The German Xbox UI is a mess (translation-wise)

ekim · Feb 10, 2022

The following examples are just a small selection.

First of all, many translations don't really make sense, sound funny, have bad grammar and/or miss punctuation.

SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE! lol

Their German translation for Roguelikes is also... interesting and a literal translation

Some UI elements were not designed for other languages and are getting out of bounds:

There is no consensus on the translation for certain terms or on the usage of formal/informal speech:

Here they are using formal speech talking to the player (note the usage of FPS here)

But just a few tabs before they are using non-formal speech

Here in the filter section they are using BpS instead of FPS and wtf at literally translating "Smart Delivery" which is a feature name:

Either they are using a translation bot as a fallback for non-translated strings or the person/team responsible for the translations are no gamers, hence the mixups and different approaches to the translation.

Is this also as bad in other languages than English?

WhoaIsThatMars · Feb 10, 2022

Can't say I'm surprised. Wasn't too long ago on here that someone pointed out how bad the Spanish localization for Halo Infinite is (was?).

8bit · Feb 10, 2022

It's probably machine translated where no official materials have been provided.

Sec0nd · Feb 10, 2022

I'm not having that many issues with the Dutch translation. Apart from the fact that most achievement titles are literal translations which often times doesn't work, especially because they are often puns and/or expressions or sayings.

GTAce · Feb 10, 2022

Hahaha, this is amazing. One of the reasons why I always use everything in English, even my Windows 10.
SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE!!!

lexony · Feb 10, 2022

Microsoft does in general a very bad job in translating their stuff considering how big they are. It is the reason why I use Windows in english at home and at work.

Clown_im_OP · Feb 10, 2022

Hooked my Series S up for the first time a few days ago and got lots of "möglicher weise" and question marks for umlauts.

Bill Gaitas · Feb 10, 2022

Microsoft has turned up the machine translation dial quite a lot lately. The Portuguese (Portugal) translation isn't much better. Especially the Xbox Insider app translation, oh boy.

Bedameister · Feb 10, 2022

Lmao. I saw some weird translation but I never saw some hilarious like that.

EagleClaw · Feb 10, 2022

Yes, it is machine translated.
It is kinda crazy if you think about it, MS is an international company.

I'm pretty sure it is the same for a lot of languages.

mrglcs · Feb 10, 2022

GTAce said:
Hahaha, this is amazing. One of the reasons why I always use everything in English, even my Windows 10.
SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE!!!

Same here. Every UI I've been using for the past 10 years was set to English. I can't deal with shitty translations or shitty dubs.

KeRaSh · Feb 10, 2022

Damn those are bad.
How hard can it be to get those translated by a native speaker?
As a German / American dual citizen I could probably translate that stuff in less than a week depending on how extensive the UI is.
I barely use my XSX so I don't really know how much text there actually is but it can't be that much.

elenarie · Feb 10, 2022

Swedish is a mess as well. :D You get one sentence in English and another in Swedish. It's quite funny, actually! :D

Erdnuckel01 · Feb 10, 2022

It's not only the user Interface, email support is machine translated as well. I for whatever reason can't use the rewards program and contacted support on the xbox homepage. The answers were a sight to behold, not helpful, but clearly machine translated.

.exe · Feb 10, 2022

I don't know about Xbox, but the Dutch Switch UI is pretty funny in spots as well. Like, some words you should simply not translate and accept as loan words, lmao.

Microsoft has a pretty comprehensive store of translated software terminology, so my expectation would've been that they're better about it.

starblue · Feb 10, 2022

Spanish (Spain) is "okayish" but still... there are mistakes and mixing with Spanish from LATAM and some strings in English.

Depressed Panda · Feb 10, 2022

I know why my consoles are never in German
But overall not suprised MS is bad with localization

TheHyde · Feb 10, 2022

Holy shit this is hilarious!
SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE!!!

underFlorence · Feb 10, 2022

SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE! is amazing, haha.

hobblygobbly · Feb 10, 2022

SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE

im gonna use this all the time now

yeah it's pretty bad given the fact that German after Russian is the most widely spoken native language in Europe (around 100 million or so)

elenarie · Feb 10, 2022

underFlo said:
SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE! is amazing, haha.

How would you translate this? Google is giving me grind hell but not sure if I see what's funny about that.

TheMoon · Feb 10, 2022

WhoaIsThatMars said:
Can't say I'm surprised. Wasn't too long ago on here that someone pointed out how bad the Spanish localization for Halo Infinite is (was?).

their entire website is machine translated which extends into the console OS. this has nothing to do with localization.

donpureevil · Feb 10, 2022

Erdnuckel01 said:
It's not only the user Interface, email support is machine translated as well. I for whatever reason can't use the rewards program and contacted support on the xbox homepage. The answers were a sight to behold, not helpful, but clearly machine translated.

Yeah it´s really bad. I got an answer from somebody called Rye and at then end of the mail their name was translated to Roggen (the german word for the grain).

OrakioRob · Feb 10, 2022

Brazilian Portuguese is also pretty bad, and very funny at times.

Clown_im_OP · Feb 10, 2022

elenarie said:
How would you translate this? Google is giving me grind hell but not sure if I see what's funny about that.

I think it's Raze Hell originally. I dunno, a translator would come up with some other pun referring to Hölle.

TheMoon · Feb 10, 2022

elenarie said:
How would you translate this? Google is giving me grind hell but not sure if I see what's funny about that.

because it's utter nonsense. "schleifen" is grinding in the literal "work with tools" sense, like you would sand off the rough spots of a piece of wood or something, that's where "schleifen" means the same thing as "grinding" - you literally cannot "grind hell"

elenarie · Feb 10, 2022

TheMoon said:
because it's utter nonsense. "schleifen" is grinding in the literal "work with tools" sense, like you would sand off the rough spots of a piece of wood or something, that's where "schleifen" means the same thing as "grinding" - you literally cannot "grind hell"

Ah okay. Thanks for the context.

donpureevil · Feb 10, 2022

elenarie said:
How would you translate this? Google is giving me grind hell but not sure if I see what's funny about that.

that´s the problem. there aren´t good german words for a lot of gaming terms, everybody just uses english for those things. i get the grind -> schleifen translation, but in german it just means making something smooth (as in sandpaper or with other tools)

V23 · Feb 10, 2022

TheHyde said:
Holy shit this is hilarious!
SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE!!!

underFlo said:
SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE! is amazing, haha.

What does it roughly translate to in English?

Rafavert · Feb 10, 2022

.exe said:
I don't know about Xbox, but the Dutch Switch UI is pretty funny in spots as well. Like, some words you should simply not translate and accept as loan words, lmao.

Microsoft has a pretty comprehensive store of translated software terminology, so my expectation would've been that they're better about it.

Microsoft used to be a reference. A few years back, though, they started working almost exclusively with machine translation (and machine translation post-editing).

Most Microsoft help pages in Portuguese are downright gibberish. They're useless. So it doesn't surprise me that Xbox suffers from the same issue.

underFlorence · Feb 10, 2022

elenarie said:
How would you translate this? Google is giving me grind hell but not sure if I see what's funny about that.

Yeah, as others have said, "Grind Hell" is a statement that I don't think can really be directly translated into German (I think the closest would be something like "Mach die Hölle heiß!" or something, at least as far as getting the meaning across). "SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE" is technically correct in that "Schleif" means grind and "Hölle" means hell, but it's not something anyone would ever say.

thatanimeweirdo · Feb 10, 2022

Every app/game has their own translation team, that is quite common for software development. Seems like they have no proper over-arching structures for translation syncs though.

TheMoon · Feb 10, 2022

V23 said:
What does it roughly translate to in English?

see above you

behOemoth · Feb 10, 2022

V23 said:
What does it roughly translate to in English?

Grind(literally) the hell as if it's a knife or something.

Sachiel · Feb 10, 2022

I would've guessed it said "Raze hell" in english, obviously a pun on "raise hell" so not really translateable.

Koukalaka · Feb 10, 2022

ekim said:
The following examples are just a small selection.

First of all, many translations don't really make sense, sound funny, have bad grammar and/or miss punctuation.

SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE! lol

Their German translation for Roguelikes is also... interesting and a literal translation

Some UI elements were not designed for other languages and are getting out of bounds:

There is no consensus on the translation for certain terms or on the usage of formal/informal speech:

Here they are using formal speech talking to the player (note the usage of FPS here)

But just a few tabs before they are using non-formal speech

Here in the filter section they are using BpS instead of FPS and wtf at literally translating "Smart Delivery" which is a feature name:

Either they are using a translation bot as a fallback for non-translated strings or the person/team responsible for the translations are no gamers, hence the mixups and different approaches to the translation.

Is this also as bad in other languages than English?

As someone who did German in school and has forgotten 99% of what I learned - is there a general approach for formal and informal address when it comes to things like websites and (in this case!) video game menus?

Clown_im_OP · Feb 10, 2022

The low effort translation would be to put the adjective "höllisch" before literally any noun that has anything to do with Doom.

Nightfall · Feb 10, 2022

That's why I never use German UI's. But damn, SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE is simply the best.

Goldstick · Feb 10, 2022

Same with portuguese (PT), lot of machine translation, and translation of stuff that shouldn't be translated

BastienContraire · Feb 10, 2022

Yeah, it's machine translated. The italian one is too.

ekim · Feb 10, 2022

Koukalaka said:
As someone who did German in school and has forgotten 99% of what I learned - is there a general approach for formal and informal address when it comes to things like websites and (in this case!) video game menus?

For stuff directed at younger people and for casual things (like gaming), I'd use informal speech but it's up to the company whether to go formal or informal. The problem here is the inconsistency.

donpureevil · Feb 10, 2022

Koukalaka said:
As someone who did German in school and has forgotten 99% of what I learned - is there a general approach for formal and informal address when it comes to things like websites and (in this case!) video game menus?

Not really, but you should stick to one way. Switching between formal and infromal feels disjointed. But that is really the smallest of the translation problems going on here.

Nightfall · Feb 10, 2022

Koukalaka said:
As someone who did German in school and has forgotten 99% of what I learned - is there a general approach for formal and informal address when it comes to things like websites and (in this case!) video game menus?

Normally stuff like this is not formal at all and uses "Du" instead of "Sie". It is very uncommon to be this formal in relation to gaming (outside of actual stories and dialogue).

ekim · Feb 10, 2022

If they would've used DeepL it would've been a tad better:

ZERSTÖRE DIE HÖLLE! would have been apt although it would not address the pun in the original term.

Glasgow Mega-Snake · Feb 10, 2022

TheMoon said:
because it's utter nonsense. "schleifen" is grinding in the literal "work with tools" sense, like you would sand off the rough spots of a piece of wood or something, that's where "schleifen" means the same thing as "grinding" - you literally cannot "grind hell"

donpureevil said:
that´s the problem. there aren´t good german words for a lot of gaming terms, everybody just uses english for those things. i get the grind -> schleifen translation, but in german it just means making something smooth (as in sandpaper or with other tools)

Schleifen does have another meaning, though. "Eine Burg schleifen" would be "Raze a castle to the ground", and the original seems to be Raze Hell.

So technically it's an accurate translation, Schleifen is the correct term... It's just that outside of history books nobody uses it in that sense any more, and of course you lose the Raise/Raze pun, so it sounds weird.

Turrican2 · Feb 10, 2022

Koukalaka said:
As someone who did German in school and has forgotten 99% of what I learned - is there a general approach for formal and informal address when it comes to things like websites and (in this case!) video game menus?

It always depends on the target group of the brands and subbrands.
As somebody who works in advertising for global companies I can only advise to always be consistent in the way you communicate.
For example when we worked for Microsoft some years ago we would use informal adress on all kinds of materials for Xbox and formal address for brands like Office and Surface.

Arubedo · Feb 10, 2022

French translation of the UI is also an absolute disaster, especially on the Microsoft Store, why can't Microsoft hire actual translation teams like Sony and Nintendo for the UI?

AzureSky · Feb 10, 2022

ekim said:
SCHLEIF DIE HÖLLE! lol

this is "so bad, its good" kind of thing, love it.
Also, you have to give the company a benefit of the doubt, cant expect Microsoft to have the perfect console experience with the first product they release.

TheMoon · Feb 10, 2022

Glasgow Mega-Snake said:
Schleifen does have another meaning, though. "Eine Burg schleifen" would be "Raze a castle to the ground", and the original seems to be Raze Hell.

So technically it's an accurate translation, Schleifen is the correct term... It's just that outside of history books nobody uses it in that sense any more, and of course you lose the Raise/Raze pun, so it sounds weird.

Granted, I never studied history but I've never ever encountered that archaic use of "schleifen" in my entire life lol. Amazing.

Tradesman · Feb 10, 2022

Sanding down hell

The German Xbox UI is a mess (translation-wise)

I left my heart on Atropos

Game Developer

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Unshakable Resolve

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