This game has a bad localization strategy

Merlight · January 2019

Speaking of Russian, is the cyrillic font in game non-proportional and ugly on purpose, or is it some defect only in my client?

Elsonso · January 2019

Merlight wrote: »

Speaking of Russian, is the cyrillic font in game non-proportional and ugly on purpose, or is it some defect only in my client?

If I had to guess, it is a product of the game and studio not officially supporting the language. It is not on purpose as much as it just happens to be what it is.

antoniodavidmv · January 2019

Davor wrote: »

antoniodavidmv wrote: »

[q I just don't know how to edit the damn post to correct it (you can edit replys but no the main text) .

To edit a Main Post, you need to go to the Title of the post, and you will see a gear beside it on the right. Click on that and you can edit the main post.

Many thanks

antoniodavidmv · January 2019

ElliottXO wrote: »

You have to remember that ESO was launched on edclusively PC.

USA, GB, Germany and France share a strong PC culture and I'm not sure whether this also applies to the Spanish speaking countries.

Also the question how many of those 400 million Spanish natives have enough purchasing power for a gaming PC and a subscription at that time?

That being said yeah they should offer Spanish, but as a company I would probably only translate the text and not the voices. A lot cheaper I suppose.

I agree, at least the text and cinematics subtitled.

antoniodavidmv · January 2019

Anhedonie wrote: »

They did translations for their target audience. I don't think there is enough spanish, brazilian or russian players for them to spend money on translations.
Not to mention that some people might be quite toxic (russian dota players come to mind).

Well, the last elder scrolls had a big spanish speaking community. Bethesda always translate their games to spanish, but Zenimax somehow don't see that necesary. If this game is not going further beyond is because of that (not the only reason, of course).

Elsonso · January 2019

antoniodavidmv wrote: »

Anhedonie wrote: »

They did translations for their target audience. I don't think there is enough spanish, brazilian or russian players for them to spend money on translations.
Not to mention that some people might be quite toxic (russian dota players come to mind).

Well, the last elder scrolls had a big spanish speaking community. Bethesda always translate their games to spanish, but Zenimax somehow don't see that necesary. If this game is not going further beyond is because of that (not the only reason, of course).

I can't say why they did not translate into Spanish, or whether it was a good idea not to.

I will say that ESO (is rumored to) have launched with more VO dialog than Fallout 4, which went way beyond Skyrim. By now, given One Tamriel, DLCs, and Chapters, it is undoubtedly more than both of them combined. Add to that all of the text that is not spoken, like the books, UI text, item popups, quest text, help text, and all of that, and we are talking some pretty large numbers. That's a huge amount of work for each new language people are asking for, even if they cut costs by only showing native language subtitles instead of full VO.

FabresFour · January 2019

I am one of the unofficial translators of The Elder Scrolls Online for Brazilian Portuguese, a translation proposed by the website UniversoESO.com.br (ESO Universe).

Frankly, the game has an absurd content to be translated, are more than 300 thousand lines with words, dialogues and books. Just from mission dialogues, it's between 50-80k lines, it's a lot.

However, in a little more than a year of work, the Brazilian non-official translation team has already reached 33% of the translation. A group that is not professional (despite having some professional translators and linguists involved), is not 100% dedicated (rarely people have time to translate, it is a secondary task, since it has no financial return and is basically a hobbie) .

So, although it is a lot of work, I imagine that with a minimum investment, Zenimax would be able to deliver the game completely translated into Portuguese. The big problem here will be the need to hire a team that speaks Portuguese for interaction with the Brazilian public.

Ydrisselle · January 2019

FabresFour wrote: »

I am one of the unofficial translators of The Elder Scrolls Online for Brazilian Portuguese, a translation proposed by the website UniversoESO.com.br (ESO Universe).

Frankly, the game has an absurd content to be translated, are more than 300 thousand lines with words, dialogues and books. Just from mission dialogues, it's between 50-80k lines, it's a lot.

However, in a little more than a year of work, the Brazilian non-official translation team has already reached 33% of the translation. A group that is not professional (despite having some professional translators and linguists involved), is not 100% dedicated (rarely people have time to translate, it is a secondary task, since it has no financial return and is basically a hobbie) .

So, although it is a lot of work, I imagine that with a minimum investment, Zenimax would be able to deliver the game completely translated into Portuguese. The big problem here will be the need to hire a team that speaks Portuguese for interaction with the Brazilian public.

Exactly. The official localization would mean official support for that language - at least one CM, a couple GMs, forum moderators etc. -, plus voice acting for the whole game. It's very expensive, and requires a lot of work and coordination between many people.

antoniodavidmv · January 2019

Ydrisselle wrote: »

FabresFour wrote: »

I am one of the unofficial translators of The Elder Scrolls Online for Brazilian Portuguese, a translation proposed by the website UniversoESO.com.br (ESO Universe).

Frankly, the game has an absurd content to be translated, are more than 300 thousand lines with words, dialogues and books. Just from mission dialogues, it's between 50-80k lines, it's a lot.

However, in a little more than a year of work, the Brazilian non-official translation team has already reached 33% of the translation. A group that is not professional (despite having some professional translators and linguists involved), is not 100% dedicated (rarely people have time to translate, it is a secondary task, since it has no financial return and is basically a hobbie) .

So, although it is a lot of work, I imagine that with a minimum investment, Zenimax would be able to deliver the game completely translated into Portuguese. The big problem here will be the need to hire a team that speaks Portuguese for interaction with the Brazilian public.

Exactly. The official localization would mean official support for that language - at least one CM, a couple GMs, forum moderators etc. -, plus voice acting for the whole game. It's very expensive, and requires a lot of work and coordination between many people.

Voice is not 100% necesary. Text and subtitles in spanish are enough (I do prefer subtitles because I like how English sounds)

xxthir13enxx · January 2019

I’m still waiting for it to be translated into Canadian,eh.....

Anhedonie · January 2019

xxthir13enxx wrote: »

I’m still waiting for it to be translated into Canadian,eh.....

Just add "please" and "thank you" at the end of each sentence.

Tan9oSuccka · January 2019

ssorgatem wrote: »

"Brazilian"

Lol.

That's not a language.

But I agree that the choice of locales is a bit odd.

I mean, even if they just want to officially support Europe and North America (in which case, German makes more sense, it's the most spoken language in Europe, after all), you still have Mexico on the Na side, which alone is almost 150% of the worldwide German-speaking population.
Add Spain to that (50% of German) and, without counting other American countries other than Mexico, you already have twice as many potential customers as with German.

It's also more of an odditiy since Skyrim was localized to Spanish too, and most big games are too (I can't think of any that isn't right now).

Still, I prefer it this way. Most Spaniards I've found on EU are just plain obnoxious. I'm thankful they are rare.

There are still tons of hue hue hue BR BRs on PS4.

Cyrodiil is a lag fest on its own. Add 50 Brazilians on 56k connections.

Terrible.

Gythral · January 2019

xxthir13enxx wrote: »

I’m still waiting for it to be translated into Canadian,eh.....

I'm still waiting on an English translation out of American

Alinhbo_Tyaka · January 2019

antoniodavidmv wrote: »

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

Having designed and developed products that had national language support I always thought German with its compound words would a problem for European languages. What I surprisingly found was Spanish was the problem due to the length of text needed to say much shorter English sentences. I probably spent the same amount of time working with translators getting Spanish to fit in the display fields as I did the five other languages besides English we supported. In a game like EOS where there is spoken word that has to match the length of animations I could see where Spanish might be a problem. I suspect some of the selectable text boxes might run into problems as well.

Not at all, there are unnoficial spanish mod and the texts are well fited. The problem is that it seems to be a google translator work instead of a professional translator one.

We did work with professional translators. In fact not only did they have to be excellent translators we also required either a comp sci or engineering degree. We did not rely upon any automated translation the process was entirely manual. Keep in mind it isn't just a translator that is involved. As a business ZOS will also have programmers and a full test cycle so their cost is at least that of a DLC if not a chapter. Add in continuing costs of supporting maintenance and it can get expensive.

My point is national language support is not a simple process and costs quite a bit of money for generally little financial return. Translation is such a high cost that in a large global company like I worked for the costs had to be paid for by each individual country's business unit. With that requirement our business unit in Spain was very selective with regard to the products they would consider for translation. If the projected revenue from sales was not magnitudes larger than projected sales without translation they would not translate a product. ZOS being a business also makes similar decisions and in this case I'm sure they've determined a translated product would not generate enough new sales to offset the cost of translation.

Sanctuary_Reaper · January 2019

Quick search of most spoken languages in 2018 came back with this.

Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion speakers) ...
English (983 million speakers) ...
Hindustani (544 million speakers) ...
Spanish (527 million speakers) ...
Arabic (422 million speakers) ...

antoniodavidmv · January 2019

Sanctuary_Reaper wrote: »

Quick search of most spoken languages in 2018 came back with this.

Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion speakers) ...
English (983 million speakers) ...
Hindustani (544 million speakers) ...
Spanish (527 million speakers) ...
Arabic (422 million speakers) ...

983 Million English speakers, you went too far. You are counting there people that know the language (international). Spanish has more native speakers than English.

antoniodavidmv · January 2019

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

antoniodavidmv wrote: »

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

Having designed and developed products that had national language support I always thought German with its compound words would a problem for European languages. What I surprisingly found was Spanish was the problem due to the length of text needed to say much shorter English sentences. I probably spent the same amount of time working with translators getting Spanish to fit in the display fields as I did the five other languages besides English we supported. In a game like EOS where there is spoken word that has to match the length of animations I could see where Spanish might be a problem. I suspect some of the selectable text boxes might run into problems as well.

Not at all, there are unnoficial spanish mod and the texts are well fited. The problem is that it seems to be a google translator work instead of a professional translator one.

We did work with professional translators. In fact not only did they have to be excellent translators we also required either a comp sci or engineering degree. We did not rely upon any automated translation the process was entirely manual. Keep in mind it isn't just a translator that is involved. As a business ZOS will also have programmers and a full test cycle so their cost is at least that of a DLC if not a chapter. Add in continuing costs of supporting maintenance and it can get expensive.

My point is national language support is not a simple process and costs quite a bit of money for generally little financial return. Translation is such a high cost that in a large global company like I worked for the costs had to be paid for by each individual country's business unit. With that requirement our business unit in Spain was very selective with regard to the products they would consider for translation. If the projected revenue from sales was not magnitudes larger than projected sales without translation they would not translate a product. ZOS being a business also makes similar decisions and in this case I'm sure they've determined a translated product would not generate enough new sales to offset the cost of translation.

It's sad to hear that. That means if we want to have the same treatment as the germans, we need a law in our country (as they have) that force the companies to translate to Spanish if they want to sell the product in this market. Very sad.

Wolfkeks · January 2019

2. English (983 million speakers)

Number of native speakers: 371 million
Number of non-native speakers: 611 million
Total number of speakers: 983 million

4. Spanish (527 million speakers)

Number of native speakers: 436 million
Number of non-native speakers: 91 million
Total number of speakers: 527 million

Here are the numbers, english has more in general, while spanish has more native speakers.

https://www.fluentin3months.com/most-spoken-languages/

So I think english still has the bigger audience (in general), but I agree spanish should be added to the game.
Still no idea why it hasen't though. That is something only ZOS can answer, I think

Alinhbo_Tyaka · January 2019

antoniodavidmv wrote: »

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

antoniodavidmv wrote: »

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

Having designed and developed products that had national language support I always thought German with its compound words would a problem for European languages. What I surprisingly found was Spanish was the problem due to the length of text needed to say much shorter English sentences. I probably spent the same amount of time working with translators getting Spanish to fit in the display fields as I did the five other languages besides English we supported. In a game like EOS where there is spoken word that has to match the length of animations I could see where Spanish might be a problem. I suspect some of the selectable text boxes might run into problems as well.

Not at all, there are unnoficial spanish mod and the texts are well fited. The problem is that it seems to be a google translator work instead of a professional translator one.

We did work with professional translators. In fact not only did they have to be excellent translators we also required either a comp sci or engineering degree. We did not rely upon any automated translation the process was entirely manual. Keep in mind it isn't just a translator that is involved. As a business ZOS will also have programmers and a full test cycle so their cost is at least that of a DLC if not a chapter. Add in continuing costs of supporting maintenance and it can get expensive.

My point is national language support is not a simple process and costs quite a bit of money for generally little financial return. Translation is such a high cost that in a large global company like I worked for the costs had to be paid for by each individual country's business unit. With that requirement our business unit in Spain was very selective with regard to the products they would consider for translation. If the projected revenue from sales was not magnitudes larger than projected sales without translation they would not translate a product. ZOS being a business also makes similar decisions and in this case I'm sure they've determined a translated product would not generate enough new sales to offset the cost of translation.

It's sad to hear that. That means if we want to have the same treatment as the germans, we need a law in our country (as they have) that force the companies to translate to Spanish if they want to sell the product in this market. Very sad.

I should have added I feel translating products into other languages is a good idea. It is just that whether an idea is good or bad it still has to go through the financial people who tend to only look at the totals column on the cost sheet.

josiahva · January 2019

Honestly, with most mobile games having a built in translation button...many PC games(including ESO) are way behind the curve.