Poll: Do you want or need localisation?

[Timeless Lavender]

I do not mind if a game is localized (duh I want to experience games from all over the world) but I do appreciate the games more if they have some cultural references still intact. Like for example, Ace Attorney, where the game is clearly took place in Japan but the localization team 'tried' to fool us by making it took place in the USA. Many Japanese references were replace with American stuff (like Maya liking burgers instead of ramen). I would love Ace Attorney more if they have some Japanese cultural stuff in the localized version so that I can learn the culture of Japan and love the original version of the game more. But I must admit that the localized version of Ace Attorney was done very well tho.

 

[SoreWristed]

Also, I remember when I first played InFamous and the game defaulted to Dutch audio (and could not be changed without a patch), the horror!

I remember being so angry about that, even though all my devices are set in english, my playstation just forced me to watch it in the horrible dutch voice acting. It made everyone sound like a kindergarten teacher, who was trying to sound rugged and "cool". => http://youtu.be/lcLSuVTmlMs?t=2m40s (If this sounds silly to you, even if you don't speak dutch, know it sounds just as silly to dutch-speaking people) It takes away from the seriousness of serious situations.

It made me stop playing that game untill they patched it out. If they would have never patched it, i would have never played an awesome game.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

It doesn't need to be localized if it's English. Never localize anything to Dutch.
However, if it's in Japanese, Russian, Spanish or something else I can't read, please do have some translations to English in place, so I at least know what I'm doing.

 

[Vlado]

Yes, BUT let there be the option of playing in the original language, too!

 

[jklinders]

As an English native speaker living in North America, I sincerely doubt that I will ever be saturated in a foreign language or even French or Spanish enough to pick it up without a lot of help. So yes, I need localization. having language options is good. But I really need to to understand the dialogue audibly to properly experience it.

 

[fenrizz]

Some time ago, my nephew(9 at the time) was over at my house and he wanted to see a movie. All of our movies from when I was a kid were in english, so I put one in and left him to it. Normally, he'll just sit through the movie quietly. Now, he's back after ten minutes asking why they're all speaking english. He won't even try to understand or watch the movie, even though he's seen it before in Dutch and knows at least the gist of what's being said. Later, he's (12) and he's playing GTAV. Besides the fact he shouldn't be playing it anyway, he skips all dialogue and text boxes. When I was over there, he was bugging me to come up and help him with a mission he was stuck on. He was stuck on a mission because he couldn't figure out what to do. He couldn't figure out what to do, besides at least two forms of explanation having totally passed by on screen, because he won't bother to try and read it. I have two of these nephews, same problems on both, despite being totally different people.
I blame localisation.

12?

Don't you learn english in school in Holland?

Here in Norway we start learning english from 1st grade.
Hell, my 8 year old son is getting pretty good by now.


OT:
Subtitles is all I need, and I don't really need them.
I find dubs to be dreadful and horrible.

 

[Denamic]

There's too much lost in translation. Some things are even untranslatable and require a paragraph-sized footnote to explain a single sentence. In those cases, translations simply ignore what is said and just make up something that more or less fits. And then there's lip-synching. In most cases, there's not only the actual meaning that you have to convey; you have to do it in a specific timeframe, which puts another layer of challenge. No matter how high the budget or how good the actors; there's always things lost in translation, and the result suffers. Translating menus and subtitles fine, but not voiceovers.

 

[DocJ]

Subs are fine. Although sometimes it can be good to not have anything. Like for instance in Punch Out for the Wii where all the fighters speak in their native language. I find it fine that there aren't subs for that.

 

[kasperbbs]

The only things that get decently localized in Lithuania are Animated movies (Shrek and stuff like that). Everything else simply blows. Theres like two people translating movies shown on TV, a guy and a girl and more often than not they only use one of them and you can hear the original audio just fine with their voices on top. Most people i know that can't speak English would rather watch stuff in Russian dub then in their native language since Russians at least know what they are doing, even the fan made dubs ar better then the so called professional ones over here.

God bless Cartoon Network for teaching me English before i even started learning it in school.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Well I'm a native English speaker but I'm currently playing an exclusively japanese game.

I manage to get by by using a wiki so that I know what everything does so...no I guess? I can get by without it so long as there's SOME sort of reference material that lets me work out how to actually play. Its nice but honestly I almost feel it'd be a lot easier to learn languages if everything wasn't spoon-fed to me all the time by having it in English.

I actually really dislike only knowing English but the problem is threefold:
1. I'm actually not that great at learning languages.
2. Because of the way everything is translated to English its very easy to be lazy about learning other languages, so as a child you "learn to be lazy" about it.
3. There's no real impetus to learn something else because other countries tend to learn English.

I almost wish more games were in other languages to help encourage me to learn them. I'm picking up little bits of japanese from this thing I'm playing which makes for a nice change. Thinking of trying to learn the language properly.

 

[Niflhel]

If I don't understand the language of the game (neither english nor danish), I'd like subtitles, but only in english. Danish localisation, no matter how well is was handled, sounds absolutely ridiciolous to me for some reason.

 

[SoreWristed]

12?

Don't you learn english in school in Holland?

Here in Norway we start learning english from 1st grade.
Hell, my 8 year old son is getting pretty good by now.


OT:
Subtitles is all I need, and I don't really need them.
I find dubs to be dreadful and horrible.

In belgium we start learning english at the age of 12 when first starting high school. This is because we first have to learn french since it is one of the three national languages. German is somehow deemed not as important and is only available by choice.

But what english we learn at that age is aimed at children who have never even heard a word of english, so it is pretty much redundant for about 50% of children that first year.

 

[Creator002]

I like localisation because, in certain games, I like listening to a different language than my native (English). Right now I'm playing through Watch_Dogs in German (my second and final language for the time being) and before that I was playing through The Last of Us in Russian.
I don't need localisation because most games are made in English, but it's nice to have it.

 

[Irridium]

Subtitles and menues for me. Though I *can* figure out menus if pressed. However I'm not against dubs. They're great for people with dyslexia.

 

[Michel Henzel]

Some time ago, my nephew(9 at the time) was over at my house and he wanted to see a movie. All of our movies from when I was a kid were in english, so I put one in and left him to it. Normally, he'll just sit through the movie quietly. Now, he's back after ten minutes asking why they're all speaking english. He won't even try to understand or watch the movie, even though he's seen it before in Dutch and knows at least the gist of what's being said. Later, he's (12) and he's playing GTAV. Besides the fact he shouldn't be playing it anyway, he skips all dialogue and text boxes. When I was over there, he was bugging me to come up and help him with a mission he was stuck on. He was stuck on a mission because he couldn't figure out what to do. He couldn't figure out what to do, besides at least two forms of explanation having totally passed by on screen, because he won't bother to try and read it. I have two of these nephews, same problems on both, despite being totally different people.
I blame localisation.

As a fellow Dutchman, I've noticed this trend. When growing up during the 80's and 90's I learned to speak and understand English simply due to the fact that most cartoon, aside those aimed at the very very young, at the time where English dubs (think Transformers, GI joe, mask etc) and had Dutch subs. So by the time I actually had English lessons in school, I was already far beyond what was actually being taught. Nowadays I see every cartoon and even live action stuff aimed at teens, completely dubbed over in Dutch.

Now ontopic, as long as it is in English I don't care. While I'm Dutch, I have almost every program on my Computer in English. Some ofcoarse simply don't have a Dutch options, but even the ones that do, like say Steam and even Windows, I have set to English.

So personally I simply do not want or need any Dutch localization, though I do support the option of having it available for those that do. I do remember being annoyed at a game that was being delayed for 6 months on steam for the simple reason that they did not have the localization done. The game was released though, but only in German en English regions. It annoyed me due to the fact that I wasn't even allowed to buy the English version due to localization which I did not ask for and there was no real reason for them to not allow people to buy it, as they could have just put a disclaimer on it saying that it was only in German and English and that other localization would come later.

 

[McElroy]

I'm very much in favour of Finnish adaptions in almost all media aimed at kids. But I do say almost, not everything. It also has to be well done. The dubs here have a bad habit of changing voice-actors between episodes for reasons unspecified. The thing is that at least if it hasn't changed too much in the last decade they are great at leaving some imported cartoons with subs and no matter what happens there are always the popular Disney-comics that have always had superb translations.

For games... Nowadays those games which lots of text and no speech are not as common so dub away! Not everything though, as I said. Keep balance. The problem with not translating anything in games is that kids take shitty loans and mix them into Finnish. Can't say I'm completely innocent of that myself either, but I try to translate as much as I can when discussing games with no official translation/localization.

 

[josemlopes]

I too learned English from watching stuff that didnt had subtitles and shit but I was a kid, I had a shit ton of time to watch something I didnt understand again and again untill I got some idea of what could actually be going on.

You cannot expect an busy person to be able to get through something that is as time consuming as a game, and since its a game you can get stuck even in the most basic thing like a tutorial (or a menu) if you dont understand what you are supposed to do.

 

[thoughtwrangler]

I'd enjoy the challenge of playing a game based in a western European language because there's help from things like cognates, similarities in language structure, etc. Plus, they're more or less using the standard alphabet as we know it - with some variations in German, French, Nordic Languages, etc. But there's just enough there to apprehend.

However, when it comes to Japanese, Korean or some of the Cyrillic-based languages out there it's much harder because your brain has to do double duty (triple duty for Japanese, what with all the kanji). You have to figure out a) what sound the word has (its shape) and then to determine its meaning. Add to that the differences in structure, etc. and it's a hot mess.

Trying to figure out a Japanese game or movie would work a lot better as a companion project to learning the language for real, I think.

 

[Rene Reyes]

I wasn't fluent also before but what I did is learn english with native speakers at http://preply.com/en/skype/english-native-speakers and it helped me

 

[ninja666]

As long as it's originally in English and not some other language, like Russian, or Japanese, I don't need any localisations, and when I need one it's from said other language to English. Nothing else is even considered in my book, especially since game localisations/translations in my country (Poland) that were done right you can count on fingers of your both hands, while the rest of them are pretty much utter shit, with mistranslations, grammar errors everywhere, and, in case of dubs, poorly matched voices (because there's a neverending fad in here that it has to be someone famous you know from TV/movies, instead of professional voice actors, so they can put "[famous actor name here] as [game character name here]" on the cover). And the worst thing about it is that most of the games you buy here are forcing those localisations unto you, with no option of changing it back to English without tweaking with the game's files. And also if you could see how much butthurt there is everywhere if a game happens to come out unlocalised... People should just learn English and deal with it instead of whining like little bitches.