Hello,
first off, I am German and I have an IMO important suggestion to make for TESV. One little but severe thing that really drove me crazy when trying to use English mods in my German Oblivion, or later on vice versa with German mods in the English game, is an issue related to voice output. It's just a tiny thing to fix in a new game for the developer, but it would be frustrating if seen again.

The problem is that voice output files are searched in folders named by the name of the races instead of their editor ID. As such, while the editor ID of the races is identical in all different language versions of TESIV, the name of course is not. For example, as Argonian -> Argonian is the same in the English version, it is not in German: Argonian -> Argonier. As the voice output file folders are named by the name, the German one in that case is called 'Argonier' instead of 'Argonian'.
This might not be of any relevance when English users only use English mods (most likely), or if German users only use German mods. But as the German (or literally any other foreign-language) players try to use English mods, they have to bother with some annoying side effects of this difference.

First of all, this generally leads to the fact that all the voice output of mods of different languages is missing. As the lip files are missing, too, one can't even read subtitles. This must usually be fixed for every single foreign-language mod by renaming the race-named voice subfolders, so their name is in the necessary language. As it has to be done for every mod over and over again, it is extremely annoying.

The problem with these differences is even more severe when using race mods of different languages. As they change the race names back to their native language, the original voice subfolders are not longer recognized as belonging to these races. As a result, all races altered by such mods have no voice output anymore, not even the standard stuff. This has to be fixed by editing the .esp of the race mod with the CS and rename the race names back to what they are in the language version of the game. This still is some nasty work, as you sometimes don't expect a given mod to alter the races, and then you got no idea why the language output is broken.


And all these nasty problems - BTW the only technical problems when using a game and mod versions of different languages together, I dealt with that topic thoroughly - could easily be forestalled if in TESV, the voice subfolders would not be named (and searched for) by the (language-specific) names of the races, but by their ID. Or any other (maybe new) race-specific, language-independent value.

I hope this point will be perceived.

Sincere regards.

A very good point. I know some of the stuff like missing voice output and lip files on English mods is strictly on purpose. Most modders don't have the time or resources to get good voice acting on their new dialog. As for the normal talking you are correct though, as those would grab directly from the game's files.

What they could do is make some kind of 'Installed Language' detection device so if a new mod is made on an english version and has to draw from the vanilla Argonian folder, then the game will automatically optimize it for a different language install by changing the directories. Anything as far as subtitles will have to be edited manually I'm afraid.

Well such a device isn't even necessary, as long as simply the reference which the voice subfolders refer to would be changed from a race-specific and language-specific (i.e. the race name) to a race-specific and language-independent one (i.e. race ID). That's just it. Simple small change/fix in the engine would cause these issues to disappear just like that.

Subtitles never had to be changed in order to make mods from different languages work. As I said, getting them to work is generally no large thing, it's just a tiny fix, but nevertheless it is immensely important that it is not passed over. Many peple avoided playing with mods from different languages even where there was no risk, simply because they didn't know about how to make it work properly. And people like me who know are simply annoyed of having to fix every mod over and over again.