11 replies to this topic

[Altynay]

Does a German localization of GW2 support case declension of PC/NPC/mob names, skills and so on?

Sadly I don't know much of German, so there could be some clever way to make it without; in that case pointing at it would be also appreciated.

[Altynay]

No answer for a month?

[NumberOneEU]

Dont understand the question, sorry. Maybe too difficult english, i dont know :S

[Yui San]

Altynay, on 09 September 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Does a German localization of GW2 support case declension of PC/NPC/mob names, skills and so on?

Sadly I don't know much of German, so there could be some clever way to make it without; in that case pointing at it would be also appreciated.

If you are trying to learn some German by playing GW2, forget about it! I'm dead serious, the translation is a mess. And I doubt there is (much) case declension on Monster and NPCs names. They also didn't have that in GW1.

Edited by Yui San, 12 November 2012 - 08:38 PM.

[AetherMcLoud]

AFAIK it does. Not for Names though (usually don't need it for names).

Edited by AetherMcLoud, 12 November 2012 - 08:38 PM.

[Akula]

Yui San, on 12 November 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

If you are trying to learn some German by playing GW2, forget about it! I'm dead serious, the translation is a mess. And I doubt there is (much) case declension on Monster and NPCs names. They also didn't have that in GW1.

So true. There's an event in Queensdale near a lake where a group of bears attack beehives in order to get some honey. If it fails, the bears are renamed to Stuffed Bear and run off with a full tummy. In the german version these bears are called "Plüschbär". While Plüschbär is a Stuffed Bear, it's the stuffed toy rather than an actual bear...

Whoever translates things at ArenaNet must have absolutely no access to the game material whatsoever.

[Kovares]

Besides that, the german voiceover iis horribly, horribly bad. The english version does not exactly offer stellar performances by the main actors, but the german version is an absolute abomination. The voice actors clearly had no direction or context at all when they spoke their lines, I wouldn't be surprised if the did them in alphabetical order or something...

[Yui San]

Akula, on 12 November 2012 - 08:45 PM, said:

So true. There's an event in Queensdale near a lake where a group of bears attack beehives in order to get some honey. If it fails, the bears are renamed to Stuffed Bear and run off with a full tummy. In the german version these bears are called "Plüschbär". While Plüschbär is a Stuffed Bear, it's the stuffed toy rather than an actual bear...

Whoever translates things at ArenaNet must have absolutely no access to the game material whatsoever.

Oh my god. XD Reminds me of Elder Scrolls translations my brother told me about. I actually used to check German translation when I wasn't sure about an English word. But after I've seen so many mistakes I stopped that. The translation is not only very bad and often completely wrong, it also seems rushed and is in many cases vey unaccurate. For example they would translate a word like blossom as Blume. But that's wrong Blume is flower in English. I had a lot of other examples but I forgot about most of them.

Does anyone have an idea who translated the game to German (and other languages). I highly doubt that it was done by a professional country or German native speakers. The word order, structure is way too bad for that.

I also agree with Kovares: German voice acting in games (in general) tends to be really bad even worse than in original versions. (English, Japanese or whatever it might be).

[Yui San]

AetherMcLoud, on 12 November 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

AFAIK it does. Not for Names though (usually don't need it for names).

This is wrong, Names "change" slightly in genitive case. There are more changes with general nouns though. Not sure what solution they have in GW2 but in GW1 with all the pick up msgs they wrote something like e.g. "Aether McLoud hebt folgendes auf: Langschwert d. Zorn" or something like that. They tryed to avoid the grammatical cases wherever they could.

This made many item names really ridiculous. For example a Hale Smiting Staff of Enchantment would be something like "Rüstigkeits- Peinigungs-Stab d. Verzauberung". It doesn't only look completely ridiculous it's also not really correct. Well you can use hyphens to connect nouns but it is not very elegant. that staff should actually be called "Rüstigkeitspeiningungsstab der Verzauberung".

[Akula]

Yui San, on 13 November 2012 - 03:17 AM, said:

Does anyone have an idea who translated the game to German (and other languages). I highly doubt that it was done by a professional country or German native speakers. The word order, structure is way too bad for that.

Another prime example is Kanaxai's Edge being translated as Kanaxai Vorteil in the german version of Guild Wars Factions. How can they make such a huge translation mistake? It's a sword, a blade, an edge and certainly not related to "Having the edge".

There's also a miniature called Mini Seraph Heavy Guard in GW2. Heavy in the sense of heavily armored. Was translated as "Schwerer-Miniatur-Seraphen-Wächter", being worded this way basically says that the miniature itself is heavy. And yes, the abundance of hyphens. They are literally everywhere.

[Yui San]

Akula, on 13 November 2012 - 03:49 AM, said:

Another prime example is Kanaxai's Edge being translated as Kanaxai Vorteil in the german version of Guild Wars Factions. How can they make such a huge translation mistake? It's a sword, a blade, an edge and certainly not related to "Having the edge".

There's also a miniature called Mini Seraph Heavy Guard in GW2. Heavy in the sense of heavily armored. Was translated as "Schwerer-Miniatur-Seraphen-Wächter", being worded this way basically says that the miniature itself is heavy. And yes, the abundance of hyphens. They are literally everywhere.

There are a lot of mistakes like the one you mentioned about Kanaxai's Edge. It makes you wonder if they sometimes just use google translation when they are not sure how they should translate a certain word.

What you say about the miniature is not correct. If the Miniatur was heavy it would have to be "schwere" since it's "die Miniatur (feminine). Also the word order would have to be different: Schwere Seraphen-Wächter-Miniatur. Schwerer Wächter" as a term is possible. In the context native speakers would think of a heavily armored Guard and not an overweight guard. ^^

Edited by Yui San, 13 November 2012 - 02:15 PM.

[snograt]

Well, it's a well-known fact that ANet don't have any native German-speakers working for them.

...owait.