Le Gaming Question about Translations

[Retro Doomer]

Ah, my dear compatriots of the gaming realm, have you ever encountered a translation of a Game into your native tongue so woefully (badly) executed that you found yourself exclaiming, "To hell with this," and instead chose to indulge in the original language of the Game in its unadulterated glory?

 

[Clippy]

I have to go with 'other'. When I was a kid translations into my native language (both official and unofficial) were about as common as an honest politician and by the time they started becoming a regular occurrence my English was good enough for me to no longer need them.

If anything, the fact that games were in English served as a good motivator for me to learn the language.

 

[ciro64]

I downloaded this NSO snes games pack once that came with a lot of games but a lot of them were translated to russian or brazilian. I didn't even needed those because I understand english, but alright.

Then me and my cousin started playing E.V.O. and the text formatting was just horrendous. There were many times where you simply couldn't understand what was being said.

In order for those roms to work in the NSO app they need to be converted to a specific format, and the only convenient way to do that was to resort to a cryptic software. After many tries, it didn't work.

Then I had it! I opened translated rom that was in that weird NSO format directly into a hex editor, identified where the game code began and replaced it with the code from the original. Worked like a charm!

To rub salt in the wound, a good brazilian translation of EVO do exists. They just didn't picked that one.

 

[DEH]

Not yet but I must also say I play most games in English rather than German.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

The few Spanish translations I've played have been pretty solid. The Terranigma Spanish language localization is a thing of beauty.

 

[longestseason]

The most recent example I encountered was the Contact spanish translation. Whatever the characters were saying barely made sense, and it was bad enough to the point I didn't want to bother with it anymore and stopped playing. If I ever go back to it, I will definitely play in english but I doubt it, the game wasn't that interesting to me in the first place.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Other:

Started playing games when these types of localizations died down, opting to be as accurate as possible or use subs.

Despite this, I still know of these translations (I will purposely play USA Yakuza 1 over any other version purely FOR the voice acting), it’s just that it’s optional and I mainly prefer playing original versions with more content

 

[PSVitaForever]

Yes. I remember it happened with "Touch Detective" for DS, especially the second title. The translation in my language lacked a lot of punctuations and I'm kinda "nazi" when it comes to mistakes in written text, I want it to be perfect if I'm read in my language, because of course I can see every single mistake and I don't like it. So I said something like "to hell with this" and bought the American version from estarland and enjoyed it in English :)
Anyway, I usually play games in English so I can also keep up with the language, even if I can't speak it fluently at least I read it.

 

[happymasksalesman happymasksalesman]

Nope! They exist but I don't use them because they make game procces heavier! Like in sekiro there was free none-fan translation but it turn my 15 minutes of wait to infinite!
I play a lot of games which I don't understand their story first. When realize it story it was crazy!

 

[Retro Doomer]

My rule of thumb is when I am able to play the game in the Native language meaning if I understand it i probably should play it in the Native Language of the Game,i can't stand stupid translations the just piss me off and make me want to play the game just in English,given I play sometimes in German mostly when i want to turn my brain off or when the Translation doesn't suck.I still remember where the refused to write the German word for Amnesia in the game of Tales of Grace wich is really stupid because you could hear Amnesia in the English syncro and the German word Amnesie sound almost Identical but we can't have that oh no.go figure why they did it.