User blog:Orkamat/Internationalization

Among the first things I did here was to Americanize spelling (eg. Armor instead of Armour), even though it pained my Canadian heart to do so (not really), because that's the way things are spelled in all DnD documentation and publications.

Lately, I've added Internationalization to the list of things I do now and then. That's a big word for basically two simple things:
 * European 1st floor = American 2nd floor. Americans count the floors of a building from the ground up, while Europeans count starting from the floor above the ground floor. In an effort to provide a neutral description that will confuse neither group, I've begun replacing "1st floor" with phrases such as "top floor" or "middle floor."
 * Decimals. American 1.5 = European 1,5. While I'm sure this confuses no-one, I've begun replacing decimals with fractions, in part because 1 1/2 feels more medieval.

On a related note, I was surprised to read that translations of the game use metric measurements. This seemed bizarre, as the imaginary world of Baldur's Gate pre-dates the metric system by many centuries. But it didn't take a lot of thought to realize that it pre-dates any international standard of measures. It would have been truly bizarre to use whatever units were used locally in medieval times. 90 feet = 37 foobars? Not good.