The title says it all. But before I go on a rant and point out the most critical issues (that need to be adressed ASAP; as there is press looking at this game right now and germany is a big gaming market), let me just tell you that the dialogues themselves are acceptable. No, really, every contextual text block has been decently translated.

 

However, everything that doesn't have a context, in other words: system messages and gameplay elements look like horrible, horrible google translations.

 

Here are the worst offenders:

 

Character attributes

 

'Constitution' has a weird translation. Just use "Konstitution" and be done with it.

'Dexterity' was translated with "Gewandheit". Use "Geschicklichkeit" instead. This is btw also what every single dictionary suggests first; why go for the least likely translation?

 

Combat log

Every friggin' damage text! The words "Piercing damage", "crushing damage", etc. were translated as verbs, not nouns! This leads to weird gibberish like:

 

"Haut Schaden"

which would, translated back to english mean:

"crushes/skins damage"

 

So, again, here's how it should look like:

 

"Piercing" --> "Stich"

"Crushing" --> "Wucht"

"Slashing" --> "Hieb"

 

 

Item names

This is by far the worst issue:

Every second item in the game has wrong string references for it's name. A Hunting bow has the name "Intellekt +2" instead of "Hunting Bow". Yes, I'm not making that up. This is confusing as hell for new players, as they will assume the item is enchanted with +attribute.

Fix this asap please!

 

Flavour texts

Every second flavour text has wrong formatting. Grey and white are completely mixed up most of the time. Very often the grey for a flavour text mixes up with the white for direct speech, making it extremely hard to read as the double quotes imply something is direct speech, but it's marked as a flavour text and vice versa. Also, there's plenty of double quotes missing completely.

This is especially offending at the beginning of the game, where almost every single dialogue has loads of flavour text. Fortunately, it getting better at later points in the game when the flavour text gets more scarce (I never liked it anyway ... I wish Obsidian would go back to BG-style direct speech only).

 

Dialogue-voiceover disparity

I know that this was a budget decision, but it's extremely confusing to read german dialogue (which you, as a german, will understand) and listen to english voiceover at the same time (which, again, most germans will understand aswell). This creates an enormous disconnect between hearing and seeing, which makes dialogue really hard to understand. I have absolutely no trouble watching japanese anime with subtitles (as I don't speak japanese), but watching english with subtitles is confusing as hell, as you understand both and your brain can not concentrate on one of the perceived languages completely, mixing things up, not understanding anything.

I mostly couldn't read anything until the voiceover was done playing. It's like someone constantly screaming in your ears when you are trying to read a book. It doesn't work (Imho, for a 45€ off-the-shelf game, not having german voiceovers is unacceptable, but that's another story).

At least give us an option to disable the english voiceover in dialogues when activating the localization!

I tried decreasing the speech volume but that also disables voiceovers that I don't want removed (outside of dialogues).

 

 

I ended up switching back to english, as the german localization was painful in every imaginable way. Sometimes even outright unplayable (system messages are virtually unreadable). Please fix this ASAP!

Edited March 27, 201510 yr by Zwiebelchen

 And i found someting weird thing see in this Screenshot:

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=414571331 

 

This _xoooD_  ???? ^^

I found two more missing translations. when entering the profession window it says "Amount" instead of "Anzahl" . And when rightclicking an item it says "Enchant" instead of "Verzaubern"

Hi,

 

found another one :

 

I played a male charakter and Calisca called me a Nomadin ( female ). Nomade is a male.

Added a image bellow.

Edited March 27, 201510 yr by Doom-ak

Bump for visibility. The combat log and item names are extremely immersion-breaking and will certainly cause point-deductions in reviews if not fixed ASAP! The other stuff is lower priority but this is urgent!

The most immersion breaking issue is that "Du" resp. "Sie" instead of "Ihr". I'm playing the english version because of that.

Edited March 27, 201510 yr by Graham

I agree 100% Intellekt as Weapons name needs to be fixed. I also need an option to deactivate voice overs as listening to englisch and simultaneously trying to read in german is impossible as hell

Sollte seitens Obsidian nichts passieren kann man die Übersetzung auch selbst in die Hand nehmen.

 

Unter C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Pillars of Eternity\PillarsOfEternity_Data\data\localized\de\text

 

sind alle Dateien enthalten, die man braucht.   Beispiel: Im Ordner Game befindet sich die STRINGTABLE-Datei "Items"

Einfach Intellekt +2 suchen und auf Jagdbogen ändern. Oder Entschlossenheit +3 auf Zweihänder ändern.

 

 

 

Gruß

 

Doom

 

 

 

My highlight are the specialization descriptions for now.

 

As the item names in the description string have a completely different description than in the overview section.

 

 

"Trainiert den Charakter im Einsatz von Säbel, Stilett, Knüppel, Pistole und Donnerbüchse,..."

 

Effekte:

Selbst: +6 Genauigkeit (Intellekt - 1, Stilett, Keule, Entschlossenheit +2, Donnerbüchse)

 

 

Not just the obviois things like the Intellekt and Entschlossenheit translations. But also Knüppel->Keule...how can that happen?

Edited March 27, 201510 yr by Kordanor

I agree, the german translation is annoying and breaks immersion. You constantly have to read every text twice and guess what it means. 

I agree also,

i played it yesterday in german. I will switch tonight to english. Its not really playable and fun with the funny weapon names and item descriptions.

 

That could have been done better. Obsidina go to Paradox and give them that feedback.

Bump for visibility.

 

@Doom-ak: nice find! At least this is a temporary solution until we get an official fix.

There are indeed tons of errors in the transcript. That's why I'd like to make a suggestion:

Instead of posting any single mistake here, why not open an offical portal where 1) everything is more structured (so that no one needs to check whether his or her mistake has already be mentioned) and 2) where everyone can contribute.

I'm thinking of something similar like https://translations.launchpad.net/

Autsch, in der Items Datei sind ja mind. 30 Gegenstände total daneben. Immerhin sind es Klartext dateien, übersetzen war noch nie so einfach

 

Crossreferenz: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71899-translation-errors-missing-translations-german/

 

I put there a patch file for the stringtable.

Edited March 27, 201510 yr by Xaratas

So far (some hours into game) I find the translation not bad (some dialogues are very fluent and really nice to read), but there are some very obvious translation mistakes (gender specific just for example). Some mistakes seem as thou the translator got some text without any context and therefore no chance to get it right or there is no common terminology all translators have access to. Translations are often outsourced and quantity counts more than quality. It is not always the translator to blame for an insuffiecient translation.

You can't deliver quality without context and enough time for the translation. But time is money, they say ...

This is just my personal view as a professional translator.
 

For a video game translator it would be paradies to play test a game during translation (to have context when you struggle with one single word without any context - often in the UI)! From my experience only fan based projects offer this luxury.

 

 

PS:

Specifically, I personally have no problem with "Gewandheit". It is also used as an attribute in the German "Das Schwarze Auge" (The Dark Eye) - THE pen and paper role playing game originating from Germany.

Edited March 27, 201510 yr by Cryss

If I already downloaded the german version, is it still possible to change it to english. I don't want to play the game that way. It's not just the errors, the whole translation is cheesy.

@Lord_Mord: If you haven't found it out on your own, you can change the language on the fly via the option menu.

Right now the translation is a love-hate for me. Some dialogues feel pretty good translated but then there are sentences that don't make any sense at all. There are multiple things that are just horrible.
For example: I found a tattered note in a box. In english it says :"I need you to deliver (and so on)". In german it says Tapferkeit +15 with the title Tapferkeit +10 instead of tattered note. Get your tables right translators (Think its probably just a swapped item translation). Another example would be the signpost in Esternwood. "East to Raedric's Hold West to Gilded Vale" which means that Raedric's Hold is east of the sign and Gilded Vale west of the sign. But the german translation says the complete opposite. Please Obsidian, fix thoses things besides all the other mentioned things in this thread :/. (Typus are bearable but shouldn't be in a finished product at all).

 

Most of the translation is not game breaking and you still get sucked into the world, but the bugs are annoying and need fixing. I also agree with Graham on the "Ihr" thing.

 

PS: I like "Gewandheit" though. I know most other games translate dex into Geschicklichkeit, but Gewandheit has a nice touch IMO.

Can you guys switch to the original English version? Because I can't.

@popkhorne i have no problem to switch the languages.

I overlooked the option. But I had no problem switching languages. It is VERY much better now.