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[Farseer]

Americans never bother translating their butchered dialect of English into the Queen's English.

[Jiri Petru]

Americans never bother translating their butchered dialect of English into the Queen's English.

Lol. So true 

About Russian voiceover and lipsinch - Valve again does it right. But to defend localisations a bit - most of the time it's impossible to do. For lipsinch you'd need to re-render the scene or program the game in such a way that it automatically analyses and lipsinchs new voice files. Both require time and effort on part of the developer who usually doesn't care. The localisations are made by external studios who often get minimal support and must do their best they can - "the best" mostly means hiring voice actors who can "fit" in the lips of the original video. Which is a hard thing to do if you don't see the video. (They don't get to see the game or videos beforehand.) Etc. etc.

[head]

Sweden

Well there is never any English to Swedish voice overs expect in kids games.

And the text translation is usually alright. expect some minor word fuck ups

[Sergius]

All the games that are translated to my language are done so in Spain. I hate them because everyone sounds like Puss in Boots.

[Greiger]

Translations would become a non-issue if everybody would just speak American like the most awesome country in the world. (Yes, I am joking, please don't hurt me)

Nobody really talked about the amateur scene much yet.  I hear there's a bunch of folks who translate the Touhou games for free, and there are some folks that translate games that aren't going to be translated.  There also used to be a whole bunch of folks that would translate ROMS of stuff like Final Fantasy 2,3 and 5 before Squaresoft realized that English speakers might like those games too.   And last I heard (like a year ago) Mother 3 is in the process of being translated to English. 

Unfortunately I don't know of any links to them, I usually find out about translations from a friend who actually knows a bit of Japanese and likes to keep up with it, and get them from him.

So there seems to be a good number of Japanese to English translators out there who do it as a hobby at least.  And they all appear to be very good quality.  I haven't seen anything done like that for more modern looking games though.  And certainly not any voicework.

[PTTG??]

I remember a French game translated to English that wasn't too bad, except for mysterious failures. You'd be talking to your country's top astronaut and offer to appoint him to chief military officer, and he'd decline, pointing out that "You should never put the cloth in the briefcases!"

[Deon]

Americans never bother translating their butchered dialect of English into the Queen's English.

Lol. So true 

About Russian voiceover and lipsinch - Valve again does it right.

Heh, of course. Valve provides an AWESOME support for localisation teams. All Half Life games have EVERYTHING translated, voice acted and lip-synched in a great way. I wish other studios (especially those making AAA RPGs) did it too (I am looking at you Bioware).

[Majestic7]

A Finn here. None of the games I play are translated (strategy, RPGs, the occasional coop shooter). I think Sims are and likely other really big games (EA), like those hockey series. I don't know about big FPS games, kind of doubt it. I don't really see any value in localisation, I'll rather go with English.

I sometimes wish I could read Russian, because there are many interesting games coming from Russia but their translation into English is almost always utterly horrible... Sometimes to the point where it makes the game unplayable.

[Croquantes]

In Canada, all games are required to come with a handy french manual, but no games are required to be translated. It's a bit silly, because the french manual is usually lower quality, and shrinkwrapped to the game case. It looks super ghetto. :S

[Silfurdreki]

Sweden

Well there is never any English to Swedish voice overs expect in kids games.

And the text translation is usually alright. expect some minor word fuck ups

This. The only game I own that is translated to Swedish is, strangely enough, Scribblenauts (one and two). There is usually a very thick booklet with the manual in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and English in every game, though.

[Sowelu]

I remember a French game translated to English that wasn't too bad, except for mysterious failures. You'd be talking to your country's top astronaut and offer to appoint him to chief military officer, and he'd decline, pointing out that "You should never put the cloth in the briefcases!"

Actually, that's not quite a mistranslation.  It's just a French figure-of-speech that makes plenty of sense if you know the meaning behind it.


no not really

[Sensei]

I think there's a few games (most Japanese-to-English) that slip in mistranslation. Like "Armored Core: For Answer". With the kind of budget the game had and the localization available...well, there's no way they didn't know it should be "for answers". I think they just know their fanbase really well.

Also, (the rare) games translated out of German tend to be a little odd. The voiceovers don't match the text, things are phrased unusually, or it'll say "Remember, umlauts may not be included in the filepath!" Which basically just suggests it was translated in Germany rather than localized in an english-speaking country.

[Darvi]

umlauts

Heh.
So what languages use ï and ÿ ? And how do you pronounce them?


It bothers me!

(btw, ë get pronounced "uh" :3)

[LASD]

There's very few games being translated to Finnish. Pretty much only kids' games, EA sports games and The Sims. All of them quite professional though.

Actually I'm really happy they aren't translated, cause I'd know about 50% less English if it wasn't for games. And I would've been way less motivated to learn it. Cause I really wanted to know what was going on in Final Fantasy 7 when I was like 9.

Fake edit: Haha, I only read this reply after writing mine, pretty much the same thoughts.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A Finn here. None of the games I play are translated (strategy, RPGs, the occasional coop shooter). I think Sims are and likely other really big games (EA), like those hockey series. I don't know about big FPS games, kind of doubt it. I don't really see any value in localisation, I'll rather go with English.

I sometimes wish I could read Russian, because there are many interesting games coming from Russia but their translation into English is almost always utterly horrible... Sometimes to the point where it makes the game unplayable.

[Silfurdreki]

umlauts

Heh.
So what languages use ï and ÿ ? And how do you pronounce them?


It bothers me!

(btw, ë get pronounced "uh" :3)

Ï is used in French (very rarely), I think. I have faint memories of one word containing an ï from my (mostly ignored) French classes in 9:th grade. I couldn't remember what word it is to save my life,though, which makes it a distinct possibility that I'm wrong.