I planted the thread in feature req. Feel free to relocate it as you please.
Without knowing your “translators” it was mentioned somewhere that some are native speakers. Oof. Really sad. With knowing about certain translations ingame I expected something more like a student of some sort doing a minimal wage job with google translator or deepl. If the translation process is not a one person issue as you write, then the situation is even worse, because multiple “experienced” translators make the same mistakes or agree and settle on misleading or plain wrong translations - and actually get paid.
With full confidence I’d say a small group of passionate community players offering to do translations free of charge can’t possibly do a worse job. And this goes for any language to translate into. I’d go as far as to say, the current amount of wrongliness and tpyos (I hope you understand what I did here ^^) would be reduced by a large %age of the current state. And again, as mentioned time and time again: There’s a good amount of wrong translations of the actual spells of troops ingame. At this point players are just laughing off a “Rowanna”… typo.
Yes, everyone can make mistakes. That isn’t the problem. The question is: how long until it gets fixed after being discovered and reported.
And this is a problem throughout all types of occuring problems of the game. At times the players get misinformed in official news or also in answers/postings after specific questions had been asked. At times we face weeklong inactions on different problems which is at best questionable handling of certain situations.
I’m saying this not to criticise individual people. Neither do I know you @Kafka or @Jeto nor anyone of “the team” or any of the current translators - but it feels like you two are the only people “the community” gets a glimpse of interaction with on this forum about any problems. If you pass stuff on to “the team”, and nothing gets done about it, then I can only see this as:
a1) “the team” doesn’t care
a2) whoever passes the message on doesn’t care that much either, otherwise they’d be more pressing on the matter, or even ask again until things are solved
b1) “the team” didn’t get the message that was sent or doesn’t understand the problem
b2) see a2)
c1) “the team” does care but doesn’t know how to fix stuff, or is unable to, or just won’t
c2) if there was clear communication on c1 the community would be more understanding - even if it would be the “won’t” part
I play this game since nearly 6 years now. I enjoy it. Still, with most of its flaws.
I often rant and swear about certain things. Because I care. As do so many others.
It is worth noting that it’s not the first time the mods lunch the ‘dedicated translation post’ initiative, with the results being evidenced by the current state of affairs
Might want to adjust efforts/expectations accordingly…
I’m happy to get some kind of google sheet going with a tab for each language and we can put the English, the current translation and what it should be on there?
Devs don’t have to read it, we don’t have to contribute if we don’t want to, but it can be there for those who do and if I keep waving it around, perhaps the dev team may see the scale of the issue and action it
Wouldn’t Google Docs be pretty meh for long term maintainability? Manually syncing up 50 new strings and 5 changed ones per patch x3-x6 languages is going to get old fast for you and for potential translators.
Gotta start somewhere, so here’s an (automated) fix for 225 (two hundred fucking twenty five) instances of the word for ‘purple’ being wrong in the German translation.
I do not know if I caught all instances. I only read the first 30 strings. Maybe some other poor soul can volunteer for the next 30. Please note that the fixes here are very specifically only for the word ‘purple’. Many of the strings in the pastebin need additional fixing.
‘lila’ is the German word for ‘purple’. It doesn’t need additional suffixes to indicate its grammatical function, it doesn’t need suffixes to account for gender or case. The translator insists on doing so anyway. Like saying purplian, greenic or yellowous in English.
Currently its set to view only. If you want to add to the document, open the file and click request edit access and i’ll approve. Just to stop random translation attempts and griefing.
There’s a tab at the bottom for each language. Don’t waste away all your time on this, but if you have the info and the skill to be able to add to the project, it cant hurt right!
I don’t know who is translating and I don’t know about English to German grammar issues, but I will tell you some things about typos. As a person who was a professional translator for TV for 12 years, I can tell you with certainty that typos will happen a lot, even when you work with dedicated translating software and excellent knowledge of the language in question. First, because usually the deadlines for translations are kinda short so you always have to hurry and second, because when you work on a translation, you WILL miss typos, even when you read the same translation for 20 times. That is why you always have at least one proofreader to check up on your work. It’s not like someone makes mistakes on purpose.
What company should do is to provide a proofreader who will spot eventual mistakes. It’s easy to berate people in “wtf are they doing” way, but unless you actually did a lot of translations yourself, you don’t have proper grasp of all the circumstances that can happen during translating a large amount of text or documents.
But it shouldn’t be such a biggie for the devs to allow the community to adress typos, grammars and/or false descriptions. Currently it feels like we get mostly ignored and this drives players away…
Making mistakes is fair enough. Doing little or nothing to rectify the mistakes because you are too busy making the next flash offer look pretty is unforgiveable.
Look, I understand. Believe me, if anyone understands, I do. Being a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to translating, and doing it for such a long time, I stopped watching anything that has subtitles in my own language. Subpar translations and even blatant mistakes (like the ones you wrote about) irked me so much that I just started watching everything with English subtitles, or reading in English when it comes to books. But I also realized that it’s not worth it being angry about things like that. They only ruin the fun and enjoyment for you. Nowadays when I encounter “translations” like that I just think “dude, I hope nobody paid for this” and move on. Much better for my mood and sanity
This is the issue though. Somebody (ip2) did pay for this, someone got paid for it and the devs believed a good translation was done. So much so that when after years of the community pointing it out, the dev team came back and said “we use native speakers who play the game” that’s how confident they are, that the actual native speakers on the forum pointing out the errors are the ones who have the translation wrong in the devs eyes.
Typos happen, whether in your native language or your 2nd, 3rd or 4th language. But repeatedly calling Purple made up words, or a new beast mythic a new mystic or true damage just damage not only is really poor translation and proof reading but it’s also confusing as heck for the players in the game.
In short, devs, we are not pulling your leg or trolling you. At the very least, you should really reach out to some other Australian German Translators and give them a try. We don’t want you to use us, or embarrass your current translator but they are either telling a few white lies on their resume/cv or need additional support with translating what you are giving them.
Dead serious question - did they really? I have no idea how translations were coordinated, but Kafka saying ‘people who play the game translated the game’ makes me wonder if some work colleague’s little cousin back in the old country was given the job for some pocket money because cheap.
Spoken language is fine. Everyone uses different registers and standards for spoken, casual, semi-casual and professional settings. Written language in a high fantasy game that asks for your $$$ though… ‘dragon go roar lol fam burnt u 2 a crisp, got u goud’ - just no.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but was this before the widespread availability of spellcheckers? I watch everything with subtitles on and I don’t remember the last time I spotted a typo in (English) non-hobbyist subtitles.
That being said, I’ve had to witness the BBC’s YouTube team struggle with then/than
I’d care much less if this game wasn’t making the amount of money it makes. It’s not hurr-durr little indie game anymore. It’s hurr-durr, look at all the things we can get away with, including dropping turds in the community’s sandwiches.
I’d care much less if it hadn’t taken years of the community arguing with Salty before they started using a (human?) spellchecker.
Yeah… It’s not that bad, it is just actually complicating things.
You’ve seen the chart above - all just “lila”.
Now the spoken language goes: ein lilanes Kleid (one/a purple dress), ein lilaner Bus, zwei lilane Schuhe (shoes) but die lilanen Schuhe (the purple shoes) der lilane Bus, das lilane Kleid (the purple dress)
With how many mistakes they make I can’t advise using the informal language instead of just having lila everywhere.
That’s one of the not game breaking or actually confusing things so I wouldn’t mind but since it came up…
I’m not advocating for using non-standard language in the game. My point was: I don’t care if you say or write ‘could of’ in a casual setting. I just don’t want 300x ‘could of’ in my game, in a resume or book. If it gets corrected in school, I expect it to get corrected in a for-profit game with a for-profit translation too - that’s the bare minimum to expect from a paid-for job, regardless of how much or little it impacts understandability.
I’m just happy the game uses basic colours except for purple. There’d be a lot more to correct if they introduced orange, pink, cyan or any other non-basic colour gem
I’m sorry… I couldn’t resist… Its Monday, please forgive me devs
Books, English subtitles - now I idntneed those anymore (unless someone has a very, very strong accent)
