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Originally Posted by Oddbrother

Does it have anything to do with accented letters?

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Only in part. It goes way beyond a few wrong letters - some sentences in the loading screen facts only make sense once you translate them back into English word for word. As I said, Blind Idiot Translation doesn't begin to describe it.

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Originally Posted by silversteen

I've played Lego Rock Band for two days now. And I have to say the german translations of this game are more than a joke, they are harmful to the education of children. I haven't seen so many mistakes in spelling, sentence structure, grammar, just to name a few, in one place in a very long time.

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LOL... machine translation strikes again!

I theorize that a lot of localizers simply can't afford real translators anymore, which is why they need to rely on translation programs and the hilariously awful translations they produce.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Tate

The Italian translation is very bad too. Problem is, nowadays multilanguage translation are done by single services that provides translation for a number of languages. They rarely use skilled translators from the country of the target language, and the clients basically just need one single provider for all the target languages, considering quality not essential.

Me and my wife are in the business of translations and we were cringing last night reading some of the on screen text. To partial defense of whoever did the job, clients are now asking for a literal translation that can easily checked, so basically all language-specific expressions are more and more substituted by (wrong) word-for-word translations.

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I have no idea what agencies you're working with, but especially the bolded part seems like exception rather than the rule to me. I'm a professional translator myself and have been involved in the localization of several games and manuals for both small games and major releases, and I have always been part of teams consisting of multiple college-educated, experienced translators who were only allowed to translate into their native languages. I also haven't had a single client yet who asked me for a literal or word-for-word translation, which rather defeats the purpose of hiring a professional anyway.

That being said, there are still plenty of businesses in every field that cut costs on translation or don't plan a budget for it, so, anecdotal evidence aside, the video game industry won't be any different. It's quite possible that TT did things 'on the cheap', while HMX went for quality with TB:RB. It's a shame, but I have to admit I doubt something like that will be fixed at any point in time. I can't recall any developer ever bringing out a patch to correct translation errors, unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by Der_Lex

I have no idea what agencies you're working with, but especially the bolded part seems like exception rather than the rule to me. I'm a professional translator myself and have been involved in the localization of several games and manuals for both small games and major releases, and I have always been part of teams consisting of multiple college-educated, experienced translators who were only allowed to translate into their native languages.

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Then you have been very lucky. In example, I suppose you have never been asked to use Trados, which basically requires all translations to comply with the original paragraph structure (i.e. a 3 sentence paragraph needs to remain a 3 sentence paragraph). We have been working in this field since 1995 and I have yet to find an in house quality control director who vaguely knows Italian like we do. So when we submit a real localisation (not a literal translation) we are asked why we changed the meaning of the original sentences, when what we did was in example using the relevant idiomatic expression.

Mind you, I'm ONLY talking about multilanguage agencies, that I will obvious won't name. We worked directly with developers (we did a lot of educational localisations, with BBC in example) and in that case we never had a problem. And that's normal: when multilanguage agencies employ people who haven't lived in their country for years and haven't talked in their own language or read material their own language, apart from work, in years, it's understandable that they lose touch with the language. Also, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in degrees, at least those coming from this southern part of Europe...

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Originally Posted by Der_Lex

I also haven't had a single client yet who asked me for a literal or word-for-word translation, which rather defeats the purpose of hiring a professional anyway.

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I suppose you will understand our frustration then. :)

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Originally Posted by Der_Lex

That being said, there are still plenty of businesses in every field that cut costs on translation or don't plan a budget for it, so, anecdotal evidence aside, the video game industry won't be any different. It's quite possible that TT did things 'on the cheap', while HMX went for quality with TB:RB. It's a shame, but I have to admit I doubt something like that will be fixed at any point in time. I can't recall any developer ever bringing out a patch to correct translation errors, unfortunately.

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If I implied that the developer was cutting corners or trying to save a buck I'm sorry, that wasn't the real point. The point is that multilanguage agencies are basically controlling the market, as I suppose it's only natural by now. And clients look more and more for agencies that can provide the largest number of languages so that they don't need to deal with local translation agencies. If an agency can provide an excellent translation in 4 languages and one can provide a so and so translation in all the 8 languages the products need to adapted for, you have your so and so translation.

Anyway, if you have some good contact, agencies that can recognize something good when they see it, please do share the joy. :p

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Originally Posted by Mr. Tate

Then you have been very lucky. In example, I suppose you have never been asked to use Trados, which basically requires all translations to comply with the original paragraph structure (i.e. a 3 sentence paragraph needs to remain a 3 sentence paragraph). We have been working in this field since 1995 and I have yet to find an in house quality control director who vaguely knows Italian like we do. So when we submit a real localisation (not a literal translation) we are asked why we changed the meaning of the original sentences, when what we did was in example using the relevant idiomatic expression.

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No, I've always actively avoided working with translation agencies that required me to use Trados, mostly because the exploitative nature of the way in which those agencies use the program.
Granted, most of the work I do is in the field of subtitling, where you use other specialized software anyway, so that makes it easier to avoid that crap. Most of the 'normal' translations I do are directly for clients, with no middle man involved. Video game translations are the only exception to that.
I also wasn't even aware that Trados had that ridiculous limitation. Combine that with poor editing and I can imagine why your experiences have been a nightmare.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Tate

Mind you, I'm ONLY talking about multilanguage agencies, that I will obvious won't name. We worked directly with developers (we did a lot of educational localisations, with BBC in example) and in that case we never had a problem. And that's normal: when multilanguage agencies employ people who haven't lived in their country for years and haven't talked in their own language or read material their own language, apart from work, in years, it's understandable that they lose touch with the language. Also, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in degrees, at least those coming from this southern part of Europe...

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Point taken about the southern European degrees. Exchange students were always in for a bit of a shock when they came over here and really had to step up their game, whereas most of the people I know that went to Spain, Portugal or Italy seemed to talk about the exchange period like it was some kind of vacation. :D Still, some degree is better than the infamous 'friend/relative/coworker who speaks language X quite well' that often get hired as well. When working directly for clients, I've had it happen on several occasions that they considered my fees too high (they're not, but again, most businesses forget to make a budget for translations) and got one of those people instead... leading to a horrible, mangled translation that usually gets them some complaints and comments from their customers, which in turns leads to me getting another call if I can please sort out the bad translation. Those people are the main reason why my editing fees are a lot higher than my translation fees. :D

I'm surprised to hear that in your experience multilanguage agencies mostly employ expats, though. In the Internet era it's exceedingly simple to work with translators from all around the globe who still live in their own country. That's how my current main partner, who's based in the US, does it.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Tate

I suppose you will understand our frustration then. :)

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Oh, absolutely. And I thought lawyers with no grasp of any language but convoluted legalese were the worst kind of people to work with... :D

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Originally Posted by Mr. Tate

If I implied that the developer was cutting corners or trying to save a buck I'm sorry, that wasn't the real point. The point is that multilanguage agencies are basically controlling the market, as I suppose it's only natural by now. And clients look more and more for agencies that can provide the largest number of languages so that they don't need to deal with local translation agencies. If an agency can provide an excellent translation in 4 languages and one can provide a so and so translation in all the 8 languages the products need to adapted for, you have your so and so translation.

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No need to be sorry, because it's quite possible that the developer was cutting corners by simply going for the agency that offers the lowest price without regard for quality. And again, agencies insisting on having every translator physically in-house and thus limiting themselves to expats instead of working with more competent people on an online basis seems a bit outdated and counterproductive to me, but who am I to tell those agencies how to run their business... still I do hope they get plenty of negative feedback to urge them to increase the quality of their work, so do send those e-mails to TT and EA, people. ;)

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Originally Posted by Mr. Tate

Anyway, if you have some good contact, agencies that can recognize something good when they see it, please do share the joy. :p

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I only work with one agency these days (the rest of my work is directly for clients), but I'll shoot them an e-mail to ask if they need someone for Italian. If you don't hear from me again, just assume that they don't (or PM me if you think I forgot).

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Originally Posted by Der_Lex

I also wasn't even aware that Trados had that ridiculous limitation. Combine that with poor editing and I can imagine why your experiences have been a nightmare.

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Yeah, it's really awful to use. It's actually useful for software applications translations, because you have a huge amount of single words or group of words (commands in example) and you need to have consistency. Other than that, it just doesn't make a lot of sense...

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Originally Posted by Der_Lex

Still, some degree is better than the infamous 'friend/relative/coworker who speaks language X quite well' that often get hired as well. When working directly for clients, I've had it happen on several occasions that they considered my fees too high (they're not, but again, most businesses forget to make a budget for translations) and got one of those people instead... leading to a horrible, mangled translation that usually gets them some complaints and comments from their customers, which in turns leads to me getting another call if I can please sort out the bad translation. Those people are the main reason why my editing fees are a lot higher than my translation fees. :D).

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:D I know what you mean.

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Originally Posted by Der_Lex

I'm surprised to hear that in your experience multilanguage agencies mostly employ expats, though. In the Internet era it's exceedingly simple to work with translators from all around the globe who still live in their own country. That's how my current main partner, who's based in the US, does it.

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Not only they do emply expats, but one supervisor we worked with used to assert her competence by pointing out that in Italy she was an elementary school teacher. I suppose it's very useful when you're reviewing translations of business brochures and such...

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Originally Posted by Der_Lex

I only work with one agency these days (the rest of my work is directly for clients), but I'll shoot them an e-mail to ask if they need someone for Italian. If you don't hear from me again, just assume that they don't (or PM me if you think I forgot).

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Well, thank you very much, very kind of you. :) Maybe I'll discover there's still hope... :D