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Shantae 5 keeps using Google Translator for it's translations as it is tradition for the series

Efejota

Efejota

Member
Mar 13, 2018
3,750


I know this doesn't matter that much for the English part of the community, but it bothers me to no end to see this trend of giving the translations duties to some person that puts half the texts into google translator and then guesses the other half.

I would much prefer to get the games later like in the old days than to suffer from this stuff.

I have talked about this topic several times before, so I'll just quote a couple messages I made some time ago to give examples about the previous game. Keep in mind this happens with the French, German, Italian and Spanish communities and for both Pirate's Curse and Half Genie Hero, as looking for stuff like "shantae + language/translation" in those languages on twitter always shows up negative results.

Time to talk about this topic, International ERA.

I honestly don't know, because the third game was fine, besides some people talking to her as a man.
My theory is that they sent the texts to someone to translate to all the languages at once, since I read similar complaints from other countries.


The very start of the game in Spanish is horrible. To give an example, here they translate "fell asleep" as "feeling sleepy".

https://twitter.com/FJLink/status/811525057142865920

From what I played, the whole thing is like that and I was actually trying actively to find sentences that meant what they were supposed to.
Whenever I decide to play it I'll have to change the language of the system since they didn't implement a language toggle ingame either.

Edit: Looking online for a bit I have seen some other examples like "no need to get all competitive" translated as "no need to obtain all the competitives", and so on.
Looking up "shantae trad" or "shantae traducción" on twitter should turn up many, many complaints in from Spain and France.

But wayforward never responded or fixed it, even if they updated the game many times because of the kickstarter content and the rereleases.
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Efejota said:
Oh, I PLEASE hope they don't mess up the translations this time.
C0Y_ZlpW8AI8LQe.jpg

C0R7ZR5XcAAG2n0.jpg


Shantae_-7-1.jpg

(Imagine the last text as "This moment, this moment, you don't have to obtain all the competitives". All the texts in the game are like that, and Shantae refers to herself as male all the time... One of the very first texts confuses "feel" with "fell", also.)
Just search "Shantae french" or "Shantae traducción" on twitter images and you will find endless amounts of people doing screen captures.

I still haven't played the game because you need to change the console language on the WiiU to English everytime because it didn't have a toggle ingame. I wouldn't be so hurt by this if it wasn't because translations were an stretch goal on the kickstarter, and also I really love my language so this is painful.

Edit: Steamworld Dig 1 had the same problem, with the very first line in the game saying "miss" as in Lady and the subs translating it as "I failed". But that game did have a language toggle, at least.
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Farrac

Farrac

Member
Nov 3, 2017
2,082
Alcalá de Henares, Spain
FFS, Wayforward. I can't put up with this bullshit once more. I know of people that are playing through the games in English even when they don't understand shit just because the Spanish translation is fucking horrid. This is particularly bad because a big part of Shantae's charm comes from the dialogue and jokes like "You got: sick!".
 
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Alvis

Alvis

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,223
Spain
As someone who is studying a translation degree, this is disgusting tbh
 
Xater

Xater

Member
Oct 26, 2017
8,905
Germany
I disagree about putting the games out later. They shopuld just put them out in English only, if using a Google translation is their go to. I see it a ton in German translations for mobile games. It's always horrible, because sometimes the translation makes so little sense that it requires more thinking to figure out what it means, than just having the English there.
 

Deleted member 9317

User requested account closure
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Oct 26, 2017
9,451
New York
In the current day and age, The world need a blockchain-fueled human translators, with systematic verification by other users. Users who help translate the game end up getting points that go towards the purchase of these games, or the game itself.

Example: Developers will post 10,000 lines of dialogue that needs translation in 8 languages.

100 users may sign up to translate 100 lines in a particular language, and each user verifies additional lines translated by other users. In return, these 100 users will get a copy of the game, this reducing the cost of translation significantly and rewarding users for it, essentially creating community feedback from translation.

Of course, 100 users won't sign up. 1000s will. The chance to read random lines from a script of your favorite game? Sign me up.

The world would be SWELL. Unfortunately, it's not.
 
jett

jett

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,653
That's hilarious and embarrassing. Don't offer additional languages if this is the effort you'll put into it.
 
PedroRVD

PedroRVD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
545
Ecuador
Thank you for bringing this up. I didn't know it was a tradition ... but I only noticed this with Half Genie. Spanish translation is bad and distracting, felt cheap. It didn't even differentiate between male and female characters correctly.
 
Stop It

Stop It

Bad Cat
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,349
Efejota said:


I know this doesn't matter that much for the English part of the community, but it bothers me to no end to see this trend of giving the translations duties to some person that puts half the texts into google translator and then guesses the other half.

I would much prefer to get the games later like in the old days than to suffer from this stuff.

I have talked about this topic several times before, so I'll just quote a couple messages I made some time ago to give examples about the previous game. Keep in mind this happens with the French, German, Italian and Spanish communities and for both Pirate's Curse and Half Genie Hero, as looking for stuff like "shantae + language/translation" in those languages on twitter always shows up negative results.

Time to talk about this topic, International ERA.




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To be fair, as someone who works with translation companies, this can happen with them too if you don't give proper context.

The joy of language where one word can mean multiple things.

However, I'm not sure there's a point where you'd hand in your CV to a Game, so oops!
 
Jon_Sama

Jon_Sama

Member
Aug 19, 2018
618
Knowing people working in translation, the extent to which people undervalue their work is really frustrating, so seeing this kind of dismissive attitude from Wayforward is pretty disappointing
 
Dee Dee

Dee Dee

Member
Nov 2, 2017
1,868
Hektor said:
Lmao that's even better than Grandias Fräulein
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Nothing will ever top that.
Nothing.

As someone who works in translation, a lot of issues come from the way the files are handed off - I had people order all of the ingame strings alphabetically, to the point where you have absolutely no idea where in the game the strings might show up (extra points to the project managers that hand off dialogue files like that).
Then it depends on how responsive the team is with context questions. I work in a third party translation studio, so we never get to see the game even, and depend on the client sending us screenshots or explanations.
No screenshots? No context? No order?
I translate "Back" as "Going back in the menu" and then it turns out it's for back costumes...
It's frustrating to do your best as a translator, and then be ridiculed when the real issue is the communication with the devs and the care and effort you are allowed to put into the translation with the time and budget they give you.

Also, LQA. Don't skip LQA guys.
 
Stop It

Stop It

Bad Cat
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,349
Whiterose said:
In the current day and age, The world need a blockchain-fueled human translators, with systematic verification by other users. Users who help translate the game end up getting points that go towards the purchase of these games, or the game itself.

Example: Developers will post 10,000 lines of dialogue that needs translation in 8 languages.

100 users may sign up to translate 100 lines in a particular language, and each user verifies additional lines translated by other users. In return, these 100 users will get a copy of the game, this reducing the cost of translation significantly and rewarding users for it, essentially creating community feedback from translation.

Of course, 100 users won't sign up. 1000s will. The chance to read random lines from a script of your favorite game? Sign me up.

The world would be SWELL. Unfortunately, it's not.
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That's 100*8

So at £40 a copy is valuing work at £32,000 of in kind benefits for the work.

At that point you may as well pay a translation company.
 
Swift_Gamer

Swift_Gamer

Banned
Dec 14, 2018
3,701
Rio de Janeiro
This makes me realize how the gaming industry is so far behind. These problems happen much less in TV, movie or books. It's really amazing how they clearly don't care much about other regions.
 
ZeroX

ZeroX

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,266
Speed Force
Whiterose said:
In the current day and age, The world need a blockchain-fueled human translators, with systematic verification by other users. Users who help translate the game end up getting points that go towards the purchase of these games, or the game itself.

Example: Developers will post 10,000 lines of dialogue that needs translation in 8 languages.

100 users may sign up to translate 100 lines in a particular language, and each user verifies additional lines translated by other users. In return, these 100 users will get a copy of the game, this reducing the cost of translation significantly and rewarding users for it, essentially creating community feedback from translation.

Of course, 100 users won't sign up. 1000s will. The chance to read random lines from a script of your favorite game? Sign me up.

The world would be SWELL. Unfortunately, it's not.
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Click to shrink...
That would be a continuity nightmare. Even if the translations are accurate, you'd have wildly changing tone and style from sentence to sentence. There's a reason that it's usually done by small groups or solo even though you could throw things at a team of a hundred and get it done in a day.
 

Deleted member 9317

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Stop It said:
That's 100*8

So at £40 a copy is valuing work at £32,000 of in kind benefits for the work.

At that point you may as well pay a translation company.
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Lol hypothetically give them the game. Points system will work better IMO.

(And c'mon, it's a digital product! And no, it's not a solution to all problems. Its a cost-effective solution where YMMV but not vary enough to be Google translator vary lol)
 
Stop It

Stop It

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Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,349
Dee Dee said:
Nothing will ever top that.
Nothing.

As someone who works in translation, a lot of issues come from the way the files are handed off - I had people order all of the ingame strings alphabetically, to the point where you have absolutely no idea where in the game the strings might show up (extra points to the project managers that hand off dialogue files like that).
Then it depends on how responsive the team is with context questions. I work in a third party translation studio, so we never get to see the game even, and depend on the client sending us screenshots or explanations.
No screenshots? No context? No order?
I translate "Back" as "Going back in the menu" and then it turns out it's for back costumes...
It's frustrating to do your best as a translator, and then be ridiculed when the real issue is the communication with the devs and the care and effort you are allowed to put into the translation with the time and budget they give you.

Also, LQA. Don't skip LQA guys.
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Context.

Translation needs context.

There's a phrase used at my work: Garbage in, Garbage out. For translation work this is very much the case.
 
MarcelRguez

MarcelRguez

Member
Nov 7, 2018
2,418
Whiterose said:
In the current day and age, The world need a blockchain-fueled human translators, with systematic verification by other users. Users who help translate the game end up getting points that go towards the purchase of these games, or the game itself.

Example: Developers will post 10,000 lines of dialogue that needs translation in 8 languages.

100 users may sign up to translate 100 lines in a particular language, and each user verifies additional lines translated by other users. In return, these 100 users will get a copy of the game, this reducing the cost of translation significantly and rewarding users for it, essentially creating community feedback from translation.

Of course, 100 users won't sign up. 1000s will. The chance to read random lines from a script of your favorite game? Sign me up.

The world would be SWELL. Unfortunately, it's not.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is a terrible idea for a good number of reasons. What WayForward should do is just paying people who have the professional knowledge and experience to do this job, and who care about crafting a consistent translation through the text, instead of devaluating translation work by delegating it to a group fans so large it's all but imposssible for them to craft a coherent translation in style and tone without supervision.
 
Patapuf

Patapuf

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,407
Lol, that even better than the Miss= Fräulein bit.

Especially since CV is a word that's actually in use in english.

I don't get why devs cheap out on translation to the point of using google translate. If you are going to bother to localise, doing it that badly is just wasting money. Wheras good localisation is frequently mentioned as a factor for good sales. Especially in countries where english literacy isn't that high.
 
Stop It

Stop It

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Oct 25, 2017
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Whiterose said:
Lol hypothetically give them the game. Points system will work better IMO.

(And c'mon, it's a digital product!)
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If you give out copies of the game like this, it has to be booked at the value of the good you're giving out for accounting purposes.

To you it may be just a digital code, but when accounting and financing work, which is what you're doing here, you have to account for things legally and for taxation and other reasons. The cost of such a system is not as advantageous as you think.
 

Deleted member 9317

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Stop It said:
If you give out copies of the game like this, it has to be booked at the value of the good you're giving out for accounting purposes.

To you it may be just a digital code, but when accounting and financing work, which is what you're doing here, you have to account for things legally and for taxation and other reasons, the cost of such a system is not as advantageous as you think.
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I suppose you're right. Still, there has to be a more interesting way to do this. The world is so interconnected, language should be the least costly barrier.

You never know what works until you put it to the test.

Real answer: Throw it out in the marketplace, and wait for fans to get mad and tell you where you messed up so you update it.
 

Deleted member 23212

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That's what I had to do, I was only supposed to translate a game into French then the publisher was like "oh BTW could you do English, German and Italian too?" despite the fact I've never learned Italian. Also, I was just given a text list with no context for it.
 
Dee Dee

Dee Dee

Member
Nov 2, 2017
1,868
Whiterose said:
In the current day and age, The world need a blockchain-fueled human translators, with systematic verification by other users. Users who help translate the game end up getting points that go towards the purchase of these games, or the game itself.

Example: Developers will post 10,000 lines of dialogue that needs translation in 8 languages.

100 users may sign up to translate 100 lines in a particular language, and each user verifies additional lines translated by other users. In return, these 100 users will get a copy of the game, this reducing the cost of translation significantly and rewarding users for it, essentially creating community feedback from translation.

Of course, 100 users won't sign up. 1000s will. The chance to read random lines from a script of your favorite game? Sign me up.

The world would be SWELL. Unfortunately, it's not.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Oh god.
By that logic why not hand off single words of a sentence for people to translate.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG.

Unfortunately, language works with context.

For example:
"I'm very happy to see you."
Looks easy enough, but did you know that "happy" will be different depending on a male or female speaker in some languages?
Since it's the same in English, a lot of times no one bothers marking the speaker, since it doesn't matter for their own language - it matters for other languages.
Now, context is usually then derived from seeing the whole text, having an idea what the conversation is about, how the speakers refer to each other, what their relationship might be. However, once you only get a SLICE of all that, you're basically royally screwed and just stabbing in the dark.

Another example:
"A: One and done!
B: More like 'One and dun-dun-dun!' Haha... okay, I'll see myself out."
If you let each sentence be translated by a different translator, there's a fat chance in hell this will work as a joke or anything remotely readable in the first place.
The more of the text a single translator sees, the higher the chance that they get a feel for the text, the target audience, the context and it's actors. The less you see, the more you have to just go blind.
 
Kingpin Rogers

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Oct 27, 2017
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Took me a hot second to get that it meant "resume" like resume your game and not like an actual resume, I was wondering what the issue was haha.
 
Stop It

Stop It

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Oct 25, 2017
6,349
Whiterose said:
I suppose you're right. Still, there has to be a more interesting way to do this. The world is so interconnected, language should be the least costly barrier.
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I'm doing a translation project as we speak. (I do data processing to send for translation and data validation). There's lots of ideas always thrown around to make the process better (read: cheaper) yet it always ends up the same way.

I'd love it if crowd sourcing for translation could work, but in a world that needs consistent results, it's a no go. I mean, muggins here will need to verify 100 different tones of voice in a translation set? Let alone have to deal with 100 people per language asking questions of the data source?

No. Fucking. Thanks. It's bad enough with 1 per language!
 
OP
OP
Efejota

Efejota

Member
Mar 13, 2018
3,750
Richter1887 said:
Never knew about this. Did they ever talk about this shit?
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They sure did. I told them the same things I said here the very day this game was announced and this was their reply:


Whiterose said:
I suppose you're right. Still, there has to be a more interesting way to do this. The world is so interconnected, language should be the least costly barrier.

You never know what works until you put it to the test.

Real answer: Throw it out in the marketplace, and wait for fans to get mad and tell you where you messed up so you update it.
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The thing is, people complained a lot for Shantae 4 and they didn't bother to update it. I think part of the reason is because you had it happening in 4 different communities at once and the English community wasn't having any problems, so the message probably diluted. That's why I wanted to try and post it here this time.
 
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Squid Bunny

Squid Bunny

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Jun 11, 2018
5,340
Wow, this is some grade-A bullshit.

If you can't afford a translation, DON'T DO IT.
 

Deleted member 9317

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
9,451
New York
Dee Dee said:
Oh god.
By that logic why not hand of single words of a sentence for people to translate.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG.

Unfortunately, language works with context.

For example:
"I'm very happy to see you."
Looks easy enough, but did you know that "happy" will be different depending on a male or female speaker in some languages?
Since it's the same in English, a lot of times no one bothers marking the speaker, since it doesn't matter for their own language - it matters for other languages.
Now, context is usually then derived from seeing the whole text, having an idea what the conversation is about, how the speakers refer to each other, what their relationship might be. However, once you only get a SLICE of all that, you're basically royally screwed and just stabbing in the dark.

Another example:
"A: One and done!
B: More like 'One and dun-dun-dun!' Haha... okay, I'll see myself out."
If you let each sentence be translated by a different translator, there's a fat chance in hell this will work as a joke or anything remotely readable in the first place.
The more of the text a single translator sees, the higher the chance that they get a feel for the text, the target audience, the context and it's actors. The less you see, the more you have to just go blind.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Absolutely agree with you (and everyone else).o Don't let me be the parade killer here with my insoluble solutions.
 

Deleted member 9317

User requested account closure
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Oct 26, 2017
9,451
New York
Stop It said:
I'm doing a translation project as we speak. (I do data processing to send for translation and data validation). There's lots of ideas always thrown around to make the process better (read: cheaper) yet it always ends up the same way.

I'd love it if crowd sourcing for translation could work, but in a world that needs consistent results, it's a no go. I mean, muggins here will need to verify 100 different tones of voice in a translation set? Let alone have to deal with 100 people per language asking questions of the data source?

No. Fucking. Thanks. It's bad enough with 1 per language!
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Interesting. Thanks for the insight. Things seem easy until it's not.
 

Deleted member 41520

Banned
Mar 29, 2018
7,078
Whiterose said:
In the current day and age, The world need a blockchain-fueled human translators, with systematic verification by other users. Users who help translate the game end up getting points that go towards the purchase of these games, or the game itself.

Example: Developers will post 10,000 lines of dialogue that needs translation in 8 languages.

100 users may sign up to translate 100 lines in a particular language, and each user verifies additional lines translated by other users. In return, these 100 users will get a copy of the game, this reducing the cost of translation significantly and rewarding users for it, essentially creating community feedback from translation.

Of course, 100 users won't sign up. 1000s will. The chance to read random lines from a script of your favorite game? Sign me up.

The world would be SWELL. Unfortunately, it's not.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Great in theory but verification of a blockchains thousands of lines is historically handled by a computer program, the Ledger

What you're proposing would require, line on line on line, exponentially more human time to verify every line, as more lines are adjusted

Still, there's something in the idea
 
Stop It

Stop It

Bad Cat
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,349
Whiterose said:
Absolutely agree with you (and everyone else).o Don't let me be the parade killer here with my insoluble solutions.
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Hahah no, disruption is good. Sometimes ideas can come in that can literally change the game.

The problem is that there's some of us who kinda know a bit about translation and know that the industry is full of underpaid and overworked people who get shit to deal with and frankly aren't at fault for the results.

I'd *love* to see the source file that ended up with his translation. I bet it was lacking context of any sort.

Also, I'm hoping it went to an actual translator instead of Google Translate.

At least use Deepl at that point lmao.
 
Jegriva

Jegriva

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Sep 23, 2019
5,519
The good old days where in Super Street Fighter II HD, Capcom translated "HIT" with "COLPITO" instead of "COLPO".
 
Dee Dee

Dee Dee

Member
Nov 2, 2017
1,868
Squid Bunny said:
Wow, this is some grade-A bullshit.

If you can't afford a translation, DON'T DO IT.
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Man, I wish it was like that.

Unfortunately (? or is it, I mean, that's how I get paid...), a lot of times an EFIGS translation is more of a marketing tool. Having your game translated officially in other languages guarantees a wider pool of press and store fronts would be interested. Mobile games have a higher chance of being featured if the feature can span more regions.
The actual quality is secondary in that case.

Whiterose said:
Absolutely agree with you (and everyone else).o Don't let me be the parade killer here with my insoluble solutions.
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I'm sorry if I was rude, I'm just getting PTSD of clients asking "can't you just add more translators" to speed up projects with 100.000s of words, where it's especially important to keep an overview and make sure everybody is on the same page (and not 5 people all doing their own interpretation of what a huge expansive fantasy world should read like).
Worldwide same-day launches are possible nowadays because communication is faster and tools are better, but you still can't start translating something until it's actually written or (ideally) finished - translation will always get less time than the actual writing, but it seems to be getting even less and less.
 
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