Spanish not equal Spain, the project spanish page is wrong for 350 millions of people

Previously I've say the translations are a waste of time specially for Spanish.

Well Today I've visited the Spanish page for the project:

http://eternity.obsidian.net/es/

 

Obsidian you translated for Spain , so? Well happens more than 400 millions of people talks Spanish in the world but just 47 million lives in Spain. The biggest quantity of spanish speakers lives in North, Central and South America: From Mexico to Argentina.

That page for example use verbs and adjectives in the way just Spain uses it. This can be ok for the project page but not for the game. For a game with a lot of dialogue this can be awful.

 

I hope if you translate it go the a "neutral" spanish as a lot of movies.

well, i think they will not translate it themselfs, and any company that does translations for them hopefully knows such specifics well enough to do the right thing

out of interest: how are translations in most other computer games done in spanish? are they also having words specific for spain and not the whole spnish speaking world?

Hey guess what? British english and American english differ in a lot of ways ... should all of our friends from the empire demand an Anglicanized version of the website too?

 

Ah, love these first world problems.

It is true that when it comes to Spanish translations we have REALLY segregated markets. On the one hand we have "latin Spanish" which strives to be "neutral" and is accepted and consumed in all of Spanish-speaking latin american countries, and then a completely independent Spanish translation produced in and catering to Spain (as far as I know Spain was into the whole "neutral" Spanish thing until Franco's regime deemed that to be... bad). So, any given animated series that is dubbed for example, will have one dub for Spain and a different and independently produced one for Latin America (does this happen, say, with a german series entering Britain, America and Australia??).

 

While it's true that one form of Spanish is jarring to the "other side", I must say that it isn't *so* jarring when it comes to subtitles or written text. Not to mention that translating the game TWICE into Spanish is rather silly.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Tychoxi

The real question is: how many Obsidian fans live in Spain and how does this number compare to other Spanish-speaking players? There was a poll which showed that the majority of backers are European, North America taking second place.

 

As an Argentinian, can you easily understand European Spanish? Would it really bother you if Obsidian settled for this version, or is it just an inconvenience (similar to AmE vs. BrE)?

@niko

well, the whole creation of project eternety is quite the first world problem isn't it?

can't see the starving folks in africa hunger for a party based RPG THAT much

Edited October 15, 2012 by lolaldanee

out of interest: how are translations in most other computer games done in spanish? are they also having words specific for spain and not the whole spnish speaking world?

 

In general they make always the mistake Spanish=Spain so the translations are weird and awful. The differences are not subtle so I always prefer to play just in English.

Y si pudieras poner un ejemplo especifico de lo que hablas, entonces dire si exclude a hispanos de otras nacionalidades.

Hey guess what? British english and American english differ in a lot of ways ... should all of our friends from the empire demand an Anglicanized version of the website too?

 

Ah, love these first world problems.

 

Obviously said by someone who doesn't speak Espanol at all. British and American English are nearly the same when it comes to sentence syntax. As an American, I can understand anything written in British English, but as an person who learned Mexican Spanish, I have a hard time following some Spanish material from Spain.

Edited October 15, 2012 by bonarbill

As a response

As an Argentinian, can you easily understand European Spanish? Would it really bother you if Obsidian settled for this version, or is it just an inconvenience (similar to AmE vs. BrE)?

 

I know about the difference between AmE and BrE but this is different, this isn't an inconvenience a lot of verbs as adjectives has a very different meaning, as example the verb "coger" for Spain that verb implies to take a thing in Argentina the uses of that verb implies to have sex.

Hey guess what? British english and American english differ in a lot of ways ...

 

Yep, some minor spelling differences make Brit English and American English differ in a lot of ways....and when I say different in a lot of ways, I mean not that much of a different at all.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Bill Gates' Son

Ah, love these first world problems.

 

I didn't see a single first world country in his post

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Hey guess what? British english and American english differ in a lot of ways ...

 

Yep, some minor spelling differences make Brit English and American English differ in a lot of ways....and when I say different in a lot of ways, I mean not that much of a different at all.

 

Phrases, how we say things, different cultural experiences, there's quite a difference.

Unless someone's speaking entirely in rhyming slang, it doesn't really compare to the different dialects of a lot of other languages...

Unless someone's speaking entirely in rhyming slang, it doesn't really compare to the different dialects of a lot of other languages...

 

West Country, Scotland, Yorkshire, Wales, and Cornwall are vastly different to other places, they have their own words and phrases that other people in the United Kingdom are not familiar with at all. I'm sure the United States is the same, I've watched Treme and The Wire, they have language you don't see in the more mainstream shows.

Edited October 15, 2012 by AwesomeOcelot

I didn't see a single first world country in his post

You didn't see Spain in his post about the Spanish language?

The real question is: how many Obsidian fans live in Spain and how does this number compare to other Spanish-speaking players? There was a poll which showed that the majority of backers are European, North America taking second place.

 

As an Argentinian, can you easily understand European Spanish? Would it really bother you if Obsidian settled for this version, or is it just an inconvenience (similar to AmE vs. BrE)?

 

As a fellow Argentino, i can say i never ever ever have i used a Spain Spanish translation in any game, it feels so strange for me that i prefer it in English. And most of the time they are aweful translations that make me want to take my eyes out.

 

But in the end they are better that nothing for people that dont know the native language of the game. So anything we got that will help the game have more fans its fine by me!

Hey guess what? British english and American english differ in a lot of ways ...

 

Yep, some minor spelling differences make Brit English and American English differ in a lot of ways....and when I say different in a lot of ways, I mean not that much of a different at all.

 

Phrases, how we say things, different cultural experiences, there's quite a difference.

 

Yeah but for the most part I understood British TV shows and books and anything I didn't know I figured out quick enough.

Hey guess what? British english and American english differ in a lot of ways ...

 

Yep, some minor spelling differences make Brit English and American English differ in a lot of ways....and when I say different in a lot of ways, I mean not that much of a different at all.

 

Phrases, how we say things, different cultural experiences, there's quite a difference.

 

Yeah but for the most part I understood British TV shows and books and anything I didn't know I figured out quick enough.

 

Yeah, it's not really a translation issue, and I'm unsure whether the Spanish/Americas issue is a translation issue or like the American/British issue. It's pretty off putting for me to listen to a game like Dragon Age: Origins where some of the stuff looks Medieval but they're speaking with American accents. It's even worse with something like How to Train Your Dragon where they have Scottish accents (a bit strange for Vikings but then not that strange considering there were Vikings in Scotland) but the teenagers had American accents. Yet it's hard for me to argue they should do a different version of that movie, it's made in the United States.

The fact about different varieties of Spanish happen with all the major languages when they are spoken in different parts of the world. In Spain, the Spanish we use differ in many ways with the Spanish used in Argentina, but both varieties are perfectly understandable among them. I can give word for that, I am the admin of a forum with both Spanish and Latin American users, and there never happened a case in which communication was impossible, or the meaning of a sentence was severely misunderstood. Of course we use different varieties of the language, but if any text should be translated into the different varieties of a given language, any translator should take into acount dialects, or even sociolects (different varieties of the language spoken by different social classes).

 

That would of course be a nightmare, and unfeasible by the way.

 

And the same happens with English, or French.

 

The ultimate goal when translating a game is to make it understandable to people speaking that language. If the translation is made into traditional Spanish (Spain's Spanish) it is understandable for Latin American Spanish speakers. If it's made the other way round, happens the same.

 

I'm pretty happy the game is translated into Spanish. I can understand and speak or write English, even translate into Spanish (I've a university degree in Translation) but many people I know can't, and I'm happy for them, because they will be able to play the game. And many of those people are Latin American users in our community, of course.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Jesugandalf

Dragon Age: Origins where some of the stuff looks Medieval but they're speaking with American accents.

 

I'm not an expert on accents, but I'm pretty sure most Fereldon native born humans in Dragon Age the had English accents and were voiced by real English voice actors. I think it was only the Dwarves and Elves that had American accents.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Bill Gates' Son

As far as I know it's only translated and not dubbed, text doesn't have any accent, the only difference is that you won't read common central/south American expressions like "che" "chingo", "weon", "pinche", etc

 

Also, one of the reasons why a lot of games are dubbed into Spanish "from Spain" is because of sales, the video-game industry sells more in Spain than in Italy for example and almost as much as in Germany, despite having less population. Very few companies would risk the investment of dubbing into any central/south American Spanish variant.

 

In the end it's all about the money.

I'm from Costa Rica and don't see any problem with the spanish in that page. Are you really having trouble understanding it?

Edited October 15, 2012 by ositoster

As far as I know it's only translated and not dubbed, text doesn't have any accent, the only difference is that you won't read common central/south American expressions like "che" "chingo", "weon", "pinche", etc

 

Also, one of the reasons why a lot of games are dubbed into Spanish "from Spain" is because of sales, the video-game industry sells more in Spain than in Italy for example and almost as much as in Germany, despite having less population. Very few companies would risk the investment of dubbing into any central/south American Spanish variant.

 

In the end it's all about the money.

 

If it's about the money, then these videogame would take the risk of dubbing in Mexico and South American market. The Mexico videogame market has been making billions of dollars every year from what I know as a video game developer, and it's still growing. Even Brazil (a country that speaks Portuguese) has one of the fastest growing videogame markets in the world, especially in Online gaming (League of Legends had to create a Brazil server because there were so many Brazilians on the North American server).