Having trouble getting my game translated

Started by Blondbraid, Mon 27/08/2018 12:55:27

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Blondbraid

Some time ago I recently released the game I've been working on for the last year, and I was hoping on finding somebody here willing to help translate the game to different languages,
but the problem is that in my recruitment thread for the game, out of the two people who offered to translate the game to French and Spanish respectively, one of them had to retract the offer
due to being busy with other stuff and I haven't heard any news from the other person. I still haven't gotten my game translated and I was wondering if anyone has any tips for what to do in such a situation.
Any advice?


Stupot

Just wait. You'll get loads of offers now. Trouble with the recruitment thread is that nobody reads it. Or, somebody replied offering to help and then nobody else feels the needs to offer.

cat

Doing translations is a lot of work, even more so for text-heavy games like yours. You need to know both languages and the game itself very well to make a good translation. I translated a few of my games to my native language (German) and even then it was not that easy.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Mon 27/08/2018 12:55:27
I still haven't gotten my game translated and I was wondering if anyone has any tips for what to do in such a situation.
The question is: Why do you want to have your game translated? Is it really worth the effort? Dave Gilbert for example doesn't even do translations of his games, because he thinks it's not worth the effort. A translation alone will not give you many more downloads unless you also reach out to foreign gaming communities or are lucky and get featured in an article.

If having a translation is important to you - have you considered paying someone for it?
Can you maybe translate your game into another language yourself (this will also show you how tedious this work is and why other people don't want to do it :P)?

Radiant

Well I've had no problem finding translators for games with 3000 to 6000 words, but from the recruitment thread, your game has about 14000 words. That's pretty big, so it's possible that it simply took a lot more time than the translator envisioned. You may be able to get around this by having two people work on the translation so they spread the work (and proofread one another to account for stylistic differences).

Or you could pay for a professional translator. This may easily cost over $1000 though, so you have to ask yourself how strongly you want your translation.

Or it's possible that you simply had bad luck twice, and the third time will work out better.

Mandle

Quote from: Radiant on Mon 27/08/2018 14:06:31
You may be able to get around this by having two people work on the translation so they spread the work (and proofread one another to account for stylistic differences).

NO! JUST NO! this will never work, will end up being much more work and stress than having just one person work on it, and will result in a bad translation.

I have been through exactly this scenerio on Donald Dowell and it caused me, and AprilSkies, so much stress in the end that we had to just go for the inferior translation.

Luckily, a lot of stuff got changed back last minute before the game was released to reduce the damage. Thank God for Andrea!

Blondbraid

Quote from: Mandle on Mon 27/08/2018 16:16:52
Quote from: Radiant on Mon 27/08/2018 14:06:31
You may be able to get around this by having two people work on the translation so they spread the work (and proofread one another to account for stylistic differences).

NO! JUST NO! this will never work, will end up being much more work and stress than having just one person work on it, and will result in a bad translation.

I have been through exactly this scenerio on Donald Dowell and it caused me, and AprilSkies, so much stress in the end that we had to just go for the inferior translation.

Luckily, a lot of stuff got changed back last minute before the game was released to reduce the damage. Thank God for Andrea!
I can see how having two people do the same translation could backfire, either causing inconsistencies in the translation or making them do redundant work translating the same text twice.

I have received positive comments from people happy to see a game in Swedish, so I hope having more languages will draw in more people,
since it is a rather story-heavy game.

But I don't really have the budget for a professional, so I'm still holding out hope that someone here will volunteer.
My hope with getting the game translated is that more people will want to download it, plus I was hoping to use a new translation
as an opportunity to keep up interest in the game by posting about added languages and similar features.


Radiant

Quote from: Mandle on Mon 27/08/2018 16:16:52
Quote from: Radiant on Mon 27/08/2018 14:06:31
You may be able to get around this by having two people work on the translation so they spread the work (and proofread one another to account for stylistic differences).
NO! JUST NO! this will never work, will end up being much more work and stress than having just one person work on it, and will result in a bad translation.
It has worked for me twice. But yes, this is something one should be cautious with.

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