German Translation AI translated or google translator??

[Lord von Z]

I just cannot believe that such a prestigious game has such a bad translation. It is insane to see how there are not even minor errors but really really dumb mistakes that no human translator ever would make.

As an example: In spell descriptions, when it would say "DEX - Save" in english, the german translation is "GES - Spielstand". Technically "Spielstand" is the translation to "save", but the meaning is the save you have after saving the game, a save which you can load. I mean there are already official translations in the rulebooks for D&D, which in this case would be "Rettungswurf", a completely different word.
Those are mistakes that only machine translation would do. And there are many more.
Did Larian just cheap out on the translation and drag it through google translate??

It was really really disappointing to see this many translation errors, before even starting the game properly, while creating the character.

And probably to repeat many others, but the amount of headache this game gave me and my partner while playing.. on both PCs we had multiple crashes, black screens, bugged dialogs, escape button / menu stopped working, characters just A-posing or looking straight into the sky in dialogs, ...

After hearing so much about it, this game left a really disappointing first impression of what I can just describe as unfinished or even cheap.

[Chaosolous]

Larian is a Belgian company. They literally speak German, Dutch and French over English. Maybe your local dialect is different.

The game issues sound like you have PC issues. Check your hardware, lower your settings, get faster internet, etc.

The game has some minor bugs from time to time but is largely stable and it shouldn't be crashing on you like that. Verify your files.

[Lord von Z]

This is not a case of dialect. It is just straight up wrong. I guess you cannot understand how wrong it is if you dont understand german yourself.

I will verify my files. Even though my PC definitely played other, more demanding games just fine Cyberpunk for example). But for 2 different PCs to have so many similar bugs is suspicious.
I mean I want to like the game, it was expensive. But it is giving me a damn hard time to like it.
And also the translation is the main issue here. That cannot be verified away.

[EricHVela]

Wait. You're saying Dexterity - Score isn't a possible equivalent when asking someone to give a total of the saving throw?

[Lord von Z]

Originally posted by EricHVela:

Wait. You're saying Dexterity - Score isn't a possible equivalent when asking someone to give a total of the saving throw?

I don't quite understand what you are asking. "Dexterity" (DEX) is translated to "Geschicklichkeit" (GES), which would be correct and is also the official translation.
But my issue in this specific case was with the translation of "save" to "Spielstand" ("score" might even with a little bit of fantasy have the translation "Spielstand". But the meaning would still be very wrong). And it is not only not the official translation but also just plain wrong (and not nuance, context or dialect wrong, just completely different meaning and if you dont know english and can think about translating it back and forth, you will not understand it wrong).

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by EricHVela:

Wait. You're saying Dexterity - Score isn't a possible equivalent when asking someone to give a total of the saving throw?

That is not the point. It is similar ridiculous to what Grandia used to be. It still made me chuckle thinking about it.

Imagine it like one of those words which can have multiple meanings, and have different words for those different meanings in other languages.

In Grandia everyone knows when you counter, it means counter attack. But the translation used the word for counter - not as the counter in attack, but as counter in counting.

Similar is the case here described by threadstarter.

Another funny example is whenever someone driver is mistranslated. Think of someone asking you to install your chaeuffeur ~

Originally posted by .☆* ロード・フォン・:

German Translation AI translated or google translator??
I just cannot believe that such a prestigious game has such a bad translation. It is insane to see how there are not even minor errors but really really dumb mistakes that no human translator ever would make.

As an example: In spell descriptions, when it would say "DEX - Save" in english, the german translation is "GES - Spielstand". Technically "Spielstand" is the translation to "save", but the meaning is the save you have after saving the game, a save which you can load. I mean there are already official translations in the rulebooks for D&D, which in this case would be "Rettungswurf", a completely different word.
Those are mistakes that only machine translation would do. And there are many more.
Did Larian just cheap out on the translation and drag it through google translate??

It was really really disappointing to see this many translation errors, before even starting the game properly, while creating the character.

And probably to repeat many others, but the amount of headache this game gave me and my partner while playing.. on both PCs we had multiple crashes, black screens, bugged dialogs, escape button / menu stopped working, characters just A-posing or looking straight into the sky in dialogs, ...

After hearing so much about it, this game left a really disappointing first impression of what I can just describe as unfinished or even cheap.

Send your finding to Larian directly. Such things are not going to be addressed if nobody cares enough to report them properly to Larian Studios.

send in your issue here alongside your savegame and the video/screenshots

via email [e-mail]

or

https://larian.com/support/baldur-s-gate-3#modal

only with your feedback Larian can fix it in the future

[Nicatlon]

I've only ever played with English texts, since the difference between voiced lines and whatever I read would drive me crazy, but such obvious mistranslations are weird. Is it also with dialogue or "just" things like the combat log?

[Lord von Z]

Originally posted by アンジェル:

Originally posted by EricHVela:

Wait. You're saying Dexterity - Score isn't a possible equivalent when asking someone to give a total of the saving throw?

That is not the point. It is similar ridiculous to what Grandia used to be. It still made me chuckle thinking about it.

Imagine it like one of those words which can have multiple meanings, and have different words for those different meanings in other languages.

In Grandia everyone knows when you counter, it means counter attack. But the translation used the word for counter - not as the counter in attack, but as counter in counting.

Similar is the case here described by threadstarter.

Another funny example is whenever someone driver is mistranslated. Think of someone asking you to install your chaeuffeur ~

Originally posted by .☆* ロード・フォン・:

German Translation AI translated or google translator??
I just cannot believe that such a prestigious game has such a bad translation. It is insane to see how there are not even minor errors but really really dumb mistakes that no human translator ever would make.

As an example: In spell descriptions, when it would say "DEX - Save" in english, the german translation is "GES - Spielstand". Technically "Spielstand" is the translation to "save", but the meaning is the save you have after saving the game, a save which you can load. I mean there are already official translations in the rulebooks for D&D, which in this case would be "Rettungswurf", a completely different word.
Those are mistakes that only machine translation would do. And there are many more.
Did Larian just cheap out on the translation and drag it through google translate??

It was really really disappointing to see this many translation errors, before even starting the game properly, while creating the character.

And probably to repeat many others, but the amount of headache this game gave me and my partner while playing.. on both PCs we had multiple crashes, black screens, bugged dialogs, escape button / menu stopped working, characters just A-posing or looking straight into the sky in dialogs, ...

After hearing so much about it, this game left a really disappointing first impression of what I can just describe as unfinished or even cheap.

Send your finding to Larian directly. Such things are not going to be addressed if nobody cares enough to report them properly to Larian Studios.

send in your issue here alongside your savegame and the video/screenshots

via email [e-mail]

or

https://larian.com/support/baldur-s-gate-3#modal

only with your feedback Larian can fix it in the future :spacehamster:

Thanks for the answer.
The game seems to be "finished" with the next patch, so my hopes are quite low, but I will try it nontheless.
I do understand english myself, but my partner does not, so it is very irritating for that so many things dont make sense.

Originally posted by Nicatlon:

I've only ever played with English texts, since the difference between voiced lines and whatever I read would drive me crazy, but such obvious mistranslations are weird. Is it also with dialogue or "just" things like the combat log?

We are not far in the game yet. The dialog seemed mostly, just because of the amount of words and most of all context.
But the dialogs also distracted me with the bugs like A-posing characters or just not progressing properly, though. So I am not quite sure.

[Premu]

Translations are often notoriously bad. I believe there are several reasons for that:

- The translators don't really know the context of the text they see. I believe they receive a text file of isolated strings, and that is directly translated. Perhaps there's just an entry of "save" in the text file which is combined with the attribute, so the translator has no idea which "save" is meant here-.
- I doubt that prices for translations of computer games are specifcally high. So they are probably done in a rush, and the translators don't really play through the game to see the context.
- In some cases different grammar rules might also cause issues. Different languages have different rules regarding grammatical genders for example. English is pretty simplified compared to German or French.

That's the reason that I play most games in English.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by .☆* ロード・フォン・:

Originally posted by アンジェル:

That is not the point. It is similar ridiculous to what Grandia used to be. It still made me chuckle thinking about it.

Imagine it like one of those words which can have multiple meanings, and have different words for those different meanings in other languages.

In Grandia everyone knows when you counter, it means counter attack. But the translation used the word for counter - not as the counter in attack, but as counter in counting.

Similar is the case here described by threadstarter.

Another funny example is whenever someone driver is mistranslated. Think of someone asking you to install your chaeuffeur ~



Send your finding to Larian directly. Such things are not going to be addressed if nobody cares enough to report them properly to Larian Studios.

send in your issue here alongside your savegame and the video/screenshots

via email [e-mail]

or

https://larian.com/support/baldur-s-gate-3#modal

only with your feedback Larian can fix it in the future

Thanks for the answer.
The game seems to be "finished" with the next patch, so my hopes are quite low, but I will try it nontheless.
I do understand english myself, but my partner does not, so it is very irritating for that so many things dont make sense.

Originally posted by Nicatlon:

I've only ever played with English texts, since the difference between voiced lines and whatever I read would drive me crazy, but such obvious mistranslations are weird. Is it also with dialogue or "just" things like the combat log?

We are not far in the game yet. The dialog seemed mostly, just because of the amount of words and most of all context.
But the dialogs also distracted me with the bugs like A-posing characters or just not progressing properly, though. So I am not quite sure.

weird posing characters should be really rare - you can reduce the risk of running into them by clearing the cache and set your PC to performance mode, as those are directly related to such "loading misbehaviours".

For the cache you can use this
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018203217

For the other stuff either
this
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3016159305
or this - just ignore that it is written for another game - but it is German so you can easily share it without the issues of translating
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3214139065
speaking of translations, maybe your partner can benefit from this while browsing
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3016414185
the AI support reduce the issue of mistranslations significantly

[Lord von Z]

Well, in the end I'm just very surprised a game that takes pride in and is praised left and right for its writing, would translate this very writing in such a sloppy or careless way.

[Favonius]

My german level is far from sufficient to judge.

But i can say that french translation is at a very good level, nothing that can be achieved by auto-translating. Even those rules that are context-dependent are usually well employed (with the exception sometime of the use of tu/vous, because this is a real headache to know the context without actually playing the game).
With a special mention to the jokes of the clown that are still hilariously not-funny in french.

[Lord von Z]

So after playing a while more, I can report, the german translation is very sloppy and incorrect in dialogs too.

As suggested I wrote to Larians support, screenshots with examples included. They were thankful and said they forwarded it to the dev team. I kinda doubt that they change anything though, since they are almost finished with the last patch now.

There is so much more sloppy nonsense in the dialog translation. Some of it makes it very hard to follow what is going on.
Also EVERY time there is a gender pronoun, all the subtitles get doubled to include male and female pronouns, even though I chose female pronouns specifically, flooding the screen with walls of text, which is incredibly irritating.
The writing itself is weird too sometimes. It reminds me of the thing everyone hated about Mass Effect, where you answer "give them a friendly slap" and then commander shepard just murders him in cold blood.

And to rub more salt into it I guess. Even after verifying my files and whatnot, the game is still full of wonky, janky bugs, my character just disappeared for a solid hour even after loading, the animations are all over the place...
And the weird disconnect I have with my player character because they are silent in dialogs, but can talk sometimes out of dialogs. Every other character is so dramatically animated, while my character is just standing there barely having any movement at all. I have never felt so disconnected from my character in an RPG before.
The fighting system is a straight downgrade from DOS 2. But that is what you get from the D&D system.

I just cant figure out how this game achieved the almost worshiped status it has. It just seems like an at best good, but more like a mid RPG. DOS 2 was way better in almost all aspects. And DOS 2 was very janky too.

[Luna]

@ .☆* ロード・フォン・ Mein Englisch ist nicht so gut, deshalb habe ich auch Deutsche Untertitel an aber sogar ich merke das in Dialogen das gesprochene nicht mit der Übersetzung übereinstimmt. Ich werde oft als Mann bezeichnet obwohl ich Weiblichen Charakter habe und manchmal sind die texte so verwirrend das ich sogar einmal ungewollt einem Privatem Treffen zugestimmt habe. Was mich aber viel mehr stört, ist das ständige würfeln in Dialogen. Bester Beispiel wenn Gale einen bittet ihm magisches zeug zu überlassen und man kann 3 mal würfeln um alle Optionen auszuschöpfen was wiederum schon witzig ist weil er sagt was man da so lange überlegen muss - da möchte man das Bildschirm anschreien das ich noch am würfeln bin.

[Lord von Z]

Originally posted by Kruemmel588:

@ .☆* ロード・フォン・ Was mich aber viel mehr stört, ist das ständige würfeln in Dialogen. Bester Beispiel wenn Gale einen bittet ihm magisches zeug zu überlassen und man kann 3 mal würfeln um alle Optionen auszuschöpfen was wiederum schon witzig ist weil er sagt was man da so lange überlegen muss - da möchte man das Bildschirm anschreien das ich noch am würfeln bin.

Haha, ja das Würfeln ist auch schlimm. Allein schon das dann alles was eventuell an Spannung und Flow da war, erst einmal durch lange Animationen unterbrochen wird. Und im Mehrspieler kann der Spieler, der NICHT würfelt bereits sofort das Ergebnis sehen, schon lange bevor die Animation beim würfelnden Spieler durchgelaufen ist. Einfach merkwürdig.