The problem is you need someone truly fluent in more than one language just to proofread the translations, let alone make them. They have to have a real 'feel' for the language that you can really only get from living in a counry where it is spoken for some years. It can be difficult to find someone like that. For Spanish it's pretty easy here in the US. In Florida and California you've got people habitually starting sentences in English and finishing them in Spanish. Something I always find funny and interesting, although I've talked to some native Spanish speakers who find it annoying. IIRC, when I lived in Montreal I noticed nearly the same thing for French (although perhaps not quite so frequently), which was even more amusing. Miami and Montreal are both superb locations to find truly excellent translators for those languages. To make matters worse you always get people who think they are fluent in their second language but really are not.
Nevertheless, for a text heavy game like this, translations seem like a must. So which langauges?
Countries with at least some international cRPG development: France, Poland, and Germany come to mind. The idea behind this is quid pro quo.
Countries with lots of native speakers: Spanish, Russian, and maybe Japanese and Chinese. I hesitate with Japanese because they seem so fond of their own jRPGs and with
Chinese because I'm not sure the average Chinese makes enough money to donate a significant amount. Not sure about this though. China changes so fast. Still, Japanese make a lot of money. It would be nice to get into that market and the Chinese market is obviously so gigantic it's almost beyond imagining.
I don't think Chinese would be neseccary, alot of Chinese speak english (I think most schools require it), any that would have the luxury of owning a personal computer definetly would. I have heard that more Chinese read and write English than in Mandarin characters, having been there I dunno if thats true but there was a lot of English signs, more Chinese probably read in the romanincized pin yin text than characters though.
English is enough of the global market share for any company, at its peak the British Empire comprised 66% of the world, you can damn well bet that every current commonwealth and most former commonwealths have a large english speaking population.
[Merged] PROTIP: Replace the "Player House" stretch goal with multi-language support
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
I don't think Chinese would be neseccary, alot of Chinese speak english (I think most schools require it), any that would have the luxury of owning a personal computer definetly would. I have heard that more Chinese read and write English than in Mandarin characters, having been there I dunno if thats true but there was a lot of English signs, more Chinese probably read in the romanincized pin yin text than characters though.
English is enough of the global market share for any company, at its peak the British Empire comprised 66% of the world, you can damn well bet that every current commonwealth and most former commonwealths have a large english speaking population.