The German translation

Hi support.

I know, I'm a little late, but maybe you're interested in my two cents of the German version of the game. I mainly played story and was quite lazy reading lore like in Vaal areas.

The acts one to four seem to be translated in a solid way. I would have done a few things different, but first of all I'm no professional translater and and furthermore, I started playing in 2015, so in my personal in-brain translation I for example didn't have to differ gems and jewels, and so translated the english gems in the german word for jewel "Juwel", since the german word for gem, "Gemme" isn't really used any more, it's antique language. Though I have the impression you hired a translator whose mother tongue is English and not German, he overall did a good job!

From act four and esspecially from act five on quality suffers a bit. Translation sometimes becomes a little clumsy. Maybe too litterally, you just realise it is a translation (and according to my teachers this shouldn't happen). Still, quality is on a fully acceptable level, even acceptable for a full-priced game, but relatively, it decreases.

Gem names and currency seem to be translated in a correct way, I just had a few problems finding gems, esspecially support gems in German, since I'm not running a litteral translation all the time I'm using English.

Nevertheless, there are a few mistakes. I didn't really look for them, but one stayed in my mind: the "Wooden Staff", which was translated to "Holzreicher Stab" ("well-forested staff" literally translated) instead of "Hölzerner Stab", which would be correct.

IMHO the translation of the currency orb into "Sphäre" isn't correct as well, since this would be a sphere, not an orb. "Kugel" or "Orbus" (this is rather Latin than German and quite anitque, but most people would understand. And the others just woudn't care!) would have been better choices.

Don't get me wrong, you did a great job, but I'm a German, we don't compliment, only criticise :-D.

I switched back to English after playing story once, since I'm just used to it. And I don't know the german names of all the gems. But for other people, I bet it's a great opportunity.

Thanks for a great game and btw, Incursion is a great league, I'm really enjoying it :)!

Well, there was quite a discussion on the German translation, not least concerning currency like orbs or the skill gem translation.

While I generally have the same impression as you - solid tranlation on an acceptable level with some nice solutions - I don't fully agree with the examples you mentioned.

For starters, there is no "wooden staff" in game, as strange as it may sound. Your mind played a trick on you and changed the word to "wooden" because it looks most logical to you - in fact, however, that thing is called a "woodful staff" - see https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Woodful_Staff

I read somewhere that this name was supposed to be some kind of insider joke, which is always nice if you know the context, but bad for translation.

As far as "orb" is concerned, "Kugel" is probably too mundane and primarily used in other contexts, such as ammunition (bullet) or geometry (a ball shape) - think of a crystal ball (Kristallkugel). Thing is, many orbs aren't ball-shaped at all. They probably thought that "Sphäre" sounds more mythical, mysterious and vague. After all, we hardly use "Sphäre" in everyday language, particularly not for tangible objects.

I don't mind outdated words that much, either - while we can argue endlessly on whether "Gemme" was the best choice, PoE is set in a fantasy environment that reminds us of long gone times, so why not use a few old-fashioned words? We don't adress each other with "Ihr" any more, either...

My biggest problems are rare monster names and some item names. Personally, I think the very idea of using these in the first place was probably based on one thought alone: 'Diablo II did it that way'.

However, do rare monster names actually contribute anything to the game (other than being unintentionally funny at times)? Do you really feel more immersed? Would you even read the names if it weren't for funny creations like "Stinkslink"? It would probably be enough to show the monster type in yellow and list the mods so players see "Oh, this is a rare one with the Volatile Flameblood mod" - what else do you need to know?

The item names are often awkward because Blizzard recycled the graphics for the Nightmare/Hell versions of Diablo II, which forced them to come up with new names.

Unfortunately, GGG adopted the same approach and copied that "same item, same graphics, three versions" logic, which also forced them to come up with three different names for one and the same item. And while there is often an established and normal name for the item, finding an equally normal-sounding synonym can be tricky. Finding a third alternative almost inevitably results in awkward designations. Translation only tends to make matters worse...

This is why I think the way that Blizzard chose is OK as a workaround that you come up with after much of the game has been developed and you want to add something on top at a later point without causing too much work (new art, new items to consider for drop tables, vendors, etc), but not really a great concept if you start a new development from scratch.

Heck, even the prefix/suffix system is a nightmare for translation, so if I were to develop a game and I knew beforehand it's going to be translated, I'd ditch it altogether, but GGG can't remove it now. Guess they didn't develop their game with translation in mind right from the start, and that's why we'll have to live with a certain degree of awkwardness.

Despite all this, however, I have made the switch to German - initially to look out for mistranslations etc). And while it took me a while to get used to stuff (been playing since around the time of the Forsaken Masters expansion (PoE 1.3?), I now feel quite comfortable with it all things considered. I wouldn't need it because I have zero trouble understanding the English version, but I think it's acceptable enough.

If you can pinpoint any particular mistakes, however, I'm sure GGG would appreciate any pointers that help them to iron out some lingering errors. :)