Arthur Bruno, I warn you!

[Kurrus]

Last but not least, at $450k we will be able to pay for professional localization into EFIGS and possibly other languages. I know there are a lot of TQ fans in Russia, so it would be nice to also offer translation into Russian.

Eek!

I was reading the second update on GD's Kickstarter updates page with a sheepish grin as I imagined all the cool, juicy stuff coming our way.

And then I read that. My face contorted into a horrifying expression of rage and confusion, my brain boiled, several arteries ruptured and sprayed blood everywhere; someone, somewhere, had an actual heart attack. God killed a pony. A baby bird fell off its nest.

This is bad news. I don't want to sound condescending or generalizing, but "professional" translation teams often create extremely low quality translations for comparatively large amounts of money. The results are nearly invariably piss poor.

If you pick a game (any game) that's been translated into Spanish, chances are the translation is painfully bad. Here're some examples because I'm a terrible person and I want to see you all suffer:

Terraria - Terrible. Some of the translations make the game crash or cause problems other than ocular cancer.

Killing Floor - Decent quality translation, but not tested at all. Consistently causes the game to crash. Updated content was not translated, which is another common problem.

All S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games (especially Call of Pripyat) - Bad overall. Even the English versions themselves weren't that well translated (let alone dubbed, as you can see).

TES 4: Oblivion - Google Translate. That is all. This stuff is still being mocked to this day. The comic I linked makes fun of the fact that the basic healing spell is (for whatever reason) called "Fireball", but that's not even the worst thing in the game.

Valve games - this started to change recently for various reasons, but until not long ago Valve's translations were horrendous: the most clear example is the infamous "rodead el gancho" in Counter-Strike: Source, but mediocre translating has plagued these games for a long time and the horrendous dubs still give some people nightmares.

Don't take me wrong, now: there're some masterpieces out there, all from big publishers. Dragon Age: Origins lacks a Spanish dub, but its translation is massive and of very good quality. Titan Quest itself enjoys a very surprisingly well made translation (courtesy of THQ I assume), even including gender differentiation for affixes. Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2 both have excellent translations and dubs (this being the one thing EA is awesome at).

But that's the problem: you guys aren't being backed by any big publisher, and hiring a "professional" localization team is practically throwing your money into the pyre. Sadly, according to those acquaintances of mine who also are into translating, everything I said here holds true for French and German. I assume Italian and Russian follow suit.

Arthur Bruno (and everyone at Crate), I warn you! There're better things to waste money on. But I don't want to go to jail, so I won't list these.

I propose the following options to solve this issue:

1.- Do not translate the game at all. This sounds extreme, but Grim Dawn is being built to cater to a hardcore audience, a big part of which understands English anyway. Additionally, while gaining more players is beneficial in the long run, a fragmented player base can lead to trouble (such as tech support - things can get messy with just one language, imagine several!). Lastly, you don't have to worry about continued support, since you won't need to get your expansions and updates translated.

2.- Let the community translate the game. Valve has been doing this for a while and it works great for them. Surely you don't have the same amount of resources as them (so no fancy Crate Translation Server thing!), but look at the Titan Quest modding community: I distinctly remember a few mods that got translated into FIGS (EFIGS if you count Lilith, I guess) by players. TQVault, which I myself translated into Spanish, was also available in a few other languages. I'm pretty sure you could get GD translated into several different languages for free or for a much lower price than usual if you asked the community (hell, I bet I could fully translate the game for free and keep the translation up to date for as long as I'm able to afford sliced bread).

3.- Release the game and decide later. Post-release localizations aren't unheard of: I recall Terraria and World of Warcraft both did this. I personally consider this the most sensible course of action, but the amount of successful ARPGs I've designed compared to you is significantly lower (zero) and I understand momentum is important for a successful launch.

I also understand that keeping a healthy community is quite important for this project and that all the money you get should be exploited. Bottom line is: hiring a professional translation team is definitely not going to help you accomplish either. I wish I could speak more favorably of them, but I really can only say good things about the big publishers'. Otherwise, every single example is a disaster. To think these devs paid good money to somebody so they could get their games bastardized like that makes me shudder.

I've been a fan of Titan Quest for a long time, and it's one of the few games I still haven't set to English (and don't plan to). The Spanish translation is great -kind of a funny coincidence, really- and I think it'd be great if Grim Dawn's was at least functional.

Just my two cents.

[zidders]

Unfortunately, the problem i've seen with most games that attempt to localize is that they do a very poor job of it. It's hard to check on your localization team and the job they're doing when you yourself don't speak the language. Torchlight managed to avoid this issue because they had a large cadre of foreign fans who had been in on the Mythos beta who followed the team to Runic and then offered to translate. Having multiple members of each unofficial team checking each others work helped eliminate many issues.

I can understand the flip side of this tho. The fact is, piracy is a service issue. A lot of games are pirated in Russia and in Europe because pirates from those countries manage to put out translated versions of the game faster than the developer can. Valve has cut down on a lot of piracy by localizing before release and having the game translation available at the same time as the english one.

I suppose the best solution would be to recruit from the fanbase, get a team of translators, have them all fact check each others translations and pay them with swag. The down side of that is that there are tons of risks. YOu risk someone flaking and losing the team, as well as someone leaking info about the game.

It IS a rather complicated issue. It all comes down to wether or not Crate feels more comfortable hiring a professional with a resume or a supportive fan who might end up being a pro or being very unprofessional.

[LostSoul]

Honestly, with a very fan-centric design to Grim Dawn, I tend to agree. The best use of the resources at hand is to let the players themselves do a proper translation. Just give them the tools to do the job without a lot of hassle and it will happen, probably rather quickly, and definitely in a far better fashion.

"Professional" translations are generally mediocre at best. This is simply not a good use of Crate's limited resources.

[varsovie]

Yeah TQ translation was indeed very good, I mean even the random NPC in each cities had good voice acting.

I would prefer to see Crate putting there money in Linux version and in MOAR content rather that in EFIGS.

If the tools to translate get in-game by the alpha, chances are good the community translate all the important stuff before the release.

I'm not totally against a "professional" translation, but I know that it takes nearly the same amount of time to fix a bad one than to start from zero.

I understand that localization is important to get a broader audience, since lot of people speak/read only one language.

I think Crate should have confidence in his community, letting them translate the alpha. And if for some obscure reason one translation do not advance at all, then use the "professional" option.

Of course to get a good fan-based translation, you will have to support the infrastructures (i.e., specific forum section, a public mantis tracker...).

BTW, could you put some images in your next update? It's an impressive block of text to read.

[Void(null)]

I would much rather see the dialogue be in an easy editable format that allows the community to translate into languages as needed.

If playing Hentai games has taught me anything, its that the modding community will always find a way.

[ASYLUM101]

I don't think this is a game where the translations will crash the game...considering it runs on the same engine as TQIT, something would have to be seriously wrong for it to have such a fault.

Bad translations, ok maybe.

[medierra]

Man, I always know its going to be an epic when a post is personally addressed to me.

I think this generally makes sense though. I'd much rather we just do it through a community effort. The one issue that concerns me, which isn't as concerning after I thought about the extensive alpha and beta periods, is that we need to orchestrate it in a way that we can have finished localization files ready for all the languages prior to full release.

But yet, with fans getting updates of the localization text files throughout the alpha and beta, this might make the process a lot easier. We can always start out with that approach and then, if it isn't working, we could have it sent out. I feel like this will work though.

[garkham]

I would love playing Grim Dawn in French so I bear the idea of an EFIGS translation on Kickstarter. But after reading Kurrus, I'm quite agreeing with everything (s)he says. Good job !

[Roros]

I think one thing about gamers who don't have english as their first language is that there's a fairly good chance we know english in the first place.

With Grim Dawn being a "gamer's game" so to speak, my (TOTALLY uninformed and uneducated) take on the matter is that efigs will affect only a tiny spec of it's playerbase and potential buyers.

At least here in Norway (yeah I know norwegian isn't part of efigs, but just for the sake of example), most people have their apps and devices set to english even if norwegian is available. Even if it's translated just fine, it's just odd to hear regular terms forcefully translated into a norwegian word we very rarely hear or use.

I don't mean to be all poopypants about it though. I only wish the best for the game, and I know I don't know nearly enough about how languages and translations affect it's accessibility in general.

[yerkyerk]

Medierra, I think it's awesome that you reconsider EFIGS, as I'm really not a fan of it. I'm with Kurrus on this one. I wouldn't want to see precious resources being allocated for translations.

I think most players indeed know English and those who don't, can probably play the game nonetheless or rely on fanmade translations. Translating in Dutch would be totally futile, it'd just annoy the playerbase here and do more harm than good. But Dutch is not part of EFIGS ofcourse. Through my experience with Dutch translations, I know I'm biased. The horror of hearing all those animated movies dubbed (Shrek, Cars, How to Train You Dragon) made my ears bleed.

Fanmade localization is often pretty good, plus it involves the community in the process, which encourages the modding scene. The biggest downside I guess would be to keep fans encouraged to update the translations as new content is added. But for professional EFIGS, it'd be an absolute nightmare. Plus, you don't need to support EFIGS officially if you let fans do it