Why the translation is WRONG

[Strontiumdog]

I used to have a company which among other things translated complicated documentation for many languages including Russian. I know a bit about translation.

A lot of the simple discussions, lore entrys, are translated well, however anything complicated or which requires any nuance becomes more or less illegible or just simply bad, with virtually non-existent punctuation, ie commas.

Case in point: The game has a fascinating world with lots of lore, therefore I try to read whatever I can (which is difficult with the current bug making NPC's thoughts display in a tiny font) ;very early on in the game I met a book seller who sold me a book, I then met a mentally confused old man who I then convinced to lend me his book. These books contain fantastical, possibly philosophical stories which would be incredible if anything was even remotely written like a Mother tongue person would translate it. I can't understand the concepts and I consider myself well read.

Metaphors are often translated verbatim from Russian in English. These metaphors make no sense to an English speaker. English is a rich language, a comparable metaphor or synonym could be found if properly translated.

Superfluous or missing definite or indefinite articles, a,an, the etc. There are no definite articles in Russian as far as I'm aware therefore another example where the translation clearly has not been done properly.

Possible Reasons:

+The translation was done in house by a Russian mother tongue English speaker who despite speaking English well is not capable of the complexities of translating a deep CRPG.

+It was done by computer using a program such as trados, which despite advances in technology are still not capable or replacing a qualified human, yet.


I hope the shameful player character bug, and the plethora of other bugs can be fixed, however I am concerned that the game will not ever be properly translated.

If I were a backer and not a Russian speaker I would be livid

[Vault_13]

What would you suggest then?

[Strontiumdog]

Originally posted by Vault_13:

What would you suggest then?

Honestly...I've never translated a computer game. The shear amount of text must be larger than a very large novel. Where I live in the central EU depending on the quantity of text it would cost a lot, the last time I personally translated a large complicated book from Italian to English I had to charge around 5000€ euros +22% sales tax, it took a long time, 2 months with the help of a colleague. It's hard work. I don't know how much a Russian translation company would cost but....it's difficult if a company offers you a low price invariably it's because the translators are not qualified or they overuse computer software (we all use computer software to a certain extent but as I mentioned you can't just rely on it, it doesn't work).

Why don't you open up a thread in the English Forums here,asking people for suggestions or changes? They did the same thing at Amplitude studios (a french company) with their Endless Space franchise. People are generally helpful. However in my case I'd be very happy to help for free with English proofreading (when I can) and I am sure a lot of other people would. However I've stopped playing the game, not because of translation problems but simply because my character's face changes during the game! Fix that and other things and I'm sure other people and I will play again and a minority of fans will assist.


Just an Idea. Best of luck

[Vault_13]

There was this other user DING, who wasn't pleased with the quality of text as well, so I suggested him to make screenshots and accompany them with the ideas on the improvements. this is the best way I see to make this work at the moment.

[Grifman]

Originally posted by Vault_13:

There was this other user DING, who wasn't pleased with the quality of text as well, so I suggested him to make screenshots and accompany them with the ideas on the improvements. this is the best way I see to make this work at the moment.

Given the scope of translation issues, taking screen shots of each one and then making suggestions isn't really a viable solution. The scope of the problem is too large for this - taking screenshot is just too unwieldy. There are a couple of solutions:

1) As suggested above, get a good translator and pay them to do the job right
2) Post a file with all of the dialogues and texts in the game somewhere accessible, then ask English speakers to look at them and submit corrections. I think though you'd want one volunteer to coordinate all of this though. However, this will not help with metaphors in the original language, because the English translation won't really tell you what the Russian originally said. Those really need a competent translator - sometimes you just can't take shortcuts.

[Strontiumdog]

Originally posted by Grifman:

Originally posted by Vault_13:

There was this other user DING, who wasn't pleased with the quality of text as well, so I suggested him to make screenshots and accompany them with the ideas on the improvements. this is the best way I see to make this work at the moment.

Given the scope of translation issues, taking screen shots of each one and then making suggestions isn't really a viable solution. The scope of the problem is too large for this - taking screenshot is just too unwieldy. There are a couple of solutions:

1) As suggested above, get a good translator and pay them to do the job right
2) Post a file with all of the dialogues and texts in the game somewhere accessible, then ask English speakers to look at them and submit corrections. I think though you'd want one volunteer to coordinate all of this though. However, this will not help with metaphors in the original language, because the English translation won't really tell you what the Russian originally said. Those really need a competent translator - sometimes you just can't take shortcuts.

You are obviously correct. I think using your intelligence within the right context would help you surmise the real meaning of metaphors. A coordinator volunteer would have to be an English speaking Russian speaker like....I dunno...Vault_13? That way meaning could be explained when it is too unclear.

[FoodStampFred]

i have to agree with all the above as someone who loves this game, was interested from the get go. waited and waited for maps to be translated. The immersion is non existent when you have no clue what is going on. Or cant understand what your being asked to do. Let alone not being able to read simple texts because of bad or worse translations

[Orange]

You could probably hire a dedicated QA who speaks English to resolve this.

[Strontiumdog]

Originally posted by Orangicus:

You could probably hire a dedicated QA who speaks English to resolve this.

Of course you are right. And I'm very surprised it wasn't done before launch. I was just pointing out that with my experience in that field it would cost a fair bit to do it properly. Perhaps they could do a Kickstarter to get the translation done properly? (bad joke)

[Vault_13]

Publishing the translations in a form of Excel google doc sounds doable, the problem is that there's no one in the team who could make sure that suggested improvements are legit. I mean I know English on a certain level that is enough for quite a few things (like most of them haha), however I still have no clue about the proper punctuation and certain other things that are obvious to a native speaker.

Which brings us to the following result: I admire your offer to help, at the same time I realize that currently we are not able to make a proper use of this help.

[Strontiumdog]

Originally posted by Vault_13:

Publishing the translations in a form of Excel google doc sounds doable, the problem is that there's no one in the team who could make sure that suggested improvements are legit. I mean I know English on a certain level that is enough for quite a few things (like most of them haha), however I still have no clue about the proper punctuation and certain other things that are obvious to a native speaker.

Which brings us to the following result: I admire your offer to help, at the same time I realize that currently we are not able to make a proper use of this help.

That is a good point. If an English speaker does a screenshot and says " well that's wrong" and makes the effort to post it in a thread, there is a 99% chance that they are correct.

Not all the translations are done badly as I said. The problems lie, I think with the philosophical, fantasy aspects which really need some work and would require someone like yourself to explain simply the meanings and then the English Speaker could make it sound more fluent.

A thread would be a good start. Putting huge reams of text in Excel or Word would be something you should send to professional translator. That costs cash.

At least with the idea I mentioned in the link. The English speaker is able to contextualise the meaning due to the situation. I don't think people should say. "you mean this" people should say "I think you mean this" and then obviously you'll have to do some work on your end.

Again love to help, but I'm not lifting a finger til you fix the face bug. I refuse to have my character have a pig nose!

Peace

[Elgar]

Why not using Crowdin ? A lot of games, including big ones, use it.

https://crowdin.com/projects#showcases/games

[svenevil]

This game would be much better when translated into english properly. I am sure it is great in russian, but it certainly is not in english.

[Strontiumdog]

Originally posted by Elgar:

Why not using Crowdin ? A lot of games, including big ones, use it.

https://crowdin.com/projects#showcases/games

Hmmm....That looks amazing....That could actually work.

That's Perfect...It's a wikipedia for translating games. Vault, check this out, scroll down to the paragraphs on the left. https://crowdin.com/translate/escape-from-tarkov/89/en-enus You upload the excel sheets and people modify it. Used that game in particular as an example as it's Russian. Haven't had a huge look at it but the English and Italian translations are correct. The interface for modifying the data is incredibly simple. It's similar to word reference but for specific projects.