Lord_Mord

I still read them from time to time. And I'm used to real literature too. Oh, and if you wondered: I don't count Game of Thrones or Harry Potter as literatur. I don't even read it. As mumbogamshoe said: Those adventure books are simplistic. But most of the adventure books I owned as a child were not badly written. Just very simple. If you can't do it good, at least don't do it bad.

I wouldn't try. It's impossible. That's what I meant with: Why try? "English" is fine here. This is a made up language consisting of english and fantasy. If Josh Saywer made up a slavic fantasy language you wouldn't translate it either. I wasn't. I'm just not good in talking english and making myself clear in general. If you read my above examples, you will know why it does. Yes they were simplistic, but the errors and bad translations in PoE have nothing to do with it's complexity. Besides: Just because of it's complexity, translation should get more attention than it does. This is not WoW. If you find those books not a good example, let's take BG2 for an example. It was simpler than PoE, but complex enough and everybody here knows it. The translation was not perfect but still way way beyond what we have here. This clearly is ten steps back.

Some random examples (I'm playing at the moment): konserviert is meant to mean preserved, I think. I dont know for shure if preserved is the right word. Anyway that translation sounds more like canned, as in canned foot. Also I'm not shure if Alhelms charming assistent is a woman, but in Germany he's definitely a man. The following examples come from ONE dialogue. The initial dialogue with Sagani: That chasm does not make flattering, but I'm definitely not 'he'. I don't even know, what that's supposed to mean. Also Saganis friend seems to have the habit of wearing other peoples skin. Grammatically wrong. Sounds like something a cliché turk comedian an television would say. so erinnere dich. Sounds like something Goethe, not Sagani would say. Warte nur balde... You smell beasts. The correct translation into German would be wild animals or something. The word beast in German means either a terrible monster or a very terrible woman. There is so much more. I can't retranslate many of these sentences into English, because I can't make it clear, why they are strange in German. But they are. Almost every one. Then there are a lot of real stupid translation and typing errors, like überlegt (thinked) instead of überlebt (survived), word repetitions (with a knife with walrus handle), crappy google translations (In Germany you don't say, that the fox stands at your heels), grammar errors (Lots and lots of them), clunky formulations and unintuitive use of conjugations. Oftentimes it's obvious that off all possible translations the word the first popped up on google was chosen. You can even test that, by typing that word into google and look at the first hit. Stealth is translated with Heimlichkeit, which means secrecy (And I don't even know if secrecy is the proper word to show you how wrong Heimlichkeit is). Now type stealth into Google Translator and see what happens. and guess what shows first, if you type in defiance. All in all it's just plain bad. If you don't notice that, you're not very firm with your language or you just got used to that kind of crap.

I dont know why you insist that it is all about the names. **** the names. I you thinnk Trutzburg is a good name... Maybe you have no taste, what do I know? That doesn't change the fact, that the translation of dialogues is bad. And that's no matter of taste. That's obvious. That is what I meant with the childrens books. They were translated way better. And i canÄt imagine, that a lot of money want into them. And why should it be out of place? Do you say Silicin Valley or Silikontal? Are names of places in western movies translated? As I said I think. Never claimed that tu be true. I looked it up: The word doesn't exist. What has that to do with the discussion? So why try? I still have them inside a shelf behind me. Ever read "Das Labyrinth des Todes" or "Der Sumpf der Skorpione"? They are no great work of literature, but there is nothing to complain about. If you compare it with the PoE translation, than german PoE not even failed to be as good as the english version, they even managed to make it worse than those books. Far worse. Edit: There was that one book where you started in a caravan lead by a guy named Big Sun Jim or something. Pillars reminded me of that.

And Black Isle were not? Apart from some minor weird things, the BG translations were totally OK. Everybody complained about it, I never understood why. And now... This is 50 times as bad and everybody plays it down.

Which I'm pretty shure they did. No matter what they others here say. I smell it. My wife speaks russian. I think I will ask her to play the russian version for a while, than compare them for me. But what you told sounds good. That mix is very oldschool. Edit: What's the name of Gilded Vale in russian?

Which they didn't even try. This translations obviously came from the machine. Someone looked over it, of course, but not very closely. I new this kind of comment would come. That you don't see the problem, does not mean, that it's not there. I just can repeat myself. This is not a problem that cannot be solved. Just read books and games from the 80s. Not perfect, but good enough that I wouldn't complain. I know. I already did some translations for the BG1 NPC project. I don't wanna be a loudmouth, but I could do it better than it was done for PoE. And I don't believe that there are no companies that could do it way better.

"Die weiße Mark" would be better for example. But as I said: I wouldn't have translated it anyway. The language of the Dyrwood is very specific and it's partly fantasy. You just can't do it right without loosing something. Take Gilded Vale for example. It has that settler vibe to it (I even think it has a double meaning, like guilded). Somehow the name itself sounds a bit ironic. Goldtal, or any other translation with gold in it sounds like a name from a fairy tale or medieval high fantasy bull****. I expect to find elves there. And I'm not talking about the names only. Or about the fact, that they didn't even bother trying to get the accents right. Almost every sentence sounded idiotic, out of context and straight from the translator. How come that my stupid adventure books for children had better translations?

Which of course would not solve the problems within dialogues and texts. Those where crap and often made no sense.

Totenfeuer is also a matter of taste. It's not bad, I could live with it. But in my opinion it does not have that piraty touch. Sounds too serious, almost catholic. The point is: If they want to save money for the translations: Why not keep the original names of everything? Less work and less probability of cheese.

Yes, but it's fun talking about it. Personally, I like this habit. At least the authors not the translators are ****ing with the content.

I would do it myself, if someone pays me for it. I hate my job anyway.

Once I read a description for a japanese game, that had a planet called Blumentopf which means flower pot in german. As far as I understood, this was no joke. It was a serious game. The main character, a woman, had a german name. Schneider or something. They love the name Schneider. I heard it very often.

There are people that are not able or confident enough to do that. I want those people to have the same experience I had, when I was 12/13/14. Those are important impressions. I don't want to live in a country/world, where people are used to bad writing only.

I have no idea, how JELENIOBORZE sounds for your ears, but I totally know, what you are talking about. Edit: I just looked up a few areas. Dyrwood is Dyrwald (???Why???) Gilded Vale is Goldtal wich literally translates back to Golden Valley and sounds even more silly in german than it does in english. White March is Weißmark which probably should remind you to LotR, but in reality sound stupid as ****. Japanese comic book authors have that habit of using german words. That often sounds the same way. Does anyone here know Weißkreuz?

OK, forget that Trutzbucht-Thing. I can already smell those guys, that will soon come here and tell me that this is a great translation. They are wrong, but this is not they point. As I said, those games, fantasy books and stuff were translated way, way better in the past. All that considerations that you are talking about. Those people either don't even make them anymore, or they are totally incompetent. This game is crippled in german. My wife plays it in german and I can't bear looking on her screen. It really makes me sad and angry. I saw people on the internet defending that translation. I just can't imagine how worse game translations must have become (Last game I played was BG2), if people are defending that crap. I remember there was a great controversity about BG being to creatively translated (Voiceovers had funny Austrian Accents That kind of stuff. I liked it, but it depended on taste). That was a great deal at that times. Nowadays people seem to be happy, if they are somehow able to understand whats going on and there are some medieval-ish words in the text to add some "flavour".

Good plan.

You are right. Someone answered to your comment that he/she donated 8$. People think, you are talking about the badge.

There is one thing that I hated really, really much about PoE1. It didn't even concern me personally, as I prefer to play the game in english, but that I wanted to see done right anyway. The localization was terrible. The whole text sounded like it was translated by google. The names of all stats, spells, attacks and so on where confusing and dumb. The proper names (I hope that means what I think it means) were silly and loveless. "Trutzbucht" for Defiance Bay would have been cool in a cliché medieval setting (With princesses and golden knights), but here it felt awkward. And there were far more terrible examples. The text parts, which sounded just great in the original lost all the literature-like feeling. Sometimes they were not even understandable. And seriously: Characters like Aloth need a little bit more intuition and sensitivity towards language than google translate has to offer. I think this is an important point, as this is some thing, early games (At least the kind that I played), Text Adventures and Adventure Books did way better and that helped not only to build immersion but to establish video gaming as something more than just pointing and clicking. Parts of PoE where written better than some books I know. Do you really want to destroy that for your foreign customers? I think lots of young people here didn't even notice how good this game was (As I read only mild complaints about that topic, I fear people already got used to that kind of translation, but I assure you: It IS terrible). You invest very much effort into writing and language. All that is destroyed by incompetent, lazy idiots. My wish: Please do something about it. Just for the sake of keeping your creation intact. If the budget does not allow hiring better companies for translation, at least keep the proper names in english. Early games and adventure books did the same and this at least helped to maintain the vibe of the original. (Plus: For a kid in the 90s these english words sounded very cool. I still remember names like "Port Blacksand". "Defiance Bay" is totally OK. At least in Germany. I dont know, how other countries think about that) P.S.: Sorry for my bad english. But I think, as you read these lines, you probably get a good idea of what I'm talking about. P.P.S.: If you are not convinced, I can give you examples. Lots of examples.

Is that really necessary? I thought the days of happy aquarium were over. Oh, oh, oh. There it is. The opportunity to say that sentence that I hate so much: I FIND THAT IMMERSION BREAKING! Ha!

What is "this"? I didn't read.

C) Only if the parrot repeats the last words of those people. No names, no stories. Parrots dont tell stories and parrots dont usually tell you, who they are quoting. otherwise B)

You forgot to post an image for "repurposed sea monster" anyway.

Why not both?

Ichose it, because I knew, people whould do that, so it's the best way to prevent the repurposed sea monster, which I think is a fun a idea, but not for our purpose.