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Solving Language Barriers for the LCS

pyroHedge·2/22/2015, 11:26:34 PM·1 votes·974 views

The LCS is becoming more global, and with it has come some language problems. I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that if a Korean comes to the NA LCS, that person is not only forced to learn the new culture, but the onus to solve the communication issues is entirely their's. I'm wondering if there's a better way.

Here's one suggestion. Rather than have the non-English speaker be fully responsible for bridging the language gap, have the whole team help by learning certain League-specific key words in the other person's language. This way the non-native speaker can easily pick out key words, like ward or dragon, and therefore has more energy to put towards playing better and understanding the rest of the directions.

Some suggestions for words the English speakers should learn in the non-English speaker's native language:

Dragon, Baron, Tower/Turret, Inhibitor, Nexus, Creep/Minions, Monsters, Bush, Vision Ward, Sight Ward, Scan, Baron Buff, Dragon Buff, Red Buff, Blue Buff, Support, ADC, Jungler, Top Laner, Mid Laner, gank, lane, base, back, push (lane), freeze (lane), flee/run, attack/go-in/engage, defend (like an objective), help.

In general I think proper names (like champions, abilities, or summoners) should remain in English. Additionally, I would argue that Top, Bot, Mid, and Jungle all stay English because by and large those words are extremely short and therefore efficient during a game. I'm not sure what to do with CC and CS, though I'm inclined to think they should remain as they would sound in English, again due to their brevity.

The above list is exactly 30 words and shouldn't be that difficult to learn and memorize (though I'd image remember to use the other language for those words would be significantly more challenging).

So anyone have thoughts on this? Good idea? Bad idea? Not worth it idea? Should a slate of words (like those above) just be converted into a standard language (kind of like how in music all terms are written in Italian) for all teams to use? I'm really sad that some of the players who were brave enough to make the jump to a new region are facing as many challenges as they are, and I'm trying to think of ways to make it easier to make that jump.

2 Comments

Joesus Christ2/22/2015, 11:43:59 PM1 votes

this isnt really a LCS thing to regulate, it is up to the teams to handle internally. i think most teams do something similar to this.

you also have to consider when 1 non-English speaker comes into a predominantly English speaking team, it makes more sense for 1 person to learn the team's native language, than for 4 people to learn a foreign language.

if you have a team that predominantly speaks Korean, the opposite would be true(see Winterfox). and if a NA player went to a KR team, you wouldnt expect all 4 korean players to learn english, you would expect the NA player to learn Korean.

while i like this sort of idea, you still have problems conveying more complex ideas very quickly(although a lot of the overall strategy is done off the rift from what i understand). and a lot of teams do have in-house translators. but regardless, this sort of thing is left up to the individual teams to handle.