We all like to play a game on our own language. It helps with quests, understanding the game, the plot, the story behind everything, etc. But what happened when the developers/publishers hires poor translators? Or maybe, they are in such a rush to release the game that “a few” mistakes follow it until the release?

Well, games mostly came from Asia, Europe and North America and I’ve started seeing some games in Portuguese-Brazil, which is pretty amazing! I have no problems reading and understanding English (yet my blog may have a lot of misspellings and grammar error… sorry) I can play an English video game with no problems. Not Japanese. No. This one is out of the questions. All those little sticks around the screen…. naaa).

Now, let me tell you a good example of localization and translation. WORLD OF WARCRAFT, from Blizzard. I’ve always been a lover of that game and, when that started 10 years ago I was one of the firsts to play and created a character. That time the game had just a few places to explore and it was all in English. Choosing a class, race, weapons, quests, talking to people. I also have to thanks Blizzard because they kind of helped me with my English. 🙂

However, for other reasons, I had to stop playing. No more. Moved from my city, got a job, had to by a better computer, no money, lots of work – in a short – had to grow up. Recently, about 3 or 4 months ago I decided that I could go back and play again. Some of my friends were in there, talking about all the updates, news enemies, places, quests and biggest of all THE GAME WAS IN PORTUGUESE. First thing that came to me. That’s impossible. Translated to Portuguese? That’s probably a mess. No way they are going to be able to translate it. I was wrong.

For the first hours playing I found a little weird, after all I was used to English. After playing for a few days, I was convinced that they did a pretty good translation and not just that. They did localized amazingly well. There are somethings that deals directly with the Brazilian culture and I thought that was considering interesting. Not only caught my attention, but my feeling to keep playing and discover more things about it. Explore it more and more.

In a nut shell, you guys understand what a great translation and localization does with the player when it is well done? If I felt that way, imagine the millions of players in Brazil.

NOW, what would happen if the opposite? A bad translation/localization? Or a rush one? Even with great games that you loved in Japanese, but the English version went down the sink. You can check below.

10. FATAL FURY SPECIAL

Fatal Fury may be one of the games with most translations problems. I found a lot of them over the internet and its a huge example of rush release.

Okay. What is wrong with this one? As far as I can understand, the grammar is missing a “to” so far. But, wait “wall of niceness”? Is that really a word that we use? Even if you won a battle and want to put the enemy down. Beware of my WALL OF NICENESS. Come on…..

9. GHOST N’ GOBLINS

Beside this game be EXTREMELY difficult and you have to play it with no power bar and two lifes (but unlimited continues) and also have to beat it two times for the “real” ending, it is a really nice one. Now, This Story is a Happy End really made me think… a lot…. and after that you may also find “being the wise and courageour knight that you are you feel strongth welling in your body. Return to starting point challenge again.” Not my mistakes, just copy…..

8. GHOSTBUSTERS

Hey, it is really a great game (besides I’ve to hear the same song THE HOLE GAME) and I am glad I’ve completed (FINALLY). I also proved (NOT PROOVED) the justice of our culture and lets go and rest our heroes. This is fin….. OH WAIT. WHAT? Conglaturation? Really? What was that? Guess someone is missing the R feeling….

7. METAL GEAR

Another great game with some great sequels, but some problems with the English language. What do you feel asleep? Legs? Arms? hands? Its an old game and good to see that they learned their lesson (not on this one). You can also find things like “The truck have started to move” and “Attempt to contact missing our Grey fox”. Nowadays, the problem is just the explanations are hard to understand. Simple.

6. THE LEGEND OF ZELDA II

All right. You may be the first one of many errors. One of the programmers errors or just a misspelling ? Some people would say that this character was supposed to be called Ellor or Elrol or Errol or whatever but, as some oriental are pretty good in English, some how it just came as Error. Hi, my name is Error. Pretty weird….

5. DOUBLE DRAGON III

Another amazing game that I’ve played for hours when I was young. Had to buy for my consoles and play with my friends. However I am not quite sure about Jimmys partner. BIMMY. Weird enough, do you know anyone named Bimmy? Unless you know some Jimmy and may call him a little bit sick…. Bimmy? Maybe? naaa…..

4. FINAL FANTASY IV

Spoony bard? Really? You want to threat me with that? Oh, my! I am sorry to come into your humble house. Anyway, this is know wrong, talking about spelling, its just weird…

3. X-MEN: THE ARCADE GAME

This is not actually on the text, but he says that. Really. I had to go after the video to check it myself. Couldn’t they think on anything more interesting to say? What the hell, spell doesn’t apply for the master of magnet.

2. PRO WRESTLING

Oh, thank you. a Winner is me! I feel like being taught by Yoda or something….

1. ZERO WING

After watching a few videos, I have to admit, almost every line is a pearl. He is about to kill and destroy everyone and has time to say “how are you gentlemen?” really? and “all your base are belong to us.” and “someone set us the bomb” and that goes on and on. Please…..

CONCLUSION

I could go over and over talking about it. I found so many information over bad English translations on video games that I’ll probably do more posts about it.

However, the reason of this post is to show how important is the spelling on a game. It doesn’t matter if the game is good (yes it does) but a bad spelling can ruin everything. Imagine it World of Warcraft had such problems like that? It would turn into a joke instead of a great and amazing game. I know that also my blog and the way I speak are not free or error (besides English be my second language) but even in Portuguese, where I studied for my whole life and went to two universities, I still make mistakes.

The point is, back at that time, they didn’t have what we have today. Ways to communicate. Tools to search, correct and fix. We have the internet for it. Is there, you just have to click it. Unfortunately, eve with that, we found some problems on the recent games. Not quite as before, but they are there. Do not believe me? Check this out that I found.

BONUS ROUND

People in Brazil tent to translate a few games that they like, just for fun or to help another to understand the game and spread their work. However, they tend to use the internet the wrong way. Not searching like it should or just using Google Translator to do the job. You can’t rely on a machine to do your job and translation and localization deals directly with the way a culture works and how you will introduce that to them. A machine can’t do that (as far as I know…).

So, lets check it out and I’ll try to translate from Portuguese to English so you can “see” what I “see”.

And this is little bit porn, so please, do not sue me for that. Simple, its says “Stop cumming on my face, Mai”. I guess it was stop mocking me or stop making fun of me, but we (Brazilians translators) did a really good work and that’s the result. Google Translator is the one.

So, that’s it. I hope I have time to work on other posts like that.