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English games translated into other languages quality?

Hegel

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May 12, 2009
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lol
 

lightbane

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I was wondering if English games are translated into other languages as badly as non-English games are translated into English? I, personally, like bad translations. I am hoping that the Starpoint Gemini Warlords is very poorly translated because a lot of times figuring out what the hell is going on and what someone is trying to say adds a whole new gameplay system.

pippin already mentioned it, but sadly Spanish translations usually go from mediocre to bad, with a few exceptions. Have a good (bad?) example:


Even nowadays we get mediocre translations. One recent example is the next-gen HITMAN, which I noticed it is partially translated: While the dialogues and the game's text are subtitled in Spanish, the NPCs' comments and talking isn't. What happens if for this reason you miss important details (ie: that you have been spotted in a place you shouldn't be)? Sucks to be you, that's what.
 

deuxhero

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You know, there is a difference between tomboys and trannies. Tomboys (a girl acting like a boy) will not use the masculine form, but trannies (a girl thinking she is a boy now) will.

That's what I was asking. In Japan(ese fiction) a girl using the masculine first person 僕 (among other bits of "masculine" speech) is simply an adorable tomboy, not some mentally ill nutjob. Was wondering if it's the case in any other language where word use depends on the speaker's sex.

In case of Fallout it was an issue with dialogue design because there were single lines for both male and female characters, newer games allow for more so your character is always speaking in correct manner.

I knew that's why it was done in Fallout, but was wondering if it could be done.
 

typical user

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It isn't a taboo. We all know that pederasts have a big problem with their gender-awareness.

I tried to keep politics out of the subject just so you know.

You know, there is a difference between tomboys and trannies. Tomboys (a girl acting like a boy) will not use the masculine form, but trannies (a girl thinking she is a boy now) will. The biggest problem, for Poles, will be making separated forms for all of these 16 genders - or maybe there are more now?

Haha please no, our last president couldn't even write proper condolences for japanese victims of tsunami in 2011 without making elementary-level typos. We even have professors whose jobs are to determine which form is or isn't correct. Those who properly speak in Potato are in my eyes artists who devote their lifes to it which may sound little funny.
 

Fowyr

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There is several pages about shitty translations in Russian thread. They are so shitty that you don't even need to know. :abyssgazer:

Я - это область.
 

Beowulf

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[...] There are also cases of amateur potato translations done by Russians 15 years ago and it was such a low quality that people simply find it hillarious. Just an example: original VO in english overlapped with poorly translated polish voice-over done by Ruskies.

Heh, I remember playing that version of Dungeon Keeper. I still sometimes say "pay-day" in the same manner as the Russian voice-over (the word has not been translated and was spoken in Russian).

Last year, around this time, I finally mustered up the courage to play Warhammer - Mark of Chaos (and patience, which is required to properly install it and patch).
There was this hilarious moment, where - due to budget constraints, I guess - two characters were talking, but both were voiced by the same actor, trying just a little too hard and delivering his lines with very fast speed (like in Far Cry 2 for example).
 
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Fowyr

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Ultima VII : they did a whole lot more effort this time. Seriously, you can't blame the effort. They translated the whole game in medieval french, since after all the first one used Thy/Thou and all that shit.
:lol:
Real medieval? Hilarious! English in Ultima was Early Modern at best.
 

Kutulu

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German translations tend to be decent, they mostly capture the story but tend to have bad Character, Location & Item names.
Idk why but simple things tend to sound stupid in german, something simple like "good cap" translated to "gute kappe" really
sounds weird.
 

Kutulu

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I get that.... Its just that if you translate something yourself you might come up with a different translation as the official Translators.
Flamebellows Slaghammer, sounds stupid to me in english and every german translation i can come up with. Nowadays i tend to like
Items that have french, spanish or latin names, idk what the fuck Espada Ropera translates to but it does sound cool unlike:
Dummeiches Haudrauf = Dimoaks Hew a Diablo 2 Item...

Also there are Names that are just stupid within modern language norms, like we have the City called Darmstadt with
Darm being Colon in modern german so: Colon City, i never cared enough to read the wiki about where that name comes from
or wether Darm had another meaning once upon a time.

Just Translating something at all might just be an Error if its an Item that has no relation to anything else within the game, for
example that Dimoaks Hew could just be renamed to something else completly.
 
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It helps if you don't make a literal translation and instead come up with a similar name that sounds half-decent in your language, but sometimes there's no helping it. I've read bitching about WoW baddie being called Illidan "Tempesfúria", as if "Stormrage" sounds any more serious and menacing.

Ultima VII : they did a whole lot more effort this time. Seriously, you can't blame the effort. They translated the whole game in medieval french, since after all the first one used Thy/Thou and all that shit.

Except Medieval french is a much much bigger pain in the ass and it makes playing the game an incredibly awkward and painful experience where "yourself" is translated as "toy-mesme" (took me quite a while to see what they were getting at), Kissme is translated as "Baysemoi" (roughly : "fuck me"). The entire game is an unreadable mess. But boy, did that take effort.

Funny how it works, as a huehue I instantly understood what these expressions meant (toy-mesme = tu-mesmo and baysemoi = beija-me) even though the latter is a formal inflection rarely used and the former sounds made-up.

Huehue-portuguese translations used to be universally terrible and amateurish in the past, with incorrect meanings and and abbreviations up the ass, to the point of sometimes making it harder to understand than if they had left it in english (the insistence on translating "Hit Points" as a hundred random things instead of leaving it as HP was pretty annoying). They're generally pretty good nowadays, even the voice acting, but the internet makes it so I have to learn the names of everything in english as well. :M
 
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Zeriel

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Ultima VII : they did a whole lot more effort this time. Seriously, you can't blame the effort. They translated the whole game in medieval french, since after all the first one used Thy/Thou and all that shit.
:lol:
Real medieval? Hilarious! English in Ultima was Early Modern at best.

I'm now jealous. Why didn't we get Ultima 7 in Chaucerian English?
 

Dzupakazul

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In Potato, the one studio that does decent translations was CDProjekt. Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment were always cited for having superawesome, high-budget (for potato) voice acting and good writing quality, though they had some fuck-ups like in-game text and manual text saying that "evil clerics can turn into paladins" instead of turn paladins (like the undead). So Potatos will aktualizować swój dziennik instead of update their journal, and RIP Krzysztof Kolberger. Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale are also pretty good.

All the other translation teams are completely half-assed, sadly.

Some stuff off the top of my head:
* For Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (?), they hired two real-life, prolific Polish sports commentators... and had them read jarring text from a piece of paper. "Jego głód bramki był chyba za słaby" ("His hunger for goals was probably not high enough") and "Odpala strzał" ("Fires the shot") are literal translations of English idioms and mannerisms that just sound stiff as fuck.
* Cenega's translations are super-infamous, but what comes to mind to me right now is their Hitman releases. Typos up the ass, mission names completely insane (from Google Translate-style stuff like "Traditions of the Trade" - "Tradycje Handlowe" to "Plutonium Runs Loose" becoming "Pluton roznosi się jak świeże bułeczki" - "Plutonium sells like fresh pastry"), and they managed to characterize 47 as gay in one of the Codename 47 missions. Good thing it's just text. However, the way they coded the Polish translation into the game is scandalous because they overwrote the English version in such a way that if you try to switch languages to English the game won't have any text OR sound (even though sound wasn't changed). Seems to be the case with every Cenega release that it's just bad.
* Fallout 1 translates "Mr. Hightower" into "pan Wieżowiec", which sounds like "Mr. Towerman" and kills any Police Academy references they might have had. Likewise, it's difficult to take "Kafar" ("pile driver", but also a name for a meathead) seriously (it's supposed to be Decker). Makes you really feel like you're in America, alright. Also, typos.
* Fallout 2 gets bonus points for getting "G.E.C.K." neatly ("Generator Ekosystemu Cudownej Krainy"). Otherwise, I don't think it had any outstanding flaws, so decent translation.
* Gothic has a pretty good translation and since every Potato played it, the translation has become quite memetic as well. The actors sometimes try their best and sometimes don't, and you'll suffer from Same Voiceactitis for the rest of your life when hearing those actors in other roles. The main protagonist is Kronk from Emperor's New Groove, Xardas and Saturas share the same voice actor (who also happens to be Wolverine) and Bloodwyn is prince Arthas.
* Speaking of prince Arthas, WC3 is pretty good, but it also has the keybindings messed up from the original version to match the letters on the translated names, which is annoying in online play.
* I recall something about Diablo 1 having a pirated translation into Polish made by Russians which was hilarious.
* I thought SC2's translation was shoddy. "Rekieterzy Raynora", pshyeah.

So overall we seem to be pretty decent on that front, it seems.
 

Lagole Gon

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Luckily all Infinite Engine games have very good potato translation.
Except for quite a few voices in the first Baldur's Gate - it was the first major major full potato translation, so you can feel the general lack of experience everywhere. Minsc is the most notable example. I believe they've hired some friends from the gaming scene just for kicks. There's also some horrible miscasts.
And what's the fucking deal with the Ukrainian Imoen and Russian Dynaheir.
Kagain's voice gives me a boner. No homo.



Potato BG2 on the other hand is probably better than the original.
(but for some reason Nalia sometimes sounds like a nympho)

 
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Zeriel

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And here's something a western mind can't even comprehend. Full PIRATE polish translations made by russians.





Yup. It was a thing.


Those are better than the originals. I don't understand the language at all, but the tone and inflections are fucking classic.

"PROSTY. :^)"
 
Self-Ejected

CptMace

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Trivia :
Blood Omen : Legacy of Kain had kinda a shit dubbing in french. To the point of being unbearably funny. The way the voice actor described Kain's spells with a telemarketing voice is fucking priceless.
Though when it comes to Soul Reaver (and SR 2 and Defiance), I don't know what happened, but the voice acting was so good it's among the best I've heard in a video game in the french version (beside the lip sync that sucked ass owell). I know the original version already was top notch, and I'm glad they, somehow, decided to respect that for localizations.
 

trais

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
My not removed from inventory copy of Age of Empires 2 also had this English-to-Polish-by-Russians translation. Hilarious stuff.
 

Zdzisiu

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My not removed from inventory copy of Age of Empires 2 also had this English-to-Polish-by-Russians translation. Hilarious stuff.
That used to be a trend back in the day of buying Not removed from inventory copies at a bazaar in Potato. Russians would get the game in English, and since Potato seemed like a good market for them, they would create those abominations of From English to Polish through Russian vatnik. They did that to movies too. And it was often one and the same guy, as it was probably a market small enough that one group of Russians would operate it.

Golden times I say! But lets never get back to them please.
 
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CptMace

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Yeah I first played it in english and I still got echoes of the line "from time to time, it is necessary to feed".
Such a random quote stuck in my brain because badass voice acting.

Best vampire ever :salute:
 

veevoir

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TO sum up the potato posts:
In potato it's either done great (like BG2 etc., localisation is how CD Projekt rose to power :M), done ok... or done by Cenega (one of the biggest distributors).

Cenega has even nickname Cenędza (Ce-misery / Ce-poverty) due to their devotion to non-quality translations.
 

Baron Dupek

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Yeah, I remember their Fallout3 release.
ENG version was tied to GfWL, which wasn't available in potato, folks solved it by registering account somewhere else, like UK embassy.
What Cenega did? They removed GfWL and applied StarForce.
Good-fucking-job, you replaced diarrhea with cancer. On already shit game praised on the Codex but shhh!

There were dozen of failures but I forgot them, only FO3 release was so bad it gave me marks.
I think about spending rest of the night finding these failures, some history and whatever.
 

pippin

Guest
I'm currently playing Caesar 3, but now in English.
Immigrants have correct english accents, but the european spanish VA had them speak in a somewhat parody-like arab accent.
They knew.

The spanish version of Caesar 3 was p good though.
 

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