French translation (and other languages)

[Biberon]

Sorry if there is another topic about that, and sorry for my bad english.

First I am a huge fan of BG and PoE. I played a lot the first PoE, the white march, and preorder the second. I am not here to spit on the game.

BUT

French trad is awfull...

- Phrases that have no meaning,
- bug on descriptions,
- words not there it should be
- untraducted things
...

I will stop here.

I mean I love the game, but I have to play it in english to really enjoy it, actually in french you're totally out the game because of the translation.

More important, some of this things were already said back in PoE. I am really disapointed about how non english people have to adapt to the game (and only english voices)

Is there something said by Obsidian I have missed ? Do they plan to do something about this ?

Again, I love PoE, and sorry for mistakes.

Ps: Obsidian, change your french translator, or stop using google trad, or be sure that the one translating it speaks french

Edited May 9, 2018 by Biberon

[Elarie]

C'est tres bizarre parce que beaucoup d'erreurs sont correct avec google, mais avec Obsidian, non.

[vanyel54]

Bon je fais bien de le jouer en anglais alors...

[Messier-31]

Je ne comprends pas.

[Sedrefilos]

Je ne comprends pas.

...rien!

[Amentep]

I think there's a thread in the Technical support about problems with the French translation as well -

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/97598-french-localization-traduction-fran%C3%A7aise/

[xzar_monty]

This is no surprise. I wrote the following reply to a thread complaining about the terrible quality of the Italian translation. Here goes:

 

I feel your pain. Here's the thing. I'm a professional translator. I've translated about 70 books in the past 20 years. Dickens, Wilde, Pynchon, Doyle, Dylan Thomas -- also biographies of Disney, McCartney, Cleese, Salinger, Stalin's daughter. Fantasy or sci-fi wise I've translated Scott Lynch, Gene Wolfe, stuff like that. And so on. Hard stuff, demanding stuff, literary stuff.

 

First, my sense is that the understanding of foreign languages within Obsidian is either zero or very close to zero. After all, it's a North American company. I am prepared to stand corrected and take this back as soon as someone demonstrates that I am in error. I have an apology ready.

 

Second, I'm guessing that Obsidian are paying peanuts, if that, for the foreign translators. Consequently, what you're likely to get are Google translations quickly scanned through and edited in a hurry, if at all.

 

Third, because of point #1, there will be no quality control at Obsidian. Nobody will know, nobody will care.

 

The result is that unless there is someone with enormous dedication working on your particular foreign language, you are almost certain to receive a piece of cr*p. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.

[theBalthazar]

When you love your language. It is hurt.

 

French trad is a total shame. No more, no less.

 

I hope french testers will not impose sanction too much in their rating...

 

Pour ceux qui parlent français, perso, si vous maitrisez l'anglais un minimum, pour l'instant, faites le en Anglais, ça vaut mieux : p

Edited May 9, 2018 by theBalthazar

[Biberon]

Honnêtement, je l'ai dit plus ou moins sérieusement dans mon message, mais je suis réellement très en colère quand je vois la qualité de la traduction. C'est pas du boulot et n'importe quelle compagnie devrait avoir honte de rendre un torchon pareil.

 

Il y a une grande différence entre faire le boulot, avoir quelques bugs et se moquer du monde non anglophone. Ils osent dire que le jeu est traduit en 10 langues? Au bout de 30 min de jeu je me suis rendu compte que aucun francophone n'avait travaillé dessus, c'est impossible.

 

C'est extrêmement préoccupant parce que:

- c'est pas nouveau (on a tous vu les problèmes de traductions dans PoE et on a les même )

- c'est pire

- ça casse complètement le mur du jeu. On a un univers magnifique, incroyable, dans lequel on veut s'investir et se plonger, mais non, c'est juste imbuvable. Et pour moi c'est le plus grave. Et on dirait que les français ne sont pas les seuls concernés.

 

Je suis déçu déçu déçu, c'est LE point noir du jeu, à mon avis. L'immersion est brisée des les premières minutes...

[Biberon]

The result is that unless there is someone with enormous dedication working on your particular foreign language, you are almost certain to receive a piece of cr*p. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.

 

 It should not be like this. I mean, PoE is 50% reading, I am playing the game as I am reading a book, would you read "The laords of the Grings"? this is just an unfinished work.

 

I'm pretty upset, this is an insult to Europeans and non english speakers considering how much time and money they spent to make a full VO. I'm not asking for a full French/ German/ Spanish voiced game..., but this is not correct.

 

PoE had the same issue, and seeing they don't care about us at all is pretty sad. If I want a game with nobrain dialogues, I'll go for CoD or Diablo. I finished playing PoE in english, with a dictionnary to help me when I needed, and I don't want that AGAIN. I payed for an incredible and fabulous world, not for a google trad.

 

This totally breaks the game immersion, and that's pretty sad and disappointing to have your first Deadfire experience ruined by a shi*** trad.

 

I can't understand how Obsidian could make such a mistake.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Biberon

[xzar_monty]

Of course it should not be like this. But I already explained why it is like this. To put it even more simply:

 

1) The folks at Obsidian probably have no understanding of languages other than English.

2) Languages other than English are not important enough for them, so the translators are paid peanuts, if that.

3) Obsidian cannot do any quality control on the translations, because there's nobody in-house who speaks foreign languages.

 

I agree that it is a travesty. The honest way to do it would be to completely refrain from making any translations, if there are no resources for making good ones.

[Biberon]

Of course it should not be like this. But I already explained why it is like this. To put it even more simply:

 

1) The folks at Obsidian probably have no understanding of languages other than English.

2) Languages other than English are not important enough for them, so the translators are paid peanuts, if that.

3) Obsidian cannot do any quality control on the translations, because there's nobody in-house who speaks foreign languages.

 

I agree that it is a travesty. The honest way to do it would be to completely refrain from making any translations, if there are no resources for making good ones.

This is not only having a bad translation, there is a lot more like untraducted phrases, missing files, wrong help, item description, abilities...

 

I totally agree with what you're saying, but they have missed everything. Not only dialogues and translations (they're OK for the main quest as far as I am).

 

Failing translation is a thing, showing you don't even care about basic understanding is something different, it is a much more serious matter.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Biberon

[GreenFire]

Of course it should not be like this. But I already explained why it is like this. To put it even more simply:

 

1) The folks at Obsidian probably have no understanding of languages other than English.

2) Languages other than English are not important enough for them, so the translators are paid peanuts, if that.

3) Obsidian cannot do any quality control on the translations, because there's nobody in-house who speaks foreign languages.

 

I agree that it is a travesty. The honest way to do it would be to completely refrain from making any translations, if there are no resources for making good ones.

 

That sums it up perfectly. I also used to be a full-time translator (40+ books) until I got fed up with being paid peanuts and got out   As I live in Taiwan and Chinese is my mother tongue, when the game launched the interface automatically appeared in Chinese (Simplified though, different from Traditional, which we use here). But instead of a nice surprise (I wasn't a backer and didn't realize there'd be a Chinese version) this came as an unpleasant jolt, because the translation was so bad I couldn't even figure out what some phrases were supposed to mean - and I hadn't even actually started playing! So the very first thing I did was go to Options and change the language to English (and I never want to look at the Chinese version again).

 

Also, my husband is head of the localisation team at a sizable game publisher, so I know how important (and how seriously overlooked and underestimated) QC is when it comes to multi-language version of games. The underlying idea seems to be, hey, at least we bothered; at least you have a translation (of sorts), right? That's got to be better than none at all. But no, it's definitely not better and usually a lot worse. Essentially what it amounts to is an insult to the devs' hard work in making a quality game, and to players who speak that language. It's just like you said: if they don't have the money, or don't know or care enough to do it, then don't.

Edited May 10, 2018 by GreenFire

[GodLemon]

I have to agree with you guys, there is a whole lot of mistranslations (a huge one in the very beginning of the game when they resume PoE1, the french translation "resolving in the killing of Waidwen" (in english text) implied that YOU took part in the killing of Waidwen instead of the dyrwoodians, which is by far very misleading for french players who have never played the first one)

 

But I have to say for their defense that the work for this kind of game with its large texts content is MASSIVE.

There is room for big improvement, and I hope the future updates will give time for the translating team to cover their mistakes, but I insist on thanking the work that has already been done.

The original (English) version of the game is very well written of course, but French language is rich, powerful and poetic (+ reading in your mother tongue deepens the experience), and I still want to pay a tribute for the translation team, despite the many flaws, for their devotion and dedicated work. I am still enjoying it in French, and let myself get carried away and inspired by the lines of dialogues and descriptions, picturing with sharp precision the intended scene or emotion, like reading a good book.

 

Hopefully it will get better and all of us will be able to enjoy the game and the great writing from the beginning to the end in French, without getting interrupted by misleading / counterintuitive translations.

[malchiorita]

This is no surprise. I wrote the following reply to a thread complaining about the terrible quality of the Italian translation. Here goes:

 

I feel your pain. Here's the thing. I'm a professional translator. I've translated about 70 books in the past 20 years. Dickens, Wilde, Pynchon, Doyle, Dylan Thomas -- also biographies of Disney, McCartney, Cleese, Salinger, Stalin's daughter. Fantasy or sci-fi wise I've translated Scott Lynch, Gene Wolfe, stuff like that. And so on. Hard stuff, demanding stuff, literary stuff.

 

First, my sense is that the understanding of foreign languages within Obsidian is either zero or very close to zero. After all, it's a North American company. I am prepared to stand corrected and take this back as soon as someone demonstrates that I am in error. I have an apology ready.

 

Second, I'm guessing that Obsidian are paying peanuts, if that, for the foreign translators. Consequently, what you're likely to get are Google translations quickly scanned through and edited in a hurry, if at all.

 

Third, because of point #1, there will be no quality control at Obsidian. Nobody will know, nobody will care.

 

The result is that unless there is someone with enormous dedication working on your particular foreign language, you are almost certain to receive a piece of cr*p. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.

Ieri sono finalmente riuscito ad installare il gioco, ci ho messo un po' a capire che SPENTO era la traduzione di offhand, ma veramente siamo ai livelli di Google translate

[Varana]

As I live in Taiwan and Chinese is my mother tongue, when the game launched the interface automatically appeared in Chinese (Simplified though, different from Traditional, which we use here). But instead of a nice surprise (I wasn't a backer and didn't realize there'd be a Chinese version) this came as an unpleasant jolt, because the translation was so bad I couldn't even figure out what some phrases were supposed to mean - and I hadn't even actually started playing! So the very first thing I did was go to Options and change the language to English (and I never want to look at the Chinese version again).

For me, the game started in German. I went to Options (because that's the first thing you do with a new game :D ) and had problems understanding some of them, and in one case, there was a really glaring translation mistake that had already been there in PoE1 and made the option completely nonsensical.* I switched to English at that point.

Which is really unfortunate because it's a vicious circle - my game will appear as "switched to English" in Obsidian's stats, meaning they will give even less priority to translations in the future.

 

(* The "gibs" option. It's videogame slang, and the translator obviously had absolutely no idea what it meant.)

Edited May 10, 2018 by Varana

[Garful]

You shouldn't blame the translators that worked on this game for things not appearing properly, problems with the code, etc.  I've worked in video game translations for years and it's sad how everyone always blames the translator, when the translators are just given a script to translate with minimal context (remember, they're still programming the game when translations have to begin months and months before there is a stable build).

 

The game launched with some big bugs in the foreign languages, but hopefully that will be patched very soon.

[GreenFire]

No, of course it's not only the translators' fault. Like I said, quality control is very important in game localisation and most people just don't realize how complicated and time-consuming it is. Sadly Obsidian seem to be also among those people. I really hope they do their non-English speaking fans justice and begin to take translation/localisation seriously.

 

You shouldn't blame the translators that worked on this game for things not appearing properly, problems with the code, etc.  I've worked in video game translations for years and it's sad how everyone always blames the translator, when the translators are just given a script to translate with minimal context (remember, they're still programming the game when translations have to begin months and months before there is a stable build).

Edited May 11, 2018 by GreenFire

[Biberon]

You shouldn't blame the translators that worked on this game for things not appearing properly, problems with the code, etc. I've worked in video game translations for years and it's sad how everyone always blames the translator, when the translators are just given a script to translate with minimal context (remember, they're still programming the game when translations have to begin months and months before there is a stable build).

 

The game launched with some big bugs in the foreign languages, but hopefully that will be patched very soon.

I am not blaming the translators, they do what they can with what they have. And like I said, the story and quests are OK.

 

The problem is about item, races, abilities descriptions. And because of it the player can be totally misslead. All game mechanics explanations are broken, and I think it is more Obsidian job than translators. Few exemples, in the French version, Nature Godlike power is the same as PoE, sword specialization says it boost deflection, Might does not affect healing and spellpower, things like this. Some spe, like bucklars, can't be read at all.

 

Even the help and info system is bugged. It is not some big bugs, it is gamebreaking bugs. I have to switch En/Fr between the main quest and stuffing. It is not immersive at all and I can't enjoy the game as much as would like.

 

The game itself is really cool, but Deadfire may be the last game I buy from Obsidian. I am sad, I played BG, BG2, IWD 1 and 2, NVWN 1 and 2, PoE, Planescape Torment... The quality of the translation of PoE wasn't great but you could deal with it.

 

They knew the problem from PoE. They did even worse.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Biberon

[Madscientist]

I want to play the game in german, but there are so many bugs.

I have posted some errors in the menu and character creation in the bug forum where some guy improve the translation. They already did it for PoE1 and the result was a thread with almost 60 pages of errors that got fixed. We told obsidian that they can put the improvements into the official game in their patches, but it did not happen.

 

Now we have exactly the same problems in PoE2. Some weapons are named like stat modifiers again ( like a warbow is called intellect+2 or something like that ). They did not change the descriptions or tooltips for some talents which means they are wrong now. Status effects, concentration mechanics and health/endurance mechanics changed a lot. So its a huge mess and players who want to play the game in german will get confused more than often.

 

The worst translation I remember was Oblivion. Lots of lines were not translated at all, and those were the best parts. The rest was complete nonsense often.

 

There are some good translations in games too.

I really like the JRPGs from XSEED. There are some blogs that show how much thoughts they put into translation ( japanese -> english ). They tried to make sure that the sentences make sense both in english language and in the context of the game. They thought about how a noble should talk, so she can talk normally with other people and you can see that her language shows her high position without letting her talk shakespeare style. Its fun to play those games in english.

OK, I admit there is one importent difference. FALCON allows localisation only after the game is released in japan. So the translators can play the final game and see all text in its context.

 

I do not know how games are translated normally, but when I look at the results of PoE1+2 I guess the translators get only a huge set of text files but they cannot actually play the game. I cannot explain otherwise why e.g. "graze" is translated with look when it means the hit resolution between miss and hit in this context.

 

dear obsidian

- In your future games, please hire somebody who knows the languages you translate the game to and let this person proof read at least parts of the translated texts. I know this costs time and money, but many translations are terrible, those who can will play the game in english and those who cannot will be very annoyed and may not buy a game from you again. Thats a shame because the games themselves are really good.

- Until you get a better official translation, please contact the people who improve the translation and implement their work into the game. They put a lot of work into it and every change is well documented. This way everyone could profit from their work.

[kyliesuperstar]

Polish translation is done by Polish publisher Cenega S.A. and the quality is GREAT.

[Townsendvol]

I am from North America (US Specifically) so I am not impacted by the issue you are discussing.  Just wanted to say that I hate that your experience is reduced or impacted by translation errors.   I hope they can get the corrected for you, I know it would be frustrating for me if I were trying to play the game in French.

 

BTW It appears to be a lot of you understand a lot more English than you think from reading your posts.  

[Varana]

Oh, for many people posting on English-language message boards it's not necessarily about not understanding themselves. I've been playing games in English since Ultima Underworld, I read a lot of English, and I'm fairly confident I get what's on the screen. Although more obscure, purple or obsolete phrases can rip you out of the flow.

But your native language feels more natural, you're more at home in it, and you understand things faster and more... subconsciously? Not sure how to express that. It's a lot more intuitive, and even if you're quite good at a foreign language, it's still more of an effort. When I listen to German music, I have to make an effort if I want to _not_ automatically get the lyrics (and I usually fail). In English, it's the other way 'round - most of the time, I can easily switch off understanding much of the lyrics. Hard to explain.

Edited May 12, 2018 by Varana

[Fluffle]

Oh, for many people posting on English-language message boards it's not necessarily about not understanding themselves. I've been playing games in English since Ultima Underworld, I read a lot of English, and I'm fairly confident I get what's on the screen. Although more obscure, purple or obsolete phrases can rip you out of the flow.

But your native language feels more natural, you're more at home in it, and you understand things faster and more... subconsciously? Not sure how to express that. It's a lot more intuitive, and even if you're quite good at a foreign language, it's still more of an effort. When I listen to German music, I have to make an effort if I want to _not_ automatically get the lyrics (and I usually fail). In English, it's the other way 'round - most of the time, I can easily switch off understanding much of the lyrics. Hard to explain.

That's interesting. For the very reason that I'm more at home in my native language I don't want to play in it.

 

Because I use games as a mean of escapism. And to escape even better it helps me when I leave my native language also behind.

Playing in my native language constantly reminds me that I'm still "here" and not "there".

 

But that's very subjective and it's just me. I can see how people could feel right the other way around.

[Olafr]

This is no surprise. I wrote the following reply to a thread complaining about the terrible quality of the Italian translation. Here goes:

 

I feel your pain. Here's the thing. I'm a professional translator. I've translated about 70 books in the past 20 years. Dickens, Wilde, Pynchon, Doyle, Dylan Thomas -- also biographies of Disney, McCartney, Cleese, Salinger, Stalin's daughter. Fantasy or sci-fi wise I've translated Scott Lynch, Gene Wolfe, stuff like that. And so on. Hard stuff, demanding stuff, literary stuff.

 

First, my sense is that the understanding of foreign languages within Obsidian is either zero or very close to zero. After all, it's a North American company. I am prepared to stand corrected and take this back as soon as someone demonstrates that I am in error. I have an apology ready.

 

Second, I'm guessing that Obsidian are paying peanuts, if that, for the foreign translators. Consequently, what you're likely to get are Google translations quickly scanned through and edited in a hurry, if at all.

 

Third, because of point #1, there will be no quality control at Obsidian. Nobody will know, nobody will care.

 

The result is that unless there is someone with enormous dedication working on your particular foreign language, you are almost certain to receive a piece of cr*p. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.

A little side point: it's bad enough that people use 'American' to refer to people from the US. It's even worse to use 'North American' when you are clearly referring to the US. Canada has two official languages, Mexico and other smaller countries which do not use English as a first language inevitably have a lot of bilingualism.