Translations

[jerf]

Please specify which languages should be a priority in your opinion.

 

Sorry that I couldn't include more languages to the poll.

Edited September 25, 2012 by jerf

[evdk]

Learn English.

[Ryuzaki]

The Italian! Please give us Italian.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Ryuzaki

[norolim]

Learn English.

 

Don't be ignorant, please.

 

On the topic: Polish, Italian and Russian. In that order if I was to decide . BTW, who is the best person to contact about those translations, if e.g. I would like to help? Would any of the Mods know?

Edited September 25, 2012 by norolim

[Pidesco]

Portuguese, so Obsidian can hire me to do the translation.

[evdk]

Learn English.

 

Don't be ignorant, please.

 

On the topic: Polish, Italian and Russian. In that order if I was to decide . BTW, who is the best person to contact about those translations, if e.g. I would like to help? Would any of the Mods know?

Because translation is free, right?

[norolim]

Because translation is free, right?

 

Again. You are being ignorant and selfish. The game is not just for you. You didn't buy the rights to it, when you pledged. Translations cost money, but they also widen the reach of the game and consequently produce more income. Simple math. So, please stop being selfish and ignorant.

[evdk]

I'd rather be ignorant with more quests in English than enlightened with half the quests but all of them fully playable in Swahili. But that's just me.

[Revan91]

I'd rather be ignorant with more quests in English than enlightened with half the quests but all of them fully playable in Swahili. But that's just me.

Text localization doesn't cost too much (in fact more languages often mean more customers for the game, therefore more money from it to spend in the next instalment - for example Eternity 2 in this case). In a game supposed to have a lot of written dialogues and text in general having the game in many languages is good, even for people who knows English pretty well.

And by the way, Spanish, German, French and hopefully Italian, Portuguese, ecc. as well will be added only if the game get more funding, so you don't get less quests (and by the way I'd go quality over quantity all the time) and other features because the localizations are paid by the extra money put in the kickstarter.

 

By the way, I would have little problems with playing the game in English, but I'd rather play it in my native language (which is Italian, by the way) if possibile.

[Macbeth]

I'd rather be ignorant with more quests in English than enlightened with half the quests but all of them fully playable in Swahili. But that's just me.

 

First off all, no one should ‘rather be ignorant’ for any reason.

 

Second, you’re not going to miss a minute of gameplay because of extra localisations. Company finances don’t work that way. There are budgets for development, marketing, localisation etc. and one doesn’t necessarily influence the other.

 

What will happen is that they’ll make Project Eternity and it will be huge in scope and by the end with deadlines looming they’ll have to cut certain regions/quests and so forth. This procedure is inherent to the nature of game development. Whether the end result is available in three languages or in thirty doesn’t change this at all.

[Ryuzaki]

I'd rather be ignorant with more quests in English than enlightened with half the quests but all of them fully playable in Swahili. But that's just me.

 

First off all, no one should ‘rather be ignorant’ for any reason.

 

Second, you’re not going to miss a minute of gameplay because of extra localisations. Company finances don’t work that way. There are budgets for development, marketing, localisation etc. and one doesn’t necessarily influence the other.

 

What will happen is that they’ll make Project Eternity and it will be huge in scope and by the end with deadlines looming they’ll have to cut certain regions/quests and so forth. This procedure is inherent to the nature of game development. Whether the end result is available in three languages or in thirty doesn’t change this at all.

 

 

Normally, the standard location for the videogame, at least here in Europe, with Multi 5 English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

We do not understand why in this case they have forgotten Italian.

Or translate into Multi 3 (English, French and German) or Multi 5 with Italian.

[vattghern]

translations, even high profile ones, are usually far below the original writing quality, which can put a serious damper on a text/dialogue heavy game like this

 

plus who doesn't speak or at least understand english in this day and age?

 

imo they should spend their resources on something else

[Semper]

I'd rather be ignorant with more quests in English than enlightened with half the quests but all of them fully playable in Swahili. But that's just me.

 

i'd rather want obsidian to be successful with their ip than 5 additional quests... besides the fact that the stretch goal includes a whole new region, faction, quests, lore and items. localization is just a little part of it.

[Macbeth]

Normally, the standard location for the videogame, at least here in Europe, with Multi 5 English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

We do not understand why in this case they have forgotten Italian.

Or translate into Multi 3 (English, French and German) or Multi 5 with Italian.

 

I don’t think you need worry about it too much as yet. German, French and Spanish translations are a given, but I would be surprised if in the end Italian, Russian and even Oriental localisations will follow.

 

Obsidian is an American company, yes, but the CRPG-market’s biggest base is still good old Europe. Like I said in the Update 8 thread: foregoing the German translation alone would be waving goodbye to a few hundreds of thousands of sales. 2.2m deadline or not, that localisation is going to happen!

 

Italian, well, that may indeed depend on budget that is freed for localisation of the game in general.

[Humanoid]

A lot of discussion presupposes multiple language support to be done as a favour instead of being a business decision. Is it? Is it a net loss in terms of pledged development funds against the extra amount gained? Is it a net loss post-release in terms of additional sales? Is it even a loss in terms of personnel-hours towards the core game? Any guess I make would be a completely uneducated one, so I will refrain from doing so, and view all other guesses through the same prism.

[theseez]

Has Obsidian taken note of the possibility to crowdsource translation yet? I notice it's been brought up quite a few times on this forum as well as on the Kickstarter page, but I don't think we've heard anything from them as yet.

[Lusankya]

translations, even high profile ones, are usually far below the original writing quality, which can put a serious damper on a text/dialogue heavy game like this

I see you like the Witcher. I assume you played the game in Polish, right? And you hated the developers for "wasting money" on an English translation?

 

plus who doesn't speak or at least understand english in this day and age?

More than you think. In addition, even if you do understand English, maybe it's still more comfortable for you to read large chunks of text in your native language.

 

imo they should spend their resources on something else

I just quote Macbeth:

Second, you’re not going to miss a minute of gameplay because of extra localisations. Company finances don’t work that way. There are budgets for development, marketing, localisation etc. and one doesn’t necessarily influence the other.

 

What will happen is that they’ll make Project Eternity and it will be huge in scope and by the end with deadlines looming they’ll have to cut certain regions/quests and so forth. This procedure is inherent to the nature of game development. Whether the end result is available in three languages or in thirty doesn’t change this at all.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Lusankya

[leshy]

translations, even high profile ones, are usually far below the original writing quality, which can put a serious damper on a text/dialogue heavy game like this

 

I disagree. I've seen a lot of very good translations in games. When I think about it I had the opportunity to play all IE games not in English. It all comes down to hiring someone who has experience in localizing games in the given language. And there is an abundance of such companies in Europe.

 

Normally, the standard location for the videogame, at least here in Europe, with Multi 5 English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

We do not understand why in this case they have forgotten Italian.

Or translate into Multi 3 (English, French and German) or Multi 5 with Italian.

 

I'm also surprised at the exclusion of Italian, after all EFIGS is sort of a standard. However when you think about it English, French and German are most popular foreign languages and Spanish is among the most widely spoken languages in the world. Italian after all doesn't have so many native and/or foreign speakers.

[norolim]

translations, even high profile ones, are usually far below the original writing quality, which can put a serious damper on a text/dialogue heavy game like this

That's as far from true as you can get. As I mentioned here, there are many excellent translations and some are even considered by many to be better than the originals, e.g. Polish localization of Baldur's Gate II. And of course you are completely forgeting that not only games get translated.

 

plus who doesn't speak or at least understand english in this day and age?

I'd say billions of people. You think that's little?

 

imo they should spend their resources on something else

As mentioned by me and others in this and other topics, those are separate resources and additional language version generate additional income.

 

Oh, and by the way. I can see you have Geralt as an avatar. What language did you play The Witcher in, again?

Edited September 25, 2012 by norolim

[Flying Magician]

Learn English.

This.

 

Localizations are the concern of regional distributor; most propably there won't be such thing.

 

Text localization doesn't cost too much

Maybe when you put the text into google translator. Otherwise you have no idea what are you writing about. Let's look at the polish localisation of Planescape Torment, made once by CD Project. A costly challenge for a professional team which took months, high price of end product.

 

An optional amateur translation, made by dedicated fans, is often far better than a cheap 'official' translation.

[Benjamin Breeg]

translations, even high profile ones, are usually far below the original writing quality, which can put a serious damper on a text/dialogue heavy game like this

 

plus who doesn't speak or at least understand english in this day and age?

 

imo they should spend their resources on something else

 

While I prefer to play in English, there are a lot of people who aren't fluent in English. Especilly if someone is older and/or from an former comministic country, since they didn't teach English in school, but Russian for example.

[Macbeth]

A lot of discussion presupposes multiple language support to be done as a favour instead of being a business decision. Is it? Is it a net loss in terms of pledged development funds against the extra amount gained? Is it a net loss post-release in terms of additional sales? Is it even a loss in terms of personnel-hours towards the core game? Any guess I make would be a completely uneducated one, so I will refrain from doing so, and view all other guesses through the same prism.

 

The answer is no to all of them and do speak from experience. Any localisation that is done is based on sales projections. If these are favourable, localisation will go through provided there’s budget for it and the profit is deemed ‘worth it’ in the eyes of company management.

 

As for loss of personnel hours: there is none except for the time put in by producers/localisation managers and this is an integral part of development anyway. Same goes for the programming of multiple language support. But the real big job, the translation itself; this is done by external companies.

 

(Which goes to show once more that the equation of ‘more languages = less quests’ is completely nonsensical. The department of design has nothing to do whatsoever with the process of localisation.)

[vattghern]

why are translations a stretch goal then if adding them is not dependant on the budget?

 

plus you cant compare an obscure language like polish to english. if obs were polish or russian or whatever then i could see the need to translate their game to reach a wider audience, but the way things stand i consider it a waste, and the germans, french etc would be better off playing it in english anyway rather than the inferior version in their native language

[norolim]

[Otherwise you have no idea what are you writing about. Let's look at the Polish localisation of Planescape Torment, made once by CD Projekt. A costly challenge for a professional team which took months, high price of end product.

 

An optional amateur translation, made by dedicated fans, is often far better than a cheap 'official' translation.

 

I'm affraid you don't know what you are writing about. I've seen a few of those translations made by devoted fans, who know some English and...well...little more. A sad joke, really. If you aim at quality, professionals must be involved. Oh, and do you have any sources for the claims about CD Projekt and PST? Did you work on that project?

 

why are translations a stretch goal then if adding them is not dependant on the budget?

 

plus you cant compare an obscure language like polish to english. if obs were polish or russian or whatever then i could see the need to translate their game to reach a wider audience, but the way things stand i consider it a waste, and the germans, french etc would be better off playing it in english anyway rather than the inferior version in their native language

 

Wow. Can you be more ignorant?

Edited September 25, 2012 by norolim

[Macbeth]

why are translations a stretch goal then if adding them is not dependant on the budget?

 

They are an incentive, not a dependency, at least not as far as ‘core’ languages like German, Spanish and French are concerned. I’m almost 100% sure that even if Obsidian does not get a 2.2m backing, these localisations will still be realised. These will earn them a lot more money than they will cost them.