Translations?

[Alex [GER]]

Is a translation in german on focus?
Thx

[AK]

Not currently, I'm afraid.

[Phen]

It would be great if you open language files for editing so people will create fan-made translations.

[Endeffect]

Yes this would be great ! trust me the community will do good work for you FREE

[knut73]

maybe - i would buy it, if this has a german version... :)

[Seven7]

another good game that will not receive more than 30% of users (and their monies) due to the lack of translations or the ability to make fan-made translations... as usual... nothing changes in world, the developers do not learn anything...

[Ardbeg]

Seven7 の投稿を引用：

another good game that will not receive more than 30% of users (and their monies) due to the lack of translations or the ability to make fan-made translations... as usual... nothing changes in world, the developers do not learn anything...

100% YES

[Alex [GER]]

@seven7: +1
This developers with the small sight exists most not long ...

[ks]

To translate something properly takes so much time and money. I don't think it's worth it for them. User made translations on the other hand would work, but would be of questionable quality. Since it's a text heavy game, that's a problem.

[Lightforce]

Translation would be great.

[trainerstar3]

I'm just going to quote a bunch of past replies to these type if threads.

*IC* Smiledozer の投稿を引用：

The problem is that there isn't any translation for a lot of the words you read in Sunless Sea. I believe the developers chose not to translate because they would essentially have to re-write the whole game in another language. And there's way too much text for that.

It's been discussed a lot and there won't be any translations. Sorry, I wish there could be as well. Not sure what they have planned for Sunless Skies though. Maybe you could petition for that game to be written in multiple languages?

Chasp の投稿を引用：

There is a lot or archaic English in Sunless Sea, for instance: "Tryst", "Sigil", "Stoker", "Fellows" (to a lesser extent), but the point is a lot of these words do not see common usage at all in modern English, and there's often no real translation.

Arlen Tektolnes の投稿を引用：

A lot of the writing works on several different levels, in a way that would be incredibly difficult to replicate in a foreign tongue.

For a couple of really basic examples, plays on words used in things like the Chapel of Lights[en.wikipedia.org] and the Liberation of Night (where the implied meaning can change drastically depending on which word you stress; is it the act of liberating the Night, or the Liberation that night brings?) couldn't be represented as elegantly in many languages.

I'm sure they could pay a not insignifant sum to get the text translated, but in doing so it would lose an awful lot of its deeper meanings and nuance.

hanchan の投稿を引用：

We don't mind fans making community translations - there's a pretty good Russian one for Sunless Sea, we understand!

Commissioning a translation isn't just a question of giving a lot of money to an external team who charge by the word. We would need to provide a lot of world and lore information up-front, and then work with them throughout the translation to answer questions and manage the project. We just don't have the resources to do it. :)

hanchan の投稿を引用：

There already is a playable Russian fan translation, as far as we know - but I don't know how you'd access it.

We would love to translate the game, but at 300,000+ words, it will be a long way off. :)

King Banhammer の投稿を引用：

Folks, there are easily a dozen threads about this.

It's a tiny company. They can't manage translations into a lot of languages.

dnqbob の投稿を引用：

If you insist on hire a translating company, just think about how they will translate the colours of the UnterZee: irrigo, cosmogone, gant...

Without investigating into the world of Fallen London and Sunless Sea, you can never know the meaning of many things in Sunless Sea, like those colours' name mentioned above. And I do not think any translating company will pay such efforts to elaborate more on those words' translation. For a game almost based on novels but getting a translation of low quality, the quality of the entire game play will shrink obviously.

Such kind of translation can be only finished well by fans and long time game players. It is not easy and very costly in both time and energy, especially for this game.

hanchan の投稿を引用：

Mobile - we're chewing over the wider implications of mobile for our PC titles at the moment. Expect news around the KS.

Localisation - It's simply beyond us. We know it's a big barrier to people in other countries owning the game, but we can't manage localisation of 450,000+ words in Sunless Sea and however many we end up with in Sunless Skies, to the quality we demand, with the team size that we have. We've looked at it from every possible angle and right now we can't do it. Sorry to disappoint!

Doubleclick の投稿を引用：

Mark╰┛宿心 の投稿を引用：

Yes, I understand.
I also understand that there will be no official Chinese language.
Unfortunately, due to a large amount of game text and update, the Chinese domestic amateur organizations also stopped Chinese language translation.
Sorry, I can only temporarily give up, waiting for the Chinese language, because my English is not good.
But as long as there is Chinese language, I must fill the belated ticket

The task of translation would be especially difficult with Sunless Sea. In English, the language in the game is fragile: delicate and poetic. There is a lot of subtle humour in the phrases, and this humour is more important than the events of the story. It would be extremely hard to translate this game properly, and it would be difficult for the makers to assess that it had been done correctly.

Fail Tank の投稿を引用：

Considering that the biggest strength of the game is in its unrivaled prose, a translation would, unless handled by an extremely proficient and talented translator, super suck. Not to mention that it's a small, niche game with a small team, so even if they had the resources to translate (they probably don't), it would probably not sell enough new copies to cover the expenses.

Imagine being blind, and someone describing the Mona Lisa to you, and trying to figure out what the big deal is. That's what trying to translate Sunless Sea would be like.

It's disappointing, sure, but it's no mistake.

Wlerin の投稿を引用：

4djes Pr0wl3r の投稿を引用：

Millions of books writen in unrivaled prose or ancient english were perfectly translated ... i think this game is not more complex than Wilde or Shakespeare. But well, what can i do. Bye xD

And even more millions were given awful translations. There's a reason there are dozens of different translations for each of the classics, with varying degrees of quality and faithfulness. And also a reason they can take years to complete even with a team of scholars.

As for non-scholarly translations (e.g. of Harry Potter), they generally are undertaken by, get this, major (book) publishers, not little indie ones. That said, there are some indie games (a better comparison) that have good translations, even one or two with significant text, but I suspect Sunless Sea would be more difficult than any of them due to how much metaphor and allusion and double meaning there is in almost every description and storylet.

[sluggard]

A German translation is urgently needed. What speaks against Failbetter Games? It's a big market. The game is always on sale and I can't play it. The world is so unfair.

[Alex [GER]]

Pay no games from this developer.
Sorry but this is the only solution.

[SonataFanatica]

Alex GER の投稿を引用：

Pay no games from this developer.
Sorry but this is the only solution.

[German]

Genau SO eine Einstellung ist es, die wieder einmal typisch deutsch ist. Da haben wir ein wirklich gutes Spiel von einem sehr sympathischen Entwickler - und schon soll man boykottieren, nur weil Deutsche eben nur Deutsch wollen und nichts anderes. Keinerlei Wertschätzung für Originalwerke. Zu stumpf, um gescheit Englisch zu lernen (ganz ehrlich: Englisch ist eine der einfachsten Sprachen, die man erlernen kann, und das geschieht doch inzwischen schon ab dem ERSTEN Schuljahr, also ab dem 6. Lebensjahr!), aber hauptsache schön aggressiv sein. Das ist absolut lächerlich.

Zweitens -- und das ist etwas, das ich über die letzten 15 Jahre immer und immer wieder erlebt habe -- sind deutsche Fan-Übersetzungen, wenn man sie denn ermöglicht, extrem fragwürdig. Wer schon einmal Sunless Sea in der englischen Version gespielt hat, der weiß, dass sich dort keinerlei Tippfehler, Grammatikfehler oder Rechtschreibfehler finden lassen. Aber jede einzelne deutsche Fan-Übersetzung, die ich über die Jahre gefunden habe (und auch deutsche Fan-Untertitel zu Serien), hatte arge Fehler. Offenbar sind Leute zwar recht ambitioniert, Dinge ins Deutsche zu übersetzen, beherrschen die deutsche Sprache aber gar nicht so recht.

Insofern: Schön durchatmen und nicht immer gleich auf die aggressive Schiene, ja?
Menschenskind...


[English]

THIS is exactly the kind of attitude that's typically German. Here we have a really good game from a very likeable developer - and then there are calls to boycott, just because Germans want German and nothing else. No apprecciation for original works. Too dense to properly learn the English language (seriously now: English is one of the easiest languages to learn and in Germany it's taught since the FIRST grade, when you're 6 years old!), but absolutely aggressive nonetheless. That is just ridiculous.

Second of all -- and this is something I've witnessed over and over again throughout the past 15 years -- German fan translations are, if they are made possible, extremely questionable. Everyone who's played Sunless Sea in its original English version, knows that there are no typos, grammatical errors or spelling errors to be found. However, each and every single German fan translation I've found over the years (also German fan subtitles for TV series) has had major errors. Apparently, people are really ambitious to translate things into German, but aren't all that capable with the German language to begin with.

In this respect: Go take a breather and relax. There's no need to always be this aggressive, okay?
Gosh...

[Plagenheini]

SonataFanatica の投稿を引用：

Alex GER の投稿を引用：

Pay no games from this developer.
Sorry but this is the only solution.

[German]

Genau SO eine Einstellung ist es, die wieder einmal typisch deutsch ist. Da haben wir ein wirklich gutes Spiel von einem sehr sympathischen Entwickler - und schon soll man boykottieren, nur weil Deutsche eben nur Deutsch wollen und nichts anderes. Keinerlei Wertschätzung für Originalwerke. Zu stumpf, um gescheit Englisch zu lernen (ganz ehrlich: Englisch ist eine der einfachsten Sprachen, die man erlernen kann, und das geschieht doch inzwischen schon ab dem ERSTEN Schuljahr, also ab dem 6. Lebensjahr!), aber hauptsache schön aggressiv sein. Das ist absolut lächerlich.

Zweitens -- und das ist etwas, das ich über die letzten 15 Jahre immer und immer wieder erlebt habe -- sind deutsche Fan-Übersetzungen, wenn man sie denn ermöglicht, extrem fragwürdig. Wer schon einmal Sunless Sea in der englischen Version gespielt hat, der weiß, dass sich dort keinerlei Tippfehler, Grammatikfehler oder Rechtschreibfehler finden lassen. Aber jede einzelne deutsche Fan-Übersetzung, die ich über die Jahre gefunden habe (und auch deutsche Fan-Untertitel zu Serien), hatte arge Fehler. Offenbar sind Leute zwar recht ambitioniert, Dinge ins Deutsche zu übersetzen, beherrschen die deutsche Sprache aber gar nicht so recht.

Insofern: Schön durchatmen und nicht immer gleich auf die aggressive Schiene, ja?
Menschenskind...


[English]

THIS is exactly the kind of attitude that's typically German. Here we have a really good game from a very likeable developer - and then there are calls to boycott, just because Germans want German and nothing else. No apprecciation for original works. Too dense to properly learn the English language (seriously now: English is one of the easiest languages to learn and in Germany it's taught since the FIRST grade, when you're 6 years old!), but absolutely aggressive nonetheless. That is just ridiculous.

Second of all -- and this is something I've witnessed over and over again throughout the past 15 years -- German fan translations are, if they are made possible, extremely questionable. Everyone who's played Sunless Sea in its original English version, knows that there are no typos, grammatical errors or spelling errors to be found. However, each and every single German fan translation I've found over the years (also German fan subtitles for TV series) has had major errors. Apparently, people are really ambitious to translate things into German, but aren't all that capable with the German language to begin with.

In this respect: Go take a breather and relax. There's no need to always be this aggressive, okay?
Gosh...

Naja ..sie sind selber deutsch ,allerdings ist es mal wieder typisch das es als "typisch deutsch" abgestempelt wird..

[Loke]

I'm a professional translator who works specifically with videogames. I can say, for sure, that it would be too expensive for a small dev team to translate a text-heavy game like Sunless Sea.
Games that have this much text (300k+ words) requires 6 to 8 months, if not more, to translate with a small team of translators and reviewers, and it would need a QA team as well.
Community-driven translation is feasible, but it would require a strong QA too.