Will a better translation make the game worse?

[Eric]

Even though I own the game on GOG I never got around to playing it, so I have no experience with the game. Now that this version is coming out I'm very interested (controller support? hell yes) but also slightly skeptical.

I've read several reviews about the game and most of what I can remember is that while the first translation is pretty wonky and weird it does add a certain charm to the game. Much like the bad voice acting in early 3D horror games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil.

But as I said I've never played the game. Will a better translation make the game better and more accessible or will it make it worse by losing one of the stranger features that it seems people have grown to like over time?

[MaxKur67]

This translation made by Ice-Pick Lodge themselves - how can they possibly kill the charm in their own creation?

[Eric]

Good point, but an example of this would be the HD versions of Resident Evil 1 and Silent Hill 2/3. While the gameplay remained the same, Capcom/Konami changing the voice acting to something "better" in the long run proved to be a bad move.

[MaxKur67]

Originally posted by Eric:

Good point, but an example of this would be the HD versions of Resident Evil 1 and Silent Hill 2/3. While the gameplay remained the same, Capcom/Konami changing the voice acting to something "better" in the long run proved to be a bad move.

Well, in case of Resident Evil Capcom didn't have much resources to hire better cast (don't forget that it was published by Virgin Entertainment) Plus - B-Movie charm, as intended. In case of SH2/3 there were legal problems with the previous cast - they didn't give the permission to use their voices later which causes quite long lawsuit with the announcement of HD release
Returning to Pathologic, 95% of text is not voiced, so the VO is not the biggest problem but the quality of translated script itself :)

[Real Sandwich]

I understand where you're coming from, but I think you're greatly underestimating the quality of the original script. There's a reason the game won several awards in its native Russia. The charm of the writing doesn't come from narm or being cheesy like the voice acting of Resident Evil, it stems from a genuinely interesting plot, and the way this story unfolds in the game. The characters you meet all have their distinct idiosyncrasies and unique ways of speaking, and represent different world-views and ideas - this aspect was at times completely distorted and lost in the original translation. I mean, Klara's (The Devotress/Changeling) storyline was pretty much unplayable, and certain names and places were translated into something completely unrelated.

While the translation might have occasionally tapped into certain bits and pieces that made the Russian version great, there was simply too much lost in translation (literally). And there's no need to worry, there's still plenty of strange weirdness awaiting in the town in the improved translation.

Having played the original, I for one am extremely hyped for this new version. I have no doubts the texts will be even more compelling this time around.

[ლ(´• ω •`ლ)]

I honestly find the idea that creative and original parts of the writing were "a translator's mistake" to be offencive. I feel like people who think so never actually played the game. Didja ever saw a Worm? The Polyhedron? Literally anything? Im not ever touching actual spoilery matters, there enough happens in the first days to get the message clear - things and tales that werent supposed to exist are not just result of mistranslation.
As speaker above me said, each character has their own destinc voice and unique speech patterns, that play a huge role in understanding who these people are and what is normal for this world and what is not. I call it - 99% of the things people percieved as "weird" in this game were either deliberatly weird or just a result of cultural mismatch. If a character says the visitor had sharpened shards of bones instead of legs that is literally what this character means. If a character says each of their pores are filled with needles that is literally what this character means.
Thing about Pathologic is that it is less of RE and more of SH2, sometimes character joke or make humanly stupid choices but its not intentionally funny game. And its not an virtually empty setting where you can just put anything in text boxes and keep the game intact as long as gameplay itself is safe.
Pathologic is literary heavy game, that relies extremely strongly on players ability to engage, relate and understand what is happening. Altho the gameplay can be entertaining, the real game happens not on the streets of the City and in survival horror genre but in dialogs and inside player's mind. And the ability to make player's mind work and percieve is the basic necessity of this game, not some kind of neat bonus on top of the gameplay.
Developers got out of their way to deliver this renewed version to you for dirt cheap 13 bucks, can you please have a tiny bit of faith they know what they are doing with this.

[alphyna]

It's not my place to judge if it's worth it since I'm not impartial to the matter (Localization Lead here, hi), but I can tell you this.

I can totally see where you're coming from. Weird and broken texts have a charm of their own; however, in my personal opinion, this is more relevant for shorter texts; poems rather than novels, so to speak. Small-ish, self-contained experiences that allow you to draw your own connections between every word—even if the text itself is mangled.

But we're talking about 70+ hours of gameplay here; a huge, gigantic plot with a ridiculously high density. I've studied the old translation in-depth, and, erm, sometimes I couldn't understand how anyone could have made sense of what was going there at all. Elegant puns were butchered, witty remarks were omitted, and the plotlines that were obscure enough in the first place turned into gibberish. I have a suspicion that Quintin Smith of "Butchering Pathologic" fame may have preferred "the meat story" to "the theatre story" because the latter basically uses longer words that ended up slaughtered in the old translation (I may be totally off the mark here though).

Here's my favourite example. Close to the ending of the Bachelor's plotline, he and Maria Kaina discuss whether a utopia can be dirty and why it would need filth and suffering at all. «В самом слове "утопия" есть "топь"», — says Maria, which literally means "there is a 'bog' in 'utopia'"—which is how it was translated. Only the pun doesn't work in English at all (while you can probably see that it does in Russian, even if you don't read Cyrillic), so her rather elegant way of sharing her ideas becomes disjointed and weird.

I think this exapmle is very representative. Do you like the disjointed version? (I've fixed the grammar there, by the way; the old translation didn't really bother with trifle matters of using the right articles and tenses and cliches.) In that case, yes, some of its charm may be lost now. But it's not like the weirdness is gone.

See, in my opinion, one of the highlights of the original is indeed the misuse of words. Nikolay's writing patterns are very distinctive; while the texts are very well-written, he often takes creative liberties with words (mixing paronyms/closely-sounding words, for example, or introducing odd metaphors). And that is something we tried to preserve rather than smoothen out. Some characters have very bizarre/wrong speech patterns (like one of the street-roaming NPCs, the Carouser, for example; these are local drunks with oddly poetic minds that have a hard time articulating their thoughts).

But oddness works better against a more sensible background, wouldn't you agree?

I can also give you the classic "well, now you'll see what was intended and what wasn't" deal, but I think you know that already. Is there a chance that you may finally make sense of what was going on there and come to the conclusion that it was less elegant and engaging than you imagined? Of course. But at least you'll end up getting to know the real Pathologic rather than its misshapen doppelganger.

[Eric]

Real Sandwich and Alphyna, you're good people. Thank you both for giving me such an in-depth explanation. It was more than I deserved but nevertheless i appreciate it greatly.

[root1902]

I'm really interested in this too and was thinking about it the other day.

The mistranslation and often muddled sentance structure added this really bizarre grandioseness and slightly alien feel to the lanaguage which suited the game's atmosphere so well.

But as has been said, the Russian script is usually said to be exceptional as well, so it'll certainly be interesting.

I'm actually quite excited about it as it's my favourite game of all-time and it feels like I'm getting to re-live it for the first time again with a different script and that feels like almost playing it for the first time again!

[Real Sandwich]

Originally posted by Eric:

Real Sandwich and Alphyna, you're good people. Thank you both for giving me such an in-depth explanation. It was more than I deserved but nevertheless i appreciate it greatly.

No problem. This game is one of my favourites so I'm just happy to help. :)

[Loki]

I can see where you're coming from here. The bad translation kind of gave the game a foreign feel. It was bad but it wasn't unintelligable, it felt like going to someplace far away. That said, I won't cry any tears for the old translation, I look forward to seeing what they did with it.

[Kolba]

Not a chance. Everyone who likes this game likes it in spite of the translation.

[Ryusui]

Having played Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, I can understand where the topic creator's coming from. With misguided intentions at the helm ("we need to make the translation more ACCURATE!"), a retranslation can be an opportunity to do harm instead of good.

On the flip side, I've also played Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which takes the stilted, broken original and turns it into a thing of quasi-Shakespearean beauty. And I consider the DS/Steam version of Final Fantasy IV to be definitive in terms of translation: not only is the prophecy central to the plot translated correctly for the first time ever, but it's done in a beautiful poetic style ("Birthed from womb of dragon's maw/And borne unto the stars...")

For that matter, I myself have been involved in a major fan retranslation project. When I first played Breath of Fire 2, I was hardly impressed with the garbled translation; when I heard someone was looking for help with an English retranslation, I felt I had no choice but to jump in. It took two and a half years, but I'd like to imagine the end result was worth the effort. :3

In short: Pathologic's old translation is infamous, and while I can understand the, ahem, "charm" of a bad translation ("ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US"), I fully expect this project will only be a massive and long overdue improvement.

...on that note, I really hope Square-Enix does something like this for Final Fantasy VII. The remake is all well and good, but the original desperately needs a spruced-up translation!

[Oberain]

I think there's a huge difference between writing that is surreal and alien and a translation job that's just absolute nonsense.

I can appreciate that some people have a higher tolerance for poor translations and don't let it affect their enjoyment and I, myself, grew up with 90% of my text heavy games coming from Japan with most in gibbering Engrish. Now that I'm older and the internet/globalization is much more of a thing I find I have very little tolerance for translation errors and reading something that doesn't make sense casues my brain to lose interest in whatever it's doing. I know it's harsh to say by my mind will kinda pull a "well if you didn't put in the effort to make this comprehensible why should I care about it at all?" I can understand how there are plenty of people that feel that it lends an air of mystique and can probably suspend disbelief letting their brains register the butchered translation as surrealist, but personally I can't.

To sum it up a poor translation isn't a replacement for David Lynch or H.P. Lovecraft. It never will be. A well written and purposefully crafted story will always have more impact and elegance then a mangled bablefish translation. If this game won so much praise for it's native script then I think a better translation will only improve the experience.

[Diabolicus]

I tried to play for 30 minutes, but the dialogue is too complex for me, I hope that in the future will do a translation into Italian I hope so much.

[INDIGO CYCLOPS]

I am honestly not seeing an IMPROVED translation, but a different one with a subtle clarity. It is still wordy and so very awkward. But that is just the nature of this world. The language is just...out there at times.