@GGG Italian translation of the game

hey guys! I'm posting this here because it looks like it is the best section, and because GGG people seem to be active on the forums.
So, my question is: are you guys (GGG staff) interested in translating the game in other languages to make it more "popular"? If the answer is "yes", I would gladly collaborate as a volounteer to help translating the game to italian, since Italian is my native language, I'm quite experienced in the English language and I have good knowledge of both the cultures and of the "fantasy/gdr" genre, and an overall wide videogames background. If you are interested, leave a comment or contact me privately, I'm really enjoying the game and it would be great to help it grow bigger.

As happended with other free to play games (ex. LoL), which rely on their community a lot and need to be spread as wide as possible, being translated into the languages of the target audience is vital to reach the biggest part of the gamers of foreign countries, who don't really know English or who don't have an appropriate knowledge of the language to play and understand a complex game like PoE.

Anyway, folks, what do you think about this topic? Suggestions/ideas? Would you like to see the game translated to your Language? Do you think it would attract more players?

Thanks for reading ;)

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Alysma wrote:

FAQ #10 ;-)
About a year ago, GGG asked for language suggestions and although I'm not really certain there's a fair chance Italian was on that list. Also, they said that they would most likely hire professionals which I sure hope they do. From the numerous discussions of this topic on the forums, people vastly underestimate the amount of time and level of language proficiency that is needed to fully translate a game. I'm all in for community projects but some things are better left to the pros :-)

thank you for the answer and the link, didn't know that :) well as I said in Italy English is taught at school but not in a truly appropriate way (in my opinion), and as I said a translation would help the game a lot, since in Italy there is a wide and growing players base. About leaving the translation to professionals, I don't agree with you, I have seen so many films/games/books translated by "professionals" in a horrible way, not because of the translators' fault, but simply because they don't have a clue about what they are translating, and the essence of the work gets lost. Just think about Oblivion or Fallout 3, and all the players made translation mods, much better than the official translation. By the way I, personally speaking, have no degrees at all in translation, but I accademically have Cambridge's highest Language certification (corresponds to native speaker level) and having realatives in the US, Australia and England I also have a pretty good knowledge of the culture, as I said. Obviously I'm writing this not for self-celebration purposes, but just to show how good bilingual people can be found in the player base, I'm sure there are many other italians playing PoE probably better than me at English, but a fan-made official translation for me is far from being impossible (look at PoE itself, made by Diablo fans and ending up being better than the "official" Diablo 3 ;D)

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Alysma wrote:

I'm sorry but I fail to see the relevance of who did what with other games ;-) :-). Anyway, I don't know you, therefore I can't gauge your language skills, so please don't take this personal (it really is meant to be a general statement): It's very likely not enough to be good at English and a native speaker. You have to be really good at reading between the lines for all the little details and capturing the atmosphere, at finding the appropriate translations, the right words, maybe come up with entirely new ones just to get the whole thing right. E.g. I'm a scientist, not a writer/poet so I'm probably not the right person for such a task :-)
And in any case, GGG would still need professional editors for e.g. proof reading and unifying the work of all the translators. Also, this would be a long-term commitment to ensure the smooth addition of new content without noticable shifts in the translations.

don't worry, it just wanted to make an example as I wrote :D probably (luckily for you :D), you are a native english speaker and you can play "english" games, watch movies, read books and listen to music in the language they were intended to be. I have also been able to do that thanks to the opportunities I've had, but I can guarantee that the average italian (or non english speaker) gamer has to play translated games. It often happens that translation (even for AAA games, for example Oblivion and FO3, and even more recently League of Legends in some parts) literally suck, and unofficial translation mods are much better and popular than the official. You rightfully said that a perfect translation has to capture the spirit of the game, and nobody can do that better than a gamer who played and loved that game, and obviously has langauge skills. Professional translators just get the script and translate mechanically, without knowing the subject at all.
Just to make an example, if you played original Pokemon games (red and blue) you would know that there was a move called "counter (attack)": in the italian games that move was litterally translated as "someone who counts", not "counter attack"! And not only someone who knows the game, but also someone with some common sense would have guessed the right meaning! I think the problem is that often the translators also speak as native language the starting language, and to get a perfect translation the translator would have to speak the final language as native, but this is just my opinion :)

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Alysma wrote:

:-D Actually, I'm German. Which is why I really care about the quality of translations. E.g. the book I'm currently trying to read where the translation is so bad that it has become a major distraction. Which is a shame because the story itself is actually ok. By now I'd be really curious to take a look at the original version, just to see if it's really that clunky.

I don't know if there have been any community attempts at Italian but the German ones I've seen were all way off the mark. Bad translations don't help anyone so regardless of who will do it, I really hope that GGG pick the right guys. Somewhere out there, there have to be people that are at home in several languages and love ARPGs. :-D

alright I see :) well as far as I could see, in Germany the level of english teaching is pretty high, you guys are lucky (by the way I'm living in Berlin at the moment and I'm totally loving the place and the people :D)! Well, yeah, let's just hope they don't mess up with the translation, so that more and more people get the chance to play this Amazing game :)