Tags: Arx Fatalis
<A href="http://www.rpgdot.com/">RPG Dot</A> has posted a <A href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=497">post mortum</a> about <A href="http://www.arxfatalis-online.com">Arx Fatalis</a>, where the developers talk about what went right and what went wrong with the production and final product. Here's part of what they felt they did wrong:
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<blockquote><b>A big waste of time with the text writings:</b> On the Script writing side, I think we did something quite uncommon that wasted a lot of our time: Though we are a French developer, we decided that the primary language for the game would be English, mainly because the big part of consumers speak English, and also because we thought it would be better when showing the game to publishers. So, we started writing our internal docs in English. Well? in something that looks like English written by French people. Later on, once we had all the dialogs and the texts written, we contracted a French writer who's job was to translate our strings, and most of all: adding some style to our dialogs and books. Once the job was done, we were a bit disappointed with the style that was too 'written' and not 'talked' enough, so we spent some time modifying some strings that we didn't like. Then, we sent them to translation into real English (there are many companies who are specialized into game translation). Once the English texts game back to us, we started to waste some time correcting all basic mistakes made by the fact that the translators didn't know all aspects and elements of the game (standard issue). Then, when we sent the scripts to the recording studio in the US for speech recording. The guy sent me a mail saying that many strings were really 'naive' and bland in the writing for this type of dark serious game. So, we contracted an American to give a bit of 'punch' to our texts and dialogs. The texts came back to us and we were happy with them. But then we had to re-affect all the changes on the French strings that were already written ! And only then, our nightmare did come to an end: Texts were finalized and ready for German and Italian translation. Next time, we'll get a native English to write our texts from scratch.</blockquote>
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Good old native English speakers. Got to love them.
<br>
<br>
Spotted at <A href="http://www.homelanfed.com">HomeLAN Fed</a>
<A href="http://www.rpgdot.com/">RPG Dot</A> has posted a <A href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=497">post mortum</a> about <A href="http://www.arxfatalis-online.com">Arx Fatalis</a>, where the developers talk about what went right and what went wrong with the production and final product. Here's part of what they felt they did wrong:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote><b>A big waste of time with the text writings:</b> On the Script writing side, I think we did something quite uncommon that wasted a lot of our time: Though we are a French developer, we decided that the primary language for the game would be English, mainly because the big part of consumers speak English, and also because we thought it would be better when showing the game to publishers. So, we started writing our internal docs in English. Well? in something that looks like English written by French people. Later on, once we had all the dialogs and the texts written, we contracted a French writer who's job was to translate our strings, and most of all: adding some style to our dialogs and books. Once the job was done, we were a bit disappointed with the style that was too 'written' and not 'talked' enough, so we spent some time modifying some strings that we didn't like. Then, we sent them to translation into real English (there are many companies who are specialized into game translation). Once the English texts game back to us, we started to waste some time correcting all basic mistakes made by the fact that the translators didn't know all aspects and elements of the game (standard issue). Then, when we sent the scripts to the recording studio in the US for speech recording. The guy sent me a mail saying that many strings were really 'naive' and bland in the writing for this type of dark serious game. So, we contracted an American to give a bit of 'punch' to our texts and dialogs. The texts came back to us and we were happy with them. But then we had to re-affect all the changes on the French strings that were already written ! And only then, our nightmare did come to an end: Texts were finalized and ready for German and Italian translation. Next time, we'll get a native English to write our texts from scratch.</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
Good old native English speakers. Got to love them.
<br>
<br>
Spotted at <A href="http://www.homelanfed.com">HomeLAN Fed</a>
