Hi, some of you who are on the IRC may have seen me pass by the past few days.
I came up with an idea today which would make translating the game into different languages not only less work for the devs, but also a lot faster.
The idea being:
Write up an XML or similar format, including all the names, text events, etc. which are in the game and/or website, then release these to the public, so they can submit their own translations, this would make the workload for the devs virtually non-existent concerning translations (other than writing up the initial file and coding an integration of the new translations, which frankly, is done relatively easy).
Obviously if you don't trust the public enough to provide you with proper translations, which I would fully understand (children will be children), you could simply find a few people who speak English well enough - as well as another language - to help out with these.
The main reason I think PRO would benefit from this, is because of the few people I've seen so far who came onto IRC or in-game, that didn't know English well enough to fully understand what was going on.
Obviously this can scare these people off from playing further, thus reducing growth in your player base.
I explained this on IRC earlier today, and honestly the reactions were decent, considering the low activity of people at the time.
Either way, if you were to choose to use this idea to translate the game, you will want proof readers, even if you select only certain people to be able to translate, just for accuracy and consistency.