Good, unlucky and bad translation...

[SisAmethyst]

I dunno if Turbine had access to at least the translation Templates from Codemaster but they do a great work in providing the French and German players a localized version. To give everybody an impression I took some examples.

The first impression was already a shock ... translating of trademarks and nouns? Even in Germany this game is known as 'Dungeon&Dragons' and not as 'Verliese und Drachen' *shudder*


Well, I bug reported this and some other minor issues but it looks fine so far. I entered the game and talked to some NPC.

So very good and well done is the translation of the conversations, item descriptions and effects:



But on the other hand, due to some translations several descriptions, menus and buttons look now a bit distorted or even unreadable:



Also why do we need to translate things like Spells, Components and even more worse Quest names?

• Die Dreaming Dark - half german, half english
• Tower of Despair - perfect, keep that name, but what is 'Überfall'? Everybody who play an MMO know what a Raid is!
• Erinnerungen zurückholen - good translation, but which quest is this? If someone is looking for a group for that Quest in German then I wish him good luck!

Why a name of a spell needs to be translated? How you translate 'Mordenkainen's Disjunction'? Translate the description but the name? A spell could be named 'Simsalabim' or 'Abracadabra' and make no sense at all. It could be spelled in draconic (which I am unable to write) but only important is I know what the spell effect is. And if I know the effect then it is irrelevant if I need as material 'Eyelash in Gum Arabic' or 'Krudelbutz'. Anyway, translating spells and components is debatable and I don't mind this that much, but the name of Quests should stay as they are as they are standing nouns.

A translation should help players to find their way through the game and connect them. It shouldn't lead to the point where players being segregated or put into a box. I would like to know and understand about what a fellow player is talking about if he talk about a 'Greensteal Weapon' or in case someone is searching for the material Heart of a Hen' that I could lead him to the right vendor, independent if that player is speaking French, English or German as a mother tongue.

Last but not least, thanks for the effort to providing a translated version, which may help a lot of players that eagerly waited for it since Codemasters closed!

[Tolero]

Thanks much! Very good feedback

[der_kluge]

When I worked for a large retail organization, I had the responsibility for translating our front-end applications into a number of different languages (French and German, in addition to Spanish and Portuguese).

French was particularly brutal because of the exponential increase that language incurs. I had a column header on my app increased like 2x the size after translation. It made it challenging, because I basically had to go through and increase all the column sizes to allow for the huge increase in language size.

It's certainly a complex task I can appreciate!

[SisAmethyst]

Thanks much! Very good feedback

Thanks Still collecting more screenshot and evidence to bug report them ... but this takes time ...

When I worked for a large retail organization, I had the responsibility for translating our front-end applications into a number of different languages (French and German, in addition to Spanish and Portuguese).

French was particularly brutal because of the exponential increase that language incurs. I had a column header on my app increased like 2x the size after translation. It made it challenging, because I basically had to go through and increase all the column sizes to allow for the huge increase in language size.

It's certainly a complex task I can appreciate!

At some positions I already have seen that the Font was altered to be more narrow/smaller. I guess at least for the title tabs like 'VERKAUFEN' where just the last character dropped in the next line this is probably the best way to go. Some words may be indeed shortcutted but this is very tricky to not lead to miss understandings. Another option for some words would be to use synonyms. This however will not help for the three buttons like 'Müll hinzufügen' where the button need to be altered in size. All in all however it is I guess a mix of all this options that need to go hand in hand and surely not an easy task!

[Vellrad]

I wonder how one thing will work:
Players who are on german/french client, and english.
Like, which description of linked item will they see, or which name of quest they see in LFM.

[SisAmethyst]

I wonder how one thing will work:
Players who are on german/french client, and english.
Like, which description of linked item will they see, or which name of quest they see in LFM.

This is indeed an interesting question, I will try that out, but I would guess that the item instance is independent of the language, so a linked item then should be read as English in a US installation and in German in a German installation.

My biggest issue is that if Quest names are translated and you try for example to reverse the German "Alte Geheimnisse abbauen" back to english you may end up with a Quest named "Remove old Secrets" which is something totally different then the initial "Mining for Ancient Secrets"!

This would mean if I wanted to ask a fellow English player about this Quest, that he wouldn't even know from what I am talking about. That shouldn't be the desired point of the translation.
A foreign player may have difficulties to spell an English Quest name like "Hound of Xoriat" but com'on who not has issues to spell some things like Xyzzy in this game anyway?

Last but not least an English Quest name would help me for example to use and search for this Quest in the Compendium or the DDO wiki to get more information about it.

EDIT:

After verification on Lamannia. The linked item itself is written in the local language in the chat so you may see things like:
'+1 Starre V (mächtig) Keule'
An other player on a French client was so nice and tell me that the description shown when opened was in English. So it seems this get a bit mixed up

[N-0cturn]

I posted this in the other Thread before, but i guess this place is better.

Some Feedback:

Something that applies to a lot of your translations: you tend to overuse the “-“
in most cases it’s better to write the words contiguous or to leave a simple space between them.
For example: "Winter-Stiefel" to "Winterstiefel"

Log-In Screen:
“Enter last last played world” „XXX“ was changed into “Betreten” „XXX“
Suggestion: „Zuletzt besuchte Welt betreten“ “XXX”

Charakter Erschaffung:
Description for Nahkampf: „Nahkampf-Charaktere begeben sich in das Handgemenge im Kampf Auge in Auge.”
This is just nonesense ^^
Suggestion: „Nahkämpfer bevorzugen den es den Gegner im Handgemenge zu stellen“
But i am not really happy with this sentence. I guess someone could propose a better solution.

Zauberwi(rker) is cut off: just “Zauber” would be OK since it’s just “Spell” in the English version.

Description for Barbaren: … und in Kampfrausch zu verfallen um …
Suggestion: … und in einen Kampfrausch zu verfallen um …

Description for Kriegsgeschmiedete: „Sie haben jedoch weniger Kapazität für Weisheit und da sie …“
Sounds kinda strange „Kapazität für Weisheit“
Suggestion: Ihr andersartiges Denken führt jedoch zu einer niedrigeren Weisheit und Problemen beim Kontakt mit anderen Rassen.

Feats:
Toughness was translated into Abhärtung
Suggestion: use „Zähigkeit“
(Volks-Abhärtung is something you really dont want in your game XD )
„Drachenmal des Schattenwandels“ Suggestion: use „Drachenmal der Schatten“ keep them simple


Items:
The items are a mess. You have to use adjectives on the prefix or we will get something like the Diablo 2 random item names.
I can see how this is a problem because the ending of the adjective depends on the noun that follows:
“Beweglich Anzug des Befehls” sounds silly
„Beweglicher Anzug des Befehls“ would be the way to go
BUT: “Bewegliches Kettenhemd des Befehls”
AND: „Bewegliche Fellrüstung des Befehls“

If you can’t fit in a correct version I would prefer english item names to item names that sound silly.
Something that’s easier to change:
+2 Ritterrüstungen to +2 Ritterrüstung the same goes for Lederrüstung, Fellrüstung etc.

(You used Plural für XXXRüstungen, it has to be singular)


Other things in game:

When you have evasion and make your save the word “saved” is on the screen for a small time.
This is translated into “Retten”, which is the wrong tense.
It should be “Gerettet” although I would prefer something else. Maybe “Vermieden”


EDIT: btw I think Mordenkainen's Disjunction could be names Mordenkainen's Bannspruch. :P

[SisAmethyst]

I posted this in the other Thread before, but i guess this place is better.

Some Feedback:

Something that applies to a lot of your translations: you tend to overuse the “-“
in most cases it’s better to write the words contiguous or to leave a simple space between them.
For example: "Winter-Stiefel" to "Winterstiefel"

....

Feats:
Toughness was translated into Abhärtung
Suggestion: use „Zähigkeit“
(Volks-Abhärtung is something you really dont want in your game XD )
„Drachenmal des Schattenwandels“ Suggestion: use „Drachenmal der Schatten“ keep them simple

...

Items:
The items are a mess. You have to use adjectives on the prefix or we will get something like the Diablo 2 random item names.
I can see how this is a problem because the ending of the adjective depends on the noun that follows:
“Beweglich Anzug des Befehls” sounds silly
„Beweglicher Anzug des Befehls“ would be the way to go
BUT: “Bewegliches Kettenhemd des Befehls”
AND: „Bewegliche Fellrüstung des Befehls“

I agree, Zähigkeit is probably a better translation for Toughness. I also noticed a lot of '-' between words, which is not directly wrong, but Germans like to concatenate words like:

Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän (Danube steamship company captain)

Yes, this is one word, and even not the longest

The '-' is more an exception to group independent words that belong together or to make a specific distinction between nouns, like in 'Sachsen-Anhalt' (Saxony-Anhalt) to distinguish the two dukedoms Saxony and Anhalt.

I also see the problem with the word ending of item prefix and suffix that may not match. Even more so this may be true in French, but they indeed like to translate everything. In this wonderful language even Computer will become ordinateur
So I guess there is no real option to keep that in English. So maybe in that case the ending could be replaced by a dot, like:
Beweglich. Anzug des Befehls
Beweglich. Kettenhemd des Befehls
Beweglich. Fellrüstung des Befehls

[Qua2]

Other things in game:
I have not a clue which dictionary told you that an auctioneer would be called “Auktionator” in German XD
The correct word would be Auktionär, although I think “Auktionator” sounds kinda cool ^^

Maybe you were thinking of 'Aktionär'. The correct translation of auctioneer is, in fact, Auktionator.

[N-0cturn]

Maybe you were thinking of 'Aktionär'. The correct translation of auctioneer is, in fact, Auktionator.

You are right ... I think i never heard someone say Aktionator and i an shocked but you are right ^^

[Tinco]

There is a huge problem in german grammar for the Prefix - Name - Suffix naming convention that is used by DDO random-loot. You won't be able to do this properly without checking (at least) for

a) gender of the item. It's 'Die Handaxt' (the handaxe) but 'Der Krummsäbel' (the scimitar).
b) number of an item(stack). This is primarily true for ammunition.

Why? because in german, adjectives are inflected based on the noun they refer to which is not true for the english language.

There are other cases where you can't apply english grammar rules to the german language but this is a big one in DDO because to do it right you basically need additional columns in your item-dababase.

[Lithic]

Today I learned some german: METEORITENSCHWARM!

That alone has made waking up this morning worthwhile

[Tom318]

I feel like playing a few foreign language clients just to learn something

[Vellrad]

How did they translated haste?
Will shouting 'schnela schnela' on voice chat will have new meaning now?

[Tom318]

How did they translated haste?
Will shouting 'schnela schnela' on voice chat will have new meaning now?

Never mind haste, how did they translate 'Pinch of Bull Dung' ?

[Dunklerlindwurm]

Haste is Hast in German. Pretty simple.

Schnelligkeit = Speed or Quickness

[phalaeo]

Today I learned some german: METEORITENSCHWARM!

That alone has made waking up this morning worthwhile

Heh- came to post this.
METEORITENSCHWARM!

[Narishka]

Generally, I don't have a clue why class, feat, race (etc) descriptions are messed up because German Eberron Rulebooks exist! It would be pretty simple for the devs just to buy a german Campaign Guide and a players handbook and compare it to the englisch ones. (I have hope that the Core books are well translated ^^). So I really ask me why we get horrible google (?) translations when the important stuff was already translated by someone else.


To the toughness discussion: I think Abhärtung is the correct term, although Volks-Abhärtung just sounds stupid, but generally the feat toughness is translated for most D&D content I know of to Abhärtung whereas Fortitude corresponds to "Zähigkeit".

Additionally I also vote for non-translated quest names because it will make questing more difficult for new players that can't talk with others about quests because they don't know the english name.

[Spoprockel]

Additionally I also vote for non-translated quest names because it will make questing more difficult for new players that can't talk with others about quests because they don't know the english name.

Maybe let the english name pop up if you mouse over them in the questlog?

[Kale_Hagan]

I came across this phrase:

"Der krankenfurher hat meine papieren essen."

***?









/ j/k