How about localized versions of Civ5? it seems nobody care about

[Akka]

I didn't try to convince anyone. I just stated my very own point of view: I prefer playing in my mother language. That's all. You don't have to endorse, but it would be nice, if you would accept my point without telling me yours is worth much more becouse of whatever.

I wasn't trying to force anything, just explaining the why's.
Now, if you've got such a thin skin that you manage to find offense in this, you should maybe take a breath and chill out.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I don't care about the localization. I installed Civ4 in German, played a few games, sadly shook my head (not only about the bugs and por performance), wiped it off the hard disc and reinstalled it in english.
Something I used to do quite often.
Nowadays I don't even bother installing the German version and go straight for English if it's possible. I also mistakenly installed Mass Effect in German and quickly corrected the mistake after I realized the disc contains multiple language versions.
It's not only about poor translations, but also to hear the big name voices the companies get. Patrick Stewart in Oblivion, Tim Curry in Dragon Age. Yes, people of this calibre always only get a cuople of line, but still...

 

[kaltorak]

What I expect is to be able to get the game in english. I'm from spain, and my language is spanish, but games just sound better in english. And some games are damn hard to get in original language. Just let us chose.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

I feel sorry for all the Germans thats being spoonfed with dubbed movies and games.

The part that really pisses me off, pardon my German, is the censorship that comes with the translations. Every reference to Nazis, humorous or not, is deleted (no "health nazis" in Germany), all jokes that involve Jews are removed (in SouthPark, for example). The most famous example is the Nazi-free version of "Casablanca", or more recently "Die Hard", where the bad guys aren't Germans in the German version. Oh, and remember when Spock went into pon farr on the original "Star Trek"? They took that out, too, because German TV didn't like the sex part. Spock suffers from "space fever".

Like I said, it might be more work, but in the long run, you're better off learning English.

 

[The_J]

Um, that has been a mater of that time.
In Voyager it's described as what it is.

And i've never noticed the problems in Die Hard.

I don't care about the localization. I installed Civ4 in German, played a few games, sadly shook my head (not only about the bugs and por performance), wiped it off the hard disc and reinstalled it in english.

er...i hope you know that you can change the language in the options menu.

Besides that: Where've been your problems?
And did you try the german community translation?

It's not only about poor translations, but also to hear the big name voices the companies get. Patrick Stewart in Oblivion, Tim Curry in Dragon Age. Yes, people of this calibre always only get a cuople of line, but still...

In german they also try to get the correct speakers .
Was amazing to hear the voice actor of Bruce Willis and Nicolas Cage in the german version of Sacred.
And these have been the voices for 2 of the main characters .

 

[henryMCVII]

I wasn't trying to force anything, just explaining the why's.
Now, if you've got such a thin skin that you manage to find offense in this, you should maybe take a breath and chill out.

Don't see, why you call me thin skinned and advice me to take a breath. I did not want to argue, I just wanted to put my favour here. Anyway, now I will try to take a closer look at some of your „why‘s“.

Well, in time, using a language make you more fluent in it, and considerably lessen the need of "conscious" translation.

True, but doesn't this counts for everything? Using X makes you better in using X. But that‘s no reason for starting to use X. I hope you don't think so. If you do, its a false (and circular) conclusion.

A translation always lose some meaning, no matter how good it is

Let me see... if you are right, then translations wouldn’t make sense. Books, directions for use, advertisings, movies … everything will lose during translation.

The truth is: A good translation will not lose meaning. Thats what professional translators are for! Some translations even add things like paronomasia, jokes or so. Maybe some civfanatics will remeber the TV series „The Persuaders!“ with Toni Curtis and Roger Moore? The original (english) version flops in America, while it became a cult series in Germany ("Die Zwei") – becouse of the dubbing.

I’m not trying to tell this happens always/often. I won't tell there never will be something lost in translation. Nor I will tell, this is totally similar in gaming industry. But I strongly disagree with that quote abouve. Translations may lose something but they don‘t always - they may even win something.

Even if you don't get it as a native speaker would, you still have much more of the "initial intent" than when you read something that has been changed through translation.

Hm, I’m afraid, this is wishfull thinking. Why? Well, a few years ago, there was a trend in the advertising industry, to write adds and stuff in english (or mixed with mother languages like „Franglais“ or „Germish“/“Denglish“).

Then some analysis showed: Writing in mother language is much more successfully. This didn’t count just for older peoples. It counts for younger peolpe as well: 20-30 year old peolpe. Most of them had learned english at school. One may think: Hey, *normally* they should be able to understand the "initial intent“ of the english adds. Wrong. The huge majority failed.

The advertising industry turned back to writing in mother language. Don’t see, why this shouldn‘t work for gaming industry as well.



PS: I didn't mean this offense, nor I was reading yours like that. Anyway I see a strong difference between forcing someone to X and convince someone to X. Maybe some missunderstandings happen, becouse we both are using an foreign language here.

 

[henryMCVII]

It's not only about poor translations, but also to hear the big name voices the companies get. Patrick Stewart in Oblivion, Tim Curry in Dragon Age. Yes, people of this calibre always only get a cuople of line, but still...

Hm... if I don't know how the "big name voices" sound in original, if I only know their voices from the dubbed movies ... wouldn't this clearly be a reason to care about the localizaced version - with "dubbed" voices?

 

[Akka]

True, but doesn't this counts for everything? Using X makes you better in using X. But that‘s no reason for starting to use X. I hope you don't think so. If you do, its a false (and circular) conclusion.

You said that you prefer to read in native language than to be "forced" to translate. I merely pointed that, after a while, you do not feel "forced" to translate, you just grasp the meaning directly while reading.
I didn't say anything more, or less, than that.

Let me see... if you are right, then translations wouldn’t make sense. Books, directions for use, advertisings, movies … everything will lose during translation.

Gnuh ?
Of course translation makes sense. I can't make head or tail with, let's say, german. It's gibberish to me. Translation allows me to understand what's happening. It will lose something, but I'll still get most of the meaning.

The truth is: A good translation will not lose meaning. Thats what professional translators are for! Some translations even add things like paronomasia, jokes or so. Maybe some civfanatics will remeber the TV series „The Persuaders!“ with Toni Curtis and Roger Moore? The original (english) version flops in America, while it became a cult series in Germany ("Die Zwei") – becouse of the dubbing.

I’m not trying to tell this happens always/often. I won't tell there never will be something lost in translation. Nor I will tell, this is totally similar in gaming industry. But I strongly disagree with that quote abouve. Translations may lose something but they don‘t always - they may even win something.

That's nonsensical. You seem to lack the fundamental understanding of WHAT a translation actually is. It's not "make the original work better". That's not translation, that's rewriting - or re-acting if it's dubbing. The goal of translation is to convey the meaning of something from a language into another language. "winning" something by translation is conceptually absurd and impossible.

If you "win" something, it means you changed the meaning of the original, hence you've FAILED at translation. You CANNOT "gain" something in translation, you can only lose - or, at the very theorical best, do an absolutely perfect translation and lose nothing, and output in a language the exact same meaning you had in the other.

Due to language complexity and depth, the latter is about impossible, too. You may manage it for extremely simple parts - I guess that "No." can be safely translated in "Nein." or "Non." for example. And even then, very simple parts can be very tricky, as it's downright impossible to really accurately translate all the subtleties of many cultural tricks. Japanese honorifics, for example, are simply what we could call "a japanese thing", and their usage and implication is alien to western culture. You simply can not understand all the meaning they convey without actually learning a bit of japanese culture, and as such you can not translate them fully into western language - you can do some tricks and try to approximate, but it's still more akin to band-aid than a perfect translation. As a matter of fact, many fansubbing team don't bother to translate them at all : they often use them in original form and expect people interested in anime will actually learn and understand them, as the sub would lose lots of meaning if they had to be fully translated.

Hm, I’m afraid, this is wishfull thinking. Why? Well, a few years ago, there was a trend in the advertising industry, to write adds and stuff in english (or mixed with mother languages like „Franglais“ or „Germish“/“Denglish&#8220.

Then some analysis showed: Writing in mother language is much more successfully. This didn’t count just for older peoples. It counts for younger peolpe as well: 20-30 year old peolpe. Most of them had learned english at school. One may think: Hey, *normally* they should be able to understand the "initial intent“ of the english adds. Wrong. The huge majority failed.

The advertising industry turned back to writing in mother language. Don’t see, why this shouldn‘t work for gaming industry as well.

That's completely beside the point. I'm talking about how, if someone learn a language and ends up reading it rather fluently, he will get a better understanding of a product written in its original language rather than reading its translation in his native one.
You then use commercial use of foreign language in advertisement that isn't successful because of people not knowing these languages ?

The two are just... completely unrelated ? I don't even get how you could go from one to another. It's just like saying to someone "hey if you learn to drive, it's more convenient for transportation than to have someone to drive for you", and you answer "wrong ! Proof is, if you put people who don't know how to drive at the wheel, they will more likely have accidents !". Ensue blank stares and scratching heads.

 

[mjs0]

That's nonsensical. You seem to lack the fundamental understanding of WHAT a translation actually is. It's not "make the original work better". That's not translation, that's rewriting - or re-acting if it's dubbing. The goal of translation is to convey the meaning of something from a language into another language. "winning" something by translation is conceptually absurd and impossible.

Whilst I agree with most of your points and specifically that translations are not intended to make a work better, a good translation can be better (a win) at conveying the intended meaning even for a fluent reader/listener of that language when idioms are factored in.

As you aluded to in your post, reading a language fluently and understanding the meaning of individual words does not always lead to an accurate understanding of the actual intended meaning. Cultural references are one problem, idioms are another. A skilled translator, especially one that has actually experienced both cultures will recognize such references and idioms and will translate them (where appropriate) as concepts rather than literally. This can lead to a good translation being a better experience than even a skilled reader of a foreign language can achieve.

One example I always remember from school in the UK is that the British English phrase 'I was soaked to the skin' should not be literally translated to French, the equivalent French idiom is 'j'étais trempée jusqu'aux os', which translates literally as 'I was soaked to the bones'. (I've noticed that in North American English you sometimes hear soaked to the bones presumably because of the influence of the French Canadians.)

Idiomatic differences between British and American English have been a constant source of amusement to my wife (who is American) and me, with some phrases meaning things that are embarrassingly different...Try asking an American what time they want to be knocked up in the morning.

Again, not disagreeing with your general point...just based on my own experience with idioms I know that sometimes a good translation can help.

 

[Akka]

Mmh...
If you mean that an excellent translation may potentially allows the person A, who is fluent in the original language of the work but not native, to better get the original meaning than by directly reading the original material, I may agree (it would have to be a really extremely good translation though, and even then I'm not sure).
But the translation still doesn't improve upon the original. It just reduces the loss of meaning due to the "good-but-not-perfect" mastery of the foreign language by A. And it really require a stellard performance from the translation, making it rather quickly an entirely rhetorical idea.

But when it comes to using idioms... well, I'd say that's the very basis of being a translator It's pretty obvious you can only rarely cut'n'paste formulation from one language to the other, and you need to find the "cultural equivalent".
But of course, the catch is that, often, there is a subtle difference in the meaning, or underone, or implications, of each idiom. And sometimes there is simply no equivalent - how can you translate the difference between "tu" and "vous" from french into english, for example, with both being strictly translated as "you" ? There is simply no cultural equivalent in english. Can be seamless in the countless cases where it's not a plot point. Can be rough when it leads to someone being rude/polite by using one or the other. Sure you can build an approximation around it, but that's always a loss of meaning ^^

 

[The_J]

But the translation still doesn't improve upon the original.

Oh, you should not bet on that.
In hollywood blockbuster with a translation you every time get a) excellent actors and b) excellent voice actors.
I'm not sure if every of the hollywood stars has a good voice and does his/her job at this point as good as a professional voice actor does.
At this point a translation can improve the original.

 

[henryMCVII]

I merely pointed that, after a while, you do not feel "forced" to translate, you just grasp the meaning directly while reading.

Im sorry that other people think different and are different then you. Maybe this is something one of us still have to learn? For me your phrase just say „If you learn somting, then you know this something the better the more you learn it.“ Thats right, but circular and it totally missed my intention. I still would feel *forced* if there would be no translation … oups, localization. Doesn‘t matter, if I feel forced to translate or if I feel forced to learn english in a way, that I not any longer have to translate …

Aside from that, it looks like an very egoistic point of view, telling people once they know english nearly as good as their mother language, then they wont feel forced to translate any longer. It ignores the facts: Not everyone is good in learning languages. Even when one learn, not everyone will become a master in using it. Btw. here is one connetion you missed about the adds thingy.

Im sorry as well about using the word „translation“ for something thats not a pure translation. I did not know, I have to be 100% correct. I just tought we are talking open minded about localizations in a more general sense here. The threads name and former posts made me think, I‘m not totallay wrong there.

You then use commercial use of foreign language in advertisement that isn't successful because of people not knowing these languages ?

Err … hm …

20-30 year old peolpe, most of them had learned english at school.

If someone learns an language at school then he is not knowing that language? Interisting view. ^^ But its not becouse people not knowing these language, its becouse they missed the intention even when knowing the language. I wonder how you can misinterpret that in a way you did.

The two are just... completely unrelated ? I don't even get how you could go from one to another.

Hint: „initial intent“ may be one of the key terms. „Learning english“ another one.

 

[Akka]

Oh, you should not bet on that.
In hollywood blockbuster with a translation you every time get a) excellent actors and b) excellent voice actors.
I'm not sure if every of the hollywood stars has a good voice and does his/her job at this point as good as a professional voice actor does.
At this point a translation can improve the original.

Let's be precise : translation in itself CAN NOT add anything. As I said earlier, the only goal of translation is to convey an idea from one language to another. If you "improve", you change the meaning, and as such, it's maybe a "better work", but it's a "bad translation".

A localization CAN be "better" than the original - it won't be the same, but it can, very very very rarely, be better - maybe the localized actors were simply better than the original ones. But it's extremely unlikely.

And I strongly disagree with your example : dubbing is practically always a severe loss of quality. The speech is part of the general actor performance, his tone influenced by his movements, body language and the like. The dubbing is always a bit more disconnected, and the different language means you need to use different words to keep lip-synch.
The overwhelming majority of time, dubbing is much worse than original + subtitles, and it is usually reviled by "purists" because of that. God, I NEVER want a dubbed movie. It's just awful.



Henry : you seem to completely miss the point at every turn, and your answers don't make much sense to me.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The part that really pisses me off, pardon my German, is the censorship that comes with the translations. Every reference to Nazis, humorous or not, is deleted (no "health nazis" in Germany), all jokes that involve Jews are removed (in SouthPark, for example). The most famous example is the Nazi-free version of "Casablanca", or more recently "Die Hard", where the bad guys aren't Germans in the German version. Oh, and remember when Spock went into pon farr on the original "Star Trek"? They took that out, too, because German TV didn't like the sex part. Spock suffers from "space fever"..

I never noticed that. I think the soup nazi from Seinfeld was translated into Suppen-Nazi. It's just that americans seem to be more fond of prefixnazi and a literal translation isn't always appropriate. Casablanca and pon farr are another case, these were just different times. Seems weird that merely a couple of decades ago Germany (or german TV executives) was more prude than the USA.

er...i hope you know that you can change the language in the options menu.

You can change the written text in the options menu , but if you want to hear the tech quotes from Spock you have to install it in english iirc.

In german they also try to get the correct speakers .
Was amazing to hear the voice actor of Bruce Willis and Nicolas Cage in the german version of Sacred.
And these have been the voices for 2 of the main characters .

Yes, but the speakers aren't the only reason. It's also differences between languages that tend to make some translations awkward. In Mass Effect Sheppard and Ashley would switch between "du" und "sie" in during one conversation.
Then there's atrocities like Oblivion where a healing spell is named Feuerball.

Hm... if I don't know how the "big name voices" sound in original, if I only know their voices from the dubbed movies ... wouldn't this clearly be a reason to care about the localizaced version - with "dubbed" voices?

You're assuming games are the only medium I prefer to enjoy in the original language. You're wrong. On the big screen and on TV I often have no choice and am forced to watch it in German, but DVDs usually have multiple language tracks, and Picard sounds much better in english. Also most black people like Worf or Sisko sound a lot "blacker" and cooler in the original.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

On the big screen and on TV I often have no choice and am forced to watch it in German, but DVDs usually have multiple language tracks, and Picard sounds much better in english.

To be fair, there are also a few cases where the German sounds better. The first time I heard Janeway's original voice, it was a serious shock -- this is a parody, right? You can't be serious! How can somebody like that command Voyager?

 

[GoodSarmatian]

To be fair, there are also a few cases where the German sounds better. The first time I heard Janeway's original voice, it was a serious shock -- this is a parody, right? You can't be serious! How can somebody like that command Voyager?

True, in some cases the dubbed version has better voices. I really don't like the english Simpsons voices, but that happens maybe in 1 out of 10 cases and videogames have on average much shoddier translations than movies or tv shows.

 

[henryMCVII]

Henry : you seem to completely miss the point at every turn, and your answers don't make much sense to me.

Since you where answering at my post, aren't YOU the one hwo should get MY point before starting a debate about it?

The thread is about localizations, isn't it? So, what are localizations for? Are they made for native or *nearly native* english speakers? Or are they made for people hwo can't or don't want to read/listen/whatever english? Please think about this and about what I may had in mind when starting my first post. You should better had done this before stating your *point*. From my POV it looks like IF you had done, then your *point* turns out to be pointless.

You're assuming games are the only medium I prefer to enjoy in the original language. You're wrong.

Oh, it wasn't meant to aim at you personally. That's why I was using the term "I" instead of "you". Anyway it is not about beeing "wrong" or "right". It was just an "If" about your argument "big name voices": How/if this argument will work, depends on personal favour; depends on what the person knows and likes.

 

[Akka]

Since you where answering at my post, aren't YOU the one hwo should get MY point before starting a debate about it?

No, I got your point. I just offered alternate opinions.

The thread is about localizations, isn't it? So, what are localizations for? Are they made for native or *nearly native* english speakers? Or are they made for people hwo can't or don't want to read/listen/whatever english? Please think about this and about what I may had in mind when starting my first post. You should better had done this before stating your *point*. From my POV it looks like IF you had done, then your *point* turns out to be pointless.

Localization are made for people who prefer to get the product in their native language.

My point was that if someone has enough mastery of the original language, he's usually better served using this original language.
My second point was that, after enough practice and when familiar enough with a language, translating isn't a conscious effort anymore and just happens automatically - strictly speaking, it's not translation anymore in fact, it's just getting directly the meaning.

I was not saying "you must do that" or "you must not do that". I was just stating some facts relevant to the subject, and giving opinions.

 

[Gamemaster77]

Well I predict if the current trends goes on, in many years most people will speak fluent English, with Chinese and other non-Latin based languages being last. Smaller countries might even make it their official language. Now many people speak English because, first of all, as mentioned here, all the English games out there, and so much stuff on the Internet is in English. English is also the most widely spoken language, being spoken by a large group in more countries than any other language. So it may spread to neighboring areas. English is also the language of trade, as English speaking countries have the upper hand on the market. This I think would be the deciding factor in how far English goes. The economic trends. Basic English is also very easy language to learn, as there is no le, la, el, les, or anything. Just the, no masculine and feminine. The rules don't have many exceptions in basic English here. The rest is also somewhat simple.

So I think at the moment it is not necessary to have many different localized versions. It would be nice, but it would help people learn even more English. Note I'm an American so I may be biased but these are my opinions. But I'm also not so stubborn that I refuse to learn any other language. I do know basic French and am learning more French.

 

[The_J]

This is probably far away, 100 years or so, probably more.