Proper Translations

[mitsho]

Although initial civ3 was translated ok into the various languages, conquest was simply a catastrophe. Here are some of the odds (out of the view of a (Swiss) German consumer:

• City names were left in English which is particularly strange when cities in this language are written wrong (for example Cologne instead of Köln, Munich instead of München, or even NurembUrg instead of Nürnberg). But ok, this is a discussion that is going on for a long time (see Chinese city names).
• Barbarians, they were not translated for conquest (can't remember vanilla) which resulted in sentences like (inverted): The Hunnen/Barbaren/Gallier attack us. So, one word from a different language, really strange!
• And then there are the cases of strange translations, e.g. the "Immortal" is called "Krummsäbelkämpfer" in German which means "Bent Sword Warrior"*.
  
  This probably won't affect me (because I'll buy CivilizationIv in English), but nevertheless this is an important point for not English-speakers and also a very strong marketing issue.
  
  mfG mitsho
  
  *I'm sorry, I'm somewhere where I do not have access to my good dixionaires and therefore cannot give a good translations (as there are no good translators on the internet which I know of).

 

[Akka]

Another reason why I never play translated games ^^

 

[Mewtarthio]

"You feed a fried chickens to fashion ranch model Nabibi. Nabibi is happy sorrow. Nabibi is work cheaper now!"

 

[jwijn]

Who knows? Perhaps a mistaken translation could be a blessing in disguise...

http://www.allyourbasearebelongtous.com

 

[Brain]

I agree with you, but I think it's not really possible to make a proper translation, especially for languages with completely different grammar than English. However, I think vanilla civ had worse translation than C3C. For example, in vanilla Civ3 "Roman Worker" relies on specific grammar and gives some pretty weird translations. In C3C it was changed to "Worker (Rome)" which is not perfect but somewhat better.

Edit: I checked out the Polish version and the city names have been changed to reflect Polish. For example, "Rzym" instead of "Rome". Maybe it's just the German translation that's really bad.

 

[mitsho]

As I said, I know that it'd be better to play the English version, but still, the point is viable that proper translations are a vital point of a good professional game and for its marketing.
As Firaxis isn't making the translations themselves, it is very well possible that only the German translation 'sucks' ...

mfG mitsho

 

[warpstorm]

In the case of Civ3, Atari handled the localization. It was out of Firaxis' hands.

 

[Brain]

In the case of Civ3, Atari handled the localization. It was out of Firaxis' hands.

That's probably why it sucked. They included grammatical structure literally in the game mechanics. If you open the Civ text files you'll find articles such as "the" which have absolutely no meaningful translation in some languages. The game producers have to think about localization as they are making the game, not as an afterthought.

 

[Urederra]

Another reason why I never play translated games ^^

The problem is that there are some mistakes in the original (english) version as well. As Mitsho said, some city names are written in english, which I think is OK. (E.g. Seville) But others are not, (Zaragoza, I think the English version for this one is Saragossa), Some of them are correctly accentuated (I think this verb is correct, although the webster dictionary has a funny entry for this verb) and have foreign characters (e.g. Mérida, Säo Paulo?, Alcobaça), The vast mayority don´t have any accentuation or foreign characters (León, Córdoba, Logroño).

My impression is they did a very poor job (time constraints?) when they released the first expansion, and a better job when they released the second, the spanish are in the first expansion (how could they remove the spanish from the vanilla version?) and their city names are poorly written and the Portuguese in the second and their names are better written.

And then there the city of Badajoz, which is spanish, and they assigned it to the portuguese. (It seems that they couldn't find enough portuguese city names and they added some brazilian ones and a spanish one )

But anyway, that's peanuts to me. What I want is a good game highly addictive and with a lot of options that will keep me playing for years. C3C is one of these games and I hope that CIv IV is another one.