How to deal/RP with people who don't speak/poorly speak English

[El_Vlado]

I make this thread to find out how the community deals with this, as I've had a difficult time in this as of late. I have asked around but have had no constructive advice in this matter.

I have had previous encounters/have encounters/will have encounters where players understand hardly any English, and have to resort to their native tongue. However, for the purposes of general chat and RP, this makes it nearly impossible to interact with them besides communicating with armed force, instead through dialogue.

For example, as LPI Officer Law, I patrol Liberty space and enforce the laws of Liberty. I've seen people who don't know English smuggle contraband, use illegal weapons/vessels and other such breaches of law, that when I attempt to do Role Play as Officer Law, it totally fails because the suspect, person B, has no understanding of what I'm saying. Responses include: "What? Russua. No English. Espanol? Romania?" and so on and so forth.

Hence, many a time I have found myself pursuing somebody with say contraband who is speaking Russian to me, and I'm helpless feeling more than frustrated:(. Once, I had an 8 minute LPI pursuit, and was just about to destroy the ship when I luckily found a LNS member that spoke the language. That character afterwards co-operated, however only after someone has spoken to them in their language.

Resorting to armed force is of last resort for my character, and hence when I know they can't speak English and such, I feel sorry for them just to shoot them down - both morally as a person, and in conflict with my character. (I know, moral considerations in a game but thats how I am)

Now I know the Server Rules state that:

1. General Terms and Conditions
0.0 Be excellent to one another. Consider the people around you. Keep fair play in mind. It's a game and nothing is gained, or lost, save the experience. Credits can be re-earned. Ammunition replenished. If you become infuriated step away. If you make a mistake apologize. If you wish to remain in system after you die, or after someone has moved away, simply ask.

However:

3. Rules of Conduct

3.2 All messages in system chat must be in understandable English.

However does this mean that every person that I encounter, I should report, as they do not know/understand/speak fluent English? I feel in conflict between the two in what to do in terms of server rules. I'm considering them as a 'person', but they don't speak English. Besides server rules, I can't really do my character's role/role play, if they have no clue what I'm saying. Moreover, I feel somehow morally confronted when in such situations.

I only know how to speak 3 Languages: English, French and Serbo-Croatian. The rest I know bits and pieces, which makes me have to rely on a person who can speak x language (if they're online). Nor is there a copy/paste feature so I can use google translate, which could at least tell them that its an English-speaking server (This is not saying that I demand it, I merely note this as I have used it on some other areas of the internet/some other games).

Hence my question is, What should I do when confronted with a person who doesn't speak English/speaks a few words of English/etc?

Thank you for all who reply, as I appreciate the comments/help:)

Negative comments are not appreciated. If you have nothing constructive to say, don't say it.

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