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Political World — designing content that survives missing translations

✅ Source verified design 🌐 Graceful degradation

A common addon failure is to make localization mandatory for basic readability:

missing locale key → empty name / ugly error / unusable UI

Political World’s API 1.9 creator layer deliberately supports incomplete localization.

Design goal from source

Section titled “Design goal from source”

The creator API comments state:

localization must be optional
English/default text must remain readable on any game language

Layered strategy

Section titled “Layered strategy”

An addon definition may carry both:

NameKey
DisplayName
DescriptionKey
Description

That means a creator can ship readable default text immediately and add full locale packs over time.

Resolution path

Section titled “Resolution path”

A user on a translated language can receive:

native/current-language translation

while a missing translation can fall back to:

registered English/default

then:

literal DisplayName/Description

and finally:

stable key

No single missing translation needs to make content blank.

Why English/default is a fallback, not a forced language

Section titled “Why English/default is a fallback, not a forced language”

The source only injects the English/default translation into the current locale when the current localization manager does not already have a translation.

A real current-language translation therefore has priority.

Runtime registry remains usable when LM integration fails

Section titled “Runtime registry remains usable when LM integration fails”

Political World stores registered translations in its own dictionaries before attempting NML localization integration.

If the NML call fails, the API’s own ResolveLocalization(...) path can still use its registered values.

This is graceful degradation across integration boundaries.

What this does not solve

Section titled “What this does not solve”

Fallback cannot guarantee:

  • perfect translation quality;
  • UI width;
  • plural rules;
  • grammar;
  • right-to-left layout;
  • font coverage.

It only guarantees a much better failure mode than “missing text”.

Lesson for general modding docs

Section titled “Lesson for general modding docs”

Document both:

How to provide full localization

and:

What happens when localization is incomplete

The second question is where many real users encounter the system.