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Forums > Home› Star Trek Online General Discussion

Localization to other languages

fdgdfjgsjffsgfdgdfjgsjffsg Member Posts: 5 Arc User
in Star Trek Online General Discussion
Are you planning to translate this game to others languages such as Russian or Italian or some other European languages? It will be very good if you will do it.

Answers

  • belidosbelidos Member Posts: 452 Arc User
    It's good to have multi-language clients, but it is a very big job and costs a lot to accomplish, even more when it's done so long after launch. To start with they would have to employ a translator for each language, good translators cost a lot to keep on the pay role, so it's extremely unlikely to ever happen.
  • fdgdfjgsjffsgfdgdfjgsjffsg Member Posts: 5 Arc User
    belidos wrote: »
    It's good to have multi-language clients, but it is a very big job and costs a lot to accomplish, even more when it's done so long after launch. To start with they would have to employ a translator for each language, good translators cost a lot to keep on the pay role, so it's extremely unlikely to ever happen.

    But I think community would do it. For example, I can help translating to Russian (for free :smile: ), and, I think, community will do it too, because if game translated to many languages, more playes will play it, and even they will donate. It is good for Cryptics.

  • comdrivercomdriver Member Posts: 74 Arc User
    belidos wrote: »
    It's good to have multi-language clients.
    the can be only one client but with different translation files in specific folder. just separate the text from game files and allow players to modify them. Yes, it is a very big job, but can be done just once.​​
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  • guljarolguljarol Member Posts: 980 Arc User
    fdgdfjgsjffsg wrote: »
    belidos wrote: »
    It's good to have multi-language clients, but it is a very big job and costs a lot to accomplish, even more when it's done so long after launch. To start with they would have to employ a translator for each language, good translators cost a lot to keep on the pay role, so it's extremely unlikely to ever happen.

    But I think community would do it. For example, I can help translating to Russian (for free :smile: ), and, I think, community will do it too, because if game translated to many languages, more playes will play it, and even they will donate. It is good for Cryptics.

    Take it from a professional translator: there's nothing worse and off-putting than a translation by an amateur, even an eager one. Speaking a language doesn't make one a translator just like owning brushes doesn't make one a painter. Enough to look at Arc's website and the translation of it: the version in my language is terrible, full of "false friends", copying English punctuation, capitalisation, mistranslations, and other errors no professional would make. I took a glance at it, and immediately returned to the English version, because it was painful to see this disaster.

    A community-made translation, even if correct and quite good, would mean different styles, different choice of words for the same term in the original, and lots of other problems.​​
  • jerichoredoranjerichoredoran Member Posts: 195 Arc User
    edited July 2015
    But professional translations are often not a bit better. They get a list of words or labels to translate but without knowing where it is used they often cant decide which word of somewhat the same meaning is the one correctly applied at that point.

    And different wordings for the same things is already in the original. So here the community version cant get much worse either.
  • guljarolguljarol Member Posts: 980 Arc User
    jerichoredoran wrote: »
    But professional translations are often not a bit better. They get a list of words or labels to translate but without knowing where it is used they often cant decide which word of somewhat the same meaning is the one correctly applied at that point.

    If it's done the right way, they must "preview" their work by playing the game to know what goes where and how it works. If it's not done the right way, it's done the "cheap" way:

    bObQ1yX.jpg

    The only advantage an STO-er (or a general Trek fan) would have over a random pro is knowing the lore and (probably) already existing translations for technobabble, etc. I've seen so many terrible translations from pros of Trek stuff that it only sped my English education (I refused to watch the show with the translation :D ).

    The only time I've seen a Trek film/series translated properly to my language was TOS when it hit TV 15 years ago for the first time. How come? The translator(s) reached out to the local community and asked us, Trekkies, how we call this and that in our language.

    jerichoredoran wrote: »
    And different wordings for the same things is already in the original. So here the community version cant get much worse either.

    I'd rather go for improving things than keeping them bad. ;) But what I mean here is a translation of, say, "wormhole". A wormhole is a wormhole in Trek lore, but it could be translated differently by different people, if they have no "official" translation (used by language users).



    My point is: it would have to be done right. Or local Internetz would be flooded with STO screenshots that are local equivalents of this:

    WGPDob7.jpg
    ​​
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