paz12 Posted March 29, 2015 Share Posted March 29, 2015 (edited) I am very dissappointed with the quality of the German texts in the game. I started to play the game in English and I liked the story. Later, I switched to German and I had BIG problems to understand what is actually going on story-wise. I had to read many, many sentences twice of even three times to figure out what was going on. It seems the translators did not know English very well, neither were they able to create normal German sentences. Reading the journal description is like reading the desperate tries of a 15-year old who is totally overwhelmed by the challenge that comes with an ever so slightly more complicated sentence structure. The translators seem unable to break down a sentence into two and will happily create monster sentences that do not make any sense whatsoever. Apart from that the localizing the names creates another ton of confusion, because the names of locations are hard to distinguish from normal nouns. New game terms are translated very strangely: A cipher has been translated into "Medium", which is a perfectly normal and established technical term for somebody who is talking to the spirits of the dead. This term is NOT interesting, or mysterious. As it turns out a cipher is NOT just a medium. Animancy (a word that is quite similar to 'necromancy') has been translated into "Beseelung", which is a) losing the necromancy/science component and b) misleading, because 'Beseelung' in German means "to add a soul into something", which is just one tiny aspect of animancy. Leaden Key: translated to the very awkward 'Bleierner Schlüssel'. Simply calling it 'Bleischlüssel' would have been much easier to handle grammar wise. +20 defense during knock-down: +20 Verteidigung (=defense) während (=during) Niedergeschlagenheit (=feeling gloomy) Again: This is a translator that is incompetent: If there is no noun or expression for "during knock-down" ways must be found to improvise. It's not that hard: +20 Verteidigung bei Niederschlag (=when a knock-down occurs, in German). To sum it up: The translation of PoE is a word for word translation. It keeps the sentence structure at all costs, resulting in a text that is little better than edited google translate. Edited March 29, 2015 by paz12 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nirei Posted March 29, 2015 Share Posted March 29, 2015 (edited) It's not that hard: +20 Verteidigung bei Niederschlag (=when a knock-down occurs, in German). Sorry man, but this would translate to +20 Defence during Precipitation And "Niederschlag" (Precipitation) as a weather condition having effect on defence would be a weird translation in this context. (Maybe a better word would be "Bewusstlosigkeit"/unconsciousness/blackout) Looks like it is really difficult to get translations right :D Edited March 29, 2015 by nirei Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magistrat Posted March 29, 2015 Share Posted March 29, 2015 I've played 2 hours, yet. The complete localization is really bad for german. It begins with the button labels and ends with the dialogs. Almost in every dialog is a mistake. Grammar or Typo. You have to fix that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paz12 Posted March 29, 2015 Author Share Posted March 29, 2015 (edited) It's not that hard: +20 Verteidigung bei Niederschlag (=when a knock-down occurs, in German). Sorry man, but this would translate to +20 Defence during Precipitation And "Niederschlag" (Precipitation) as a weather condition having effect on defence would be a weird translation in this context. (Maybe a better word would be "Bewusstlosigkeit"/unconsciousness/blackout) Looks like it is really difficult to get translations right :D Haha, I'm sorry, but "Niederschlag" is a perfectly normal term frequently used in boxing: "Stieglitz: Niederschlag kurz vor Ende" (http://www.ran.de/boxen/video/stieglitz-niederschlag-kurz-vor-ende-clip). "Niedergeschlagenheit" however, when used in boxing, is a feeling of disappointment since the fight was lost and all the pain has been in vain :D Edited March 29, 2015 by paz12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antagonyst Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 There's a reason why I always chose an English original when available. No matter if we're talking about games, movies, books, German translations (or maybe translations in general) are way to often just outright bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zwiebelchen Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) There's a reason why I always chose an English original when available. No matter if we're talking about games, movies, books, German translations (or maybe translations in general) are way to often just outright bad. This is simply not true and a typical elitist's comment. Books and movies are usually translated very well. It's more or less only games and eastern animations that are lacking in quality. Obviously, you often can't translate puns into another language freely. That's why a translated version of, f.ex. How I Met Your Mother is inferior to the original. Nevertheless it's still a very good translation job. There is a term for that which is "Lost in Translation". Edited March 30, 2015 by Zwiebelchen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaydee.2k Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Thinking of Wasteland 2 the german translation of "Pillars" is outstanding in my opinion. =D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zwiebelchen Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Btw, there's a community fix for some of the worst offenders of the german localization here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71899-translation-errors-missing-translations-german/page-3 Pho currently provides us with free updates on this. Check it out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazou Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) I have to agree to this topic. Some stuff is really annoying to read and you have to start over and over again. Spotted also missing letters and so on and so on.... What is also very annoying are the damage type names when hitting an enemy: "... streift Aloth für 5 schockt Schaden." -> correction -> "... streift Aloth für 5 Schockschaden." "... streift Aloth für 5 sticht Schaden." -> correction -> "... streift Aloth für 5 Stichschaden." "... streift Aloth für 5 schmettert Schaden." -> correction -> "... streift Aloth für 5 Schmetterschaden." "... streift Aloth für 5 haut Schaden." -> correction -> "... streift Aloth für 5 Hiebschaden." This is not a cosmetic thing, it's simply wrong and not German at all. (At first I thought "haut Schaden" means "skin damage". ) Edited March 30, 2015 by Jazou Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darji Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) The German Translation is sadly really bad. Sometimes you do not even know what they even wanted to say in these conversations.... I tried the first 2 hours to Play in German but it was just too much for me. ... But thats not something i really care about to be honest because english is really good and i have no Problems understanding. Edited March 30, 2015 by Darji Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antagonyst Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 This is simply not true and a typical elitist's comment. Thanks for calling me an elitist just because I happen to have an opinion that differs from yours Note that I didn't say that all translations are bad translations. I used the phrase 'way to often' for a reason. And that has been my experience. Going back to reading/watching something in German after having read/watched it in English I often stumble over stuff that's been translated incorrectly. And I'm not talking about jokes and word plays that needed to be changed. I get that. I'm talking about proverbs and phrases that were translated word for word. Stuff that seemingly got translated by somebody who doesn't understand what was happening in the original. There is more than one TV show that I was happily watching dubbed for years and today I just can't anymore because it's glaring how little the dubbed version has to do with the original. And let's not forget jargon... I have a book here about the history of IT ('Eine kleine Geschichte der EDV') that (amongst other stuff) mistranslates 'random access memory'. If that hasn't been your experience: Good for you. But I have to insist that this has been my experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Relmmes Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) I have to admit. Besides some obvious wrong wording / incorrect words there is something going on with the german translation that makes it stressful / unpleasant to read. I decided to go back to the english version as well. Even though I don't get the meaning of every word I do get a better overall sense of what's going on / the atmosphere. PoE is very 'technically' translated, it lacks personality and it does not 'flow' in a native speaker way. Is it on the whole even made by humans? Edited March 30, 2015 by Relmmes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazou Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 (edited) My english is not that bad, but there are still a few words I don't understand. I think if I don't understand everything, I will miss some important stuff. But the more I'm playing the more I'm thinking that I miss important stuff with the German translation too. I'm pretty sure the translator wasn't a German native and considering the amount of text in this game, a native translator would have been a great choice. Maybe nexttime. Nevertheless - it's a great game! -- Edit: Just found another one. "Ich hätte gerne eine Zimmer" - this is really bad. Not even that kind of simple sentences are correct. I will try English from now on and if it doesn't fit for my english skills, I will try the mod for german corrections. Edited March 30, 2015 by Jazou Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harrumph Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Is it on the whole even made by humans? Probably not. Game companies are too cheap to hire real translators (in fairness, good translators are quite expensive), so they do "computer-assisted translation," which is actually more like human-assisted machine translation. Basically a slightly more sophisticated version of Google Translate with somebody who (ostensibly) speaks both languages correcting anything egregiously bad the program spits out. I was offered a job at a games publisher here in Berlin translating from German to English using such software—all I had to do was translate a few sample paragraphs; we didn't even speak German in the interview (I didn't take the job). My German is pretty good, but I'm not fluent and certainly not capable of translating colloquial speech correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausir Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 No idea about German, but I can confirm that at least the Polish translation was done by real humans, including myself. 1 Pillars of Eternity Wiki * The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Wasteland 2 Wiki Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ColinaX47 Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 The german translation is really bad. Not as bad as Wasteland 2 was, but its bad enought to complain about it. And there are many spelling mistakes besides the translation errors. You just have to play a few minutes to find the first errors. I think it was made in a big hurry and there was not much time to check the translation before release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausir Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Thankfully, the reception of the Polish translation has been positive so far (there have been some small errors, but hopefully they'll be fixed in future patches). Pillars of Eternity Wiki * The Vault - Fallout Wiki * Wasteland 2 Wiki Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ColinaX47 Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Thankfully, the reception of the Polish translation has been positive so far (there have been some small errors, but hopefully they'll be fixed in future patches). Thats good to know, but my Polish is even worse than my English. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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