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Obsidian’s 10th Extra Life Anniversary

Translations

jerf
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1697 members have voted

  1. 1. Translation to which languages should be a priority in your opinion (in addition to English, French, German and Spanish, which are already confirmed)?

    • Dutch
      39
    • Chinese
      279
    • Italian
      561
    • Japanese
      115
    • Korean
      46
    • Portuguese
      89
    • Polish
      406
    • Russian
      351
    • Turkish
      312
    • Other (specify in comments)
      66

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Rosveen

Rosveen

Posted
Posted (edited)

When software companies ask for money, we pay in euro not in rubles.

I speak English and I also want to improve my level of learning, but I'm Italian, I speak Italian and I want to be respected.

You are respected, every player is. But Obsidian has limited resources and they have to make a choice: more content? More translations? If yes, then which languages?

These are difficult decisions and I believe they did the best possible thing: they're going to release tools that the community can use to translate the game themselves into every language imaginable.

 

 

has anyone noticed that the percentages of each option of the poll are incorrect? :facepalm:

They are correct. You can cast multiple votes, so the number of voters (828) doesn't equal the number of votes (1117). Percentages are calculated from the second value.

Edited by Rosveen
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Emeraude

Emeraude

Posted
Posted

This thread really makes wonder what the actual market happens to be for that kind of game in Asia... I do not doubt that Chinese, Japanese and Korean people play these games (the same way we have enthusiasts from the rest of the world who import and play *their* niche games) but truly I wonder how widespread the practice happen to be.

 

Just fishing for info if anyone knows.

 

And yes, as Hopper mentioned, the reason we so often get bad/poor translations happens to be the conditions in which the translations are being done. Multiple translators with no centralized editors, context-less text dumps, very short delays, less rare today, but still happens: the necessity to translate texts in an equivalent number of characters, arbitrary local censorship from publisher policies...

 

Really admire Alexander O. Smith for his work at Square Enix on that front. And I don't mean just his actual translation work, but his convincing them of the importance of having the translation process being an integral part of the production pipeline.

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AGX-17

AGX-17

Posted
Posted (edited)

Certainly Russian and Italian should be priorities, no? Followed by Chinese/Japanese/Korean I would think, if only because speakers of those languages are so much less likely to know English.

 

I don't even know why they bother to hire people to do professional translations though. Not that I don't think the game should be translated (I think it absolutely should), I just think having a large volunteer base help them with it would actually be cheaper & better quality. Volunteers care the most. Like, if they asked me to translate it into French I would be there in a heartbeat, no pension required.

 

Rudimentary English education is mandatory in the Japanese school system, but it really doesn't stick unless the student intends to get involved in international business. It's also encouraged among the Chinese who can get an education (something highly valued by Han society, but not available to the impoverished majority of a 1.3bn population,) but, facts being facts, they'd just pirate it anyway. I've seen a few Japanese Let's Play style video series of Fallout and Dragon Age: Origins, So there is a potential market. When it comes to Western games, things like Fallout 3, NV and Skyrim definitely do much better than the classics.

 

Korea's (south, of course, don't want Kim Jong Un kidnapping the Obsidian team to force them to make games for him,) the best bet as far as Eastern translations, if the popularity of genres similar to the IE games is anything to go by. If the money was there from the start, and highly fluent translators available, I'd say go for more Eastern language translations. After all, with a game funded in advance, you don't have much of anything to lose on a risk like Japanese, Mandarin or Korean translations.

 

As far as volunteers go, there can be legal issues, as well as quality issues. It's true that passion can help a lot, but inexperience can also hurt a lot.

Edited by AGX-17
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Maf

Maf

Posted
Posted (edited)

1. Polish, Italian, Russian seems like the best candidates (and I'm dutch).

 

2. I would HIGHLY recommend allowing exotic/asian characters with the font however, as well as moddable text.

This way fan communities can translate the game themselves in whatever language they seem fit.

 

As a note though, I'd rather they choose option 2 and not spend money into any more translations (depending on cost).

Edited by Maf
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Gokyabgu

Gokyabgu

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hi, I'm working as a project manager ar 23 Studios, Turkey's leading game localization studio. RPGs are my obsession as a gamer and my specialty as as an interpreter. My last RPG project was The Witcher 2 (apart from several MMORPGs). Knowing that Obsidian is working on a RPG in the veins of legendary IE games is a dream that comes true for me, and I definitely want to work on the Turkish localization if Obsidian will decide to localize the game into Turkish. I can easily say you can't find more professional and experienced localization company in Turkey than us.

 

Gökhan Hali Düzgün

Project Manager at 23 Studios

gokhan@23studios.org

Edited by Gokyabgu
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frankdd89

frankdd89

Posted
Posted

I've pledged the project, I have no problem into speaking, reading and understanding english. But it will also be nice to have the possibility to play this game in Italian for all the people who are not fully comfortable with english. Please Obsidian, if some Language did not make to get into the game encourage a open translation project hosted on a site like https://www.transifex.com. So the community can work together to bring those languages into the game.

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