Continuing my posts on getting some Web Services basic term explained for the business side of the company, I introduce XSD  (Xml Schema Definition) that is nothing else that an XML document that formally describes the structure of another  XML document. As I wrote in the previous post, the author of the XML document decides its elements. If somebody else needs to make use of that XML, they will look at its Schema Definition to create a formally correct document or to validate an existing one. In practice the XSD tells us what elements/attributes are present and their format,  parent/child relationships, whether an element is empty or can contain text including any default values. Below you can find an excerpt for an hypothetical XSD describing all elements as strings.

 [...]
  <xs:complexType name=”Family“>
    <xs:sequence>
      <xs:element name=”dad“ type=”xs:string”/>
      <xs:element name=”mom” type=”xs:string”/>
      <xs:element name=”baby” type=”xs:string”/>
     <xs:element name=”dog” type=”xs:string”/>
    </xs:sequence>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
[...]

I started playing Mafia II yesterday late at night, but as much as I like how the story is evolving and its cinematics, I still fail to understand why companies such as 2K spend a lot of efforts researching on historical events, weapons of the period, mocap, etc. but still have the lead character, Vito Scaletta, born in Italy, raised by native Italian speakers in an Italian American neighboorhood that is not able to speak a single Italian word without an American/New Yorker accent.

I must say that are also major translation blunders.  We have literal translations from English to Italian, such as Vito’s Mamma saying “mio bambino” at the end of almost every stentence as a substitute for ”my child”. “Mio bambino” as it is used is not an expression an Italian would use, the meaningful translation should have been “bambino mio”.  We have also nonsense such as “Sia benedica” which actually does not mean anything, maybe they meant “Be blessed” in English?? Come on guys couldn’t you afford a native Italian proof reader??

This is not the first case in terms of bad accents. I have also seen it playing Assassin’s Creed 2 demo where Ezio is an Italian speaking its own language with an English accent. At least, from what I saw they used proper Italian sentences there…

I gather that other non English speakers which have characters that are supposedly of the some mothertongue will inevitably feel frustrated by having native English speakers faking their own accents, and even worse use blatantly incorrect or even non-sense expressions. I wonder why the gaming industry is so focused on shaders and gigs of texture to fail at the very base of competing in this global market.