвичай тримаються на плаву завдяки дереву, запаяним бочкам або надувним камерам (наприклад, понтонам) і, як правило, не мають двигуна. Традиційні або примітивні плоти роблять із дерева чи очерету.</Ukrainian>
</TEXT>

<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_UNIT_RAFT_STRATEGY</Tag>
<English>
<Text>The [COLOR_UNIT_TEXT]Raft[COLOR_REVERT] is the very first unit than can go on water.</Text>
</English>
<Italian>
<Text>La zattera č la prima unitŕ in grado di attraversare le acque costiere.</Text>
</Italian>
<Spanish>
<Text>La Balsa es la primera unidad que puede atravesar el agua.</Text>
</Spanish>
<Polish>Tratwa to pierwsza jednostka nawodna.</Polish>
<Hungarian>A [COLOR_UNIT_TEXT]Tutaj[COLOR_REVERT] az első egység, amely képes vízre menni.</Hungarian>
<Ukrainian>[COLOR_UNIT_TEXT]Пліт[COLOR_REVERT] — це перший підрозділ, який може пересуватися по воді.</Ukrainian>
</TEXT>

Aaaand... yes... Proofreading is still adviced. I'm mostly fine with the Hungarian translation but I don't really like Strategy text (but that is not because of lack of context but simply a not so fine translation)

Instead of:
A [COLOR_UNIT_TEXT]Tutaj[COLOR_REVERT] az első egység, amely képes vízre menni. (the very first unit than can go on water)

I'd rather say:
A [COLOR_UNIT_TEXT]Tutaj[COLOR_REVERT] az első vízi egység. (the first water unit)

 

[Nightinggale]

I'd argue for a translation mod that's overengineering - if someone opts to use a translation mod, they obviously want to use that particular language.

I agree. Introducing multiple TGA files in order to support multiple codepages in a single mod should be for that: full featured mods rather than a mod aiming at translating vanilla. It's still valid to bring up as who knows who or why this thread turns up in a search in 5 years.

As a former translator I can vouch for modern AI actually translating better than the average person at this point (this speaks more ill about the average person than good about the AI though)

That or even professional translators. There is a book in Finland about poor subtitles. The front page has Homer Simpson saying "I'm going to see Magic Johnson play" where the subtitles says he is going to see a magician playing music. Personally I have seen subtitles which called the English city Didcot for "Dear God" or another great one James Joy's novel Ulysses, which fills the entire screen and then the subtitles said "it's called Odysseus". News are even worse like "train derailed" and then the journalist came up with the train transporting automobiles in grain cars because of the word "car".

when translating small snippets of text, AI often lacks context, and thus can misinterpret - and that is exactly the case with translating Civ 4 stuff (as a simple example, a single word "Замок" can be translated from Ukrainian to English as "Castle" or "Lock", and AI wouldn't be able to recognize which of the two is needed).

Issues like this is why a lot of people claim translating visual novels from Japanese to English can't use machine translation. Translating line by line without giving the context of the other lines tend to mess up. On top of that machine translations have a super hard time with names, resulting in lines like "I saw strawberry and show having a conversation". Supposedly it can be AI translated now, but you need some fairly advanced setup where context is given to strings, which have no context. Given how the TXT system works, I can't really imagine how that is possible with those short lines intended to be merged with other words.

Another issue to point out is string merging at runtime. It's hard for human translators too due to different grammar rules and word ordering. Say we have a line, which includes the name of a unit. Imagine if the gender of the word or something affects the rest of the line so something else should be changed depending on if it is a settler or a swordsman.

So AI is very good at translating, but in cases like that only when supervised by a person who is at least somewhat understands the language in question. If I were to machine translate Civ 4 to Korean, I am certain the translation would be filled with nonsense, as I'd have no way of weeding it out.

AI outputs always needs to be reviewed by a skilled person. Somebody showed me AI generated code for an event and I pointed out that it would affect a unit on the plot, but due to a bug it might not be the one triggering the event if there are multiple units on said plot. Easy to spot for an experienced programmer, but non-programmers can miss it and let it pass the test because all tests ended up with only one unit on the plot each time or by chance the semi random unit on the plot was the right one for each test.

As for AI translations I would say that they would probably do a better job with the long pedia texts than the short ones in the game. This means AI can probably be a decent time saver if some lines are translated while others better be human translated. It's not all or nothing. Also all lines should ideally be reviewed for translation accuracy, be it AI or human translated. If the aim is high quality, ideally there is one translator, then one editor, who edits the line to make the flow sound natural in the "new" language and last quality control, which verifies that translation and editing didn't end up making the translation inaccurate compared to the original. I translation should feel like the translation is the original language of the text rather than being a translation where you can tell English was the original.

Yes I'm not joking. I have seen dubbed TV where I could tell English was the original language due to translation quality issues. It screams loudly when you know what to look for. If you don't know what to look for, it still come through as poor, through you are less likely to pick up on why it feels bad.

Personally I don't like and never liked Hungarian translations of games - though I'm not sure whether because the translation was so bad or just the feeling is different.

Generally speaking, there is always a loss in translation. Languages are complex and even if it is possible to translate word by word, the meaning may not always be the same. This is before taking into account that most translations are of inferior quality compared to what they could have been. Wanting to use the original language rather than a translation is fairly normal.

While generally not a huge issue for any civ4 mod, when translating text intended to be read for pleasure (like a novel), a lot of text can easily become untranslatable. This is due to cultural references, play on words or anything else of that nature. Either such info is lost or the text becomes strangely artificial and harder to read and often both happens.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Generally speaking, there is always a loss in translation. Languages are complex and even if it is possible to translate word by word, the meaning may not always be the same. This is before taking into account that most translations are of inferior quality compared to what they could have been. Wanting to use the original language rather than a translation is fairly normal.

While generally not a huge issue for any civ4 mod, when translating text intended to be read for pleasure (like a novel), a lot of text can easily become untranslatable. This is due to cultural references, play on words or anything else of that nature. Either such info is lost or the text becomes strangely artificial and harder to read and often both happens.

Feels like we're hijacking the thread a bit, but I really want to disagree with you here a bit - there are good translations out there, and that's what good translators are actually about. While there is always some loss in translation, a good translation (which aren't very common) will also enrich the original in process - as you wrote, languages are complex, and often the new language and cultural context has more nuance in some areas, and if properly taken advantage of, a translation might not necessarily be what you describe - instead of a "downgrade", it can be a "sidegrade" (or even in some rare cases an "upgrade" if the translator is actually themselves a good writer, but that's vanishingly rare).

 

[<Nexus>]

While there is always some loss in translation, a good translation (which aren't very common) will also enrich the original in process - as you wrote, languages are complex, and often the new language and cultural context has more nuance in some areas,

Yeah, this is what makes makes translation more than math (what AI can solve) and rather an art (what AI can't for lack of creativity.

(or even in some rare cases an "upgrade" if the translator is actually themselves a good writer, but that's vanishingly rare).

That reminds me of the Flintstones Family from my childhood. In the Hungarian translation they speak in rhymes non-stop and it's rather funny. When later I watched (and understood) the show in English I didn't enjoy it at all. I guess in English it was funny because of the cultural references while in Hungarian it was the way of speaking Translation tailored to a different audience.