Devs, an explanation, please

[Karhu]

This game looked cool, and after watching a few gameplay videos, decided to buy it. Then I noticed that it's by a Finnish developer, with Finnish language option! Sweet! Thanks guys, not many of those around.

And so, I started the game, with Finnish enabled.

And what did I find?

What did I find, indeed.

If you wanted this to be a joke, then ok.

I just could not get through the Main Menu without cringing and looking at the words that's supposed to be "options" or "save slots", and I'm not even going to mention what's inside those menu options, or anything else.

I switched to English, hoping that it was just a style decision or something ridiculous. Nope, everything looks cool, correct over there.

Honestly, the whole thing looks like it was translated by people not really understanding what they were translating, or how, to put it nicely. There's not many games with Finnish localization, but there's enough that even these basic things should have been correct, specially if it's not intended. I can tolerate mistakes in translations, but this...

So, devs, can you, uh, fix this? Please?
Or if it's not feasible, then just remove it, the language option is not really helping anyone with that kind of quality.

[Windi]

The Finnish translation was quickly created to test the localization system. It was written tongue in cheek. You are absolutely correct, though: If someone bought the game expecting a proper Finnish localization, he/she would find the quality disappointing. We will discuss this tomorrow and figure out what to do.

[Karhu]

Really, thanks for the explanation. A bit of a warning would have been nice though, because some of the language used in there was just very distracting. :)

Many people do use the Finnish option if it's available, heck, I've seen people play PS4's Bloodborne in Finnish language without complaint, and that's a game you normally would not expect Finnish in lol.

Anyway, it's always nice to see how many developers this small country has.

[THE CAKE MAKER]

I am curious, what was written?

[knotto]

cake maker: There's a lot of devspeak which is filled with "anglisms" so the language isn't really that high quality.

We should've improved it before setting it available. We'll get right on it! Expect a better Finnish translation in beta today or tomorrow! Now we know we have an audience for the translation :)

That said, we're not used to writing fantasy in Finnish, so the quality won't be as high as the professional writers produce in Finland even if we try our best. Still, at the moment we see that a translation where we've tried our best (coming soon) is better than no translation at all.

We could try working with a professional Finnish fantasy writer in the future, but given the size of the Finnish-speaking market, it might not be financially feasible.

[Karhu]

Knotto: Cool! I hope you guys were not too upset about my little rant lol.
Maybe you should rename it as Devspeak in the language menu?

In Finnish:
Kuka teistä keksikään Benevictorin väännöksen ansaitsee palkankorotuksen. Nyt kun yön yli nukkunut niin vähän letkeämmin pystyy tuon ottamaan. Saanko käyttää sitä seuraavan Dark Souls -hahmon kanssa? :)

For the updated section, fantasy Finnish is not really so weird once you get used to it, there's tons of fantasy litetature in Finnish.
Yeah, it might not be financially viable, 5 million people can stretch only so far. It's still odd that we have the occasional Finnish in big games though, last year Spyro Trilogy had Finnish, last month Days Gone. Maybe they have met sales expectations. It just means that we are on our own with this language question.

We used to have more detailed sales data in public view, when FIGMA was still around... but Swedes had to take that away too. :/

[knotto]

Your feedback was a good push to motivate us improve the Finnish translation - thanks for that.

My RPG fantasy Finnish is mostly based on Tolkien translations and old D&D translations from 80s and 90s. Maybe topped up with some Finnish translated Harry Potter I've been reading to younger people. We'll see how far that goes if we try a bit more :)

We'll keep "Penavoitokas" in if that sounds good :)

[Karhu]

DnD is so good game...
The only Finnish translation I've ever heard of was this free resource: click[www.lohikaarmeenluola.fi]

Also, we Finns have Praedor[fi.m.wikipedia.org] which, oddly enough, has had a resurgence in this decade in the form of novels etc.

Edit: You know what? Contact Petri Hiltunen and make a Praedor game. The Bear has spoken. (Just kidding :) )

Well, we are getting a bit off topic.

[Grom]

Played years ago (on mobile though) & decided to try switching from English - Boy was I surprised! Love it, glad you didn't change it, 'cause the translation is bloody brilliant... Now to slay Pena (after Joni, of course)