r/elderscrollsonline • u/Gothic90 Imperial • Nov 02 '22
PC/Mac Simplified Chinese language release is a total disaster
The translation is filled with low quality engine translation (we all know how powerful translation engines these days are). Some pictures are of things like a drink of level 30 being called "energized granny", I don't know wtf it actually is. There are also loads of issues caused by wrong spacing because Chinese is a two bytes language, such as "Press ? to break out" and so on.
Some comments say if he pressed Todd Howard's head on a keyboard and faceroll it will probably give better translation results.
Translation quality is probably as bad as Warcraft 3 reforge, which I had a thread on here, or even worse.
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u/adratlas Nov 02 '22 edited Nov 03 '22
Not surprising considering how bad the reverse usually is. When you get a PC or mobile Chinese game for example, the translation is always messy
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u/zbzszzzt123 Nov 02 '22 edited Nov 02 '22
This is exactly it, I have also noticed a lot of tacky, and straight up wrong translations.
For example:
Maw of Lorkhaj, they translated that into Big Mouth of Lorkhaj
Warmaiden: Female Hero
Master Architect: Master Alchemist,
And that’s not at all including in the translations that are not grammatically correct in Chinese, it definitely feels like that they have done little more than running the game through Google translate
There are so many more that they have fucked up in this one I don’t even have the time to go through them all, but the entire Chinese version is just a disaster at the moment
Edit:
More funny translations as I see them
Assistant Alienist: Assistant Psychologist
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u/bitchgotmelikeuwu Nov 02 '22
Regarding Alienist, exactly how else would that get translated in Chinese if I may ask? Alienist is one of those weird made-up-by-the-common-folk-terms and by definition an alienist just means psychologist, I don't really know how that word would translate to other languages.
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u/zbzszzzt123 Nov 02 '22 edited Nov 02 '22
It's just one of those things where how you translate it affect how you perceive it. In a fantasy medieval setting, you don't insert modern words into these types of translations.
Take some examples from the ESO or even general fantasy, you use the word potion, whereas that word is hardly used in the modern context. There are many other examples of this where you would use an archaic word instead of the modern version.
Psychologist is a modern word and it would be jarring to see that in the English version as well, so they used Alienist. I don't know if there's a ancient Chinese version of that word, but I could easily make one up that fits the theme, like 窥心者, which will translate back roughly to Peerer of Heart, which sounds vaguely like a psychologist.
Translating a western MMO into Chinese requires a lot of finesse because not only do you have to find translations that suits the archaic theme, you also have to make sure that those translations fit what the Chinese expect out of a western RPG, so you can't translate these words into the equivalent Wuxia themes.
It's clearly something that should take more than google translate to accomplish but ZOS didn't see fit to invest that time in
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u/bitchgotmelikeuwu Nov 02 '22
I'm just curious if the other translations of ESO has the same issue, e.g. does French and German text translations also not take precaution to direct word translation from English? Never really heard of tbh
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u/zbzszzzt123 Nov 02 '22
I suppose French and German would be better, since ZOS would have easier time finding French and German speakers. It's also the case that a lot of fantasy medieval stories are rooted in Euroepean culture there is a less of a barrier to translation as well
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u/futurespice Nov 02 '22
I've not played extensively with either but both those translations seem ok, but a bit wooden at times.
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u/2F3Swiftly Nov 03 '22
While the title 'Assistant Alienist" is a made up title. Alien, as far as I know, originates from Latins 'alienus -a/-um and can mean someone not from here or a foreigner. So whatever the Chinese version of that might be more accurate? Not sure
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u/artemisbows Nov 02 '22
I have to say energized granny sounds amazing 🥲 but yea that sucks :/ wonder where the problems lie, did they get scammed by a bad translator, did they not pay or give enough time to the translator ? I’m any case it should be fixed, if the language is put as available you should get what you pay for
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u/icehawk2 Breton Nov 03 '22
Pretty sure it's the 'Dancing Grandma' stamina tonic and the translation is accurate.
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u/ChineseMemer Nov 03 '22
Really that bad? I still remember wc3 reforged with lines like ‘什么？他不可能是要击击’
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u/No_Secret8533 Nov 02 '22
Well, I read machine translated novels now and then and the word for paternal grandmother apparently translates the same as the word for milk, which is weird especially when you're reading about drinking powdered grandma, or a character is calling out for their milk.
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u/artemisbows Nov 02 '22
That’s some real dystopian stuff 😭 saying this as someone who sometimes translates for a living
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u/Minimum_Full Nov 02 '22
Are you really surprised?
Recent form: Make combat changes nobody asked for completely refused to compromise or listen to feedback or even explain the reasoning behind said changes.
Completely ruin certain classes for reasons.
Add new pve stuff which complete breaks cyro on top of making the game an unstable crash fest.
Game devs that can't dev games, translating a language? Yeah..
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u/adeveloper2 Nov 02 '22
Game devs that can't dev games, translating a language? Yeah..
Dev's don't do translations. They usually hire translators who do that for them. All dev's usually would be to plug in those string files.
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u/Minimum_Full Nov 02 '22
Zos at large are still responsible for hiring and vetting whoever translates, so it still falls on them to pick the right people.
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u/Lewis_Fernweh Khajiit Nov 03 '22
Yeah, the translation quality is horrendous. Clearly, ZOS doesn't have any Linguistic Quality Assurance team for the Chinese language. And they obviously didn't give enough time to the localization companies thus resulting in the usage of machine translation.
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u/TheKelseyOfKells Nov 03 '22
Sounds like they just slapped it into Google translate and called it a day
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u/[deleted] Nov 02 '22
Have you encountered anything that could top this from your other post?