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More languages?

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2013 10:48 am
by albigiusti
I was looking at NN greenlight page when I noticed that the game won't be translated into any languages in addition to English... I don't know if there's a mistake, or if the information isn't updated, anyway I think that translating a game in the main languages is a good thing :)
Maybe, if the text is not very important for the narration, it is not necessary.
I don't write this only because i'm Italian, I can speak English well enough so that I don't need the game to be translated but there are many european backers (and a lot of my friends :lol: ) who would probably appreciate to play the game in their native language and better understand the story :D .
What do you think?
Is it too demanding? Are you already working on it?
Thanks! :D

Re: More languages?

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2013 11:05 am
by loudERIC
Matt should do what the Gone Home team did. Open source translations. They let fans make their own subtitles for the game in any language and patch them into the game. I think some of them even feature voice acting. I'm not sure what the process is like and if they have the fans send the translations directly to the team where it becomes official, or if the translations are just put on mod website where you can download them... but I see Fullbright Co. promoting them all the time.

Something to consider. :)

Re: More languages?

Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2013 11:40 am
by miumiaou
Actually I ask that to Matt (in an E-mail) already and he answer that the game would probably be translate in French, Italian, German, and Spanish and maybe they'd add Portuguese

Re: More languages?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:45 pm
by matt
I probably want to do the main translations with a professional translator just so that people who speak popular languages can enjoy the game right when it comes out, and I don't have to "leak" all of our surprises. I don't think we will have a ton of text, so I suspect that won't be too costly. I'd be happy to crowd source more languages once the game comes out. That is a good idea.

As miumiaou said, I will probably do English, French, Italian, German, Spanish (What we refer to as EFIGS in the game industry), and maybe Portuguese, but then I have to decide if I want Brazilian Portuguese or regular... Not sure which would be the better choice. I'd have to research it.

Re: More languages?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 7:27 pm
by loudERIC
I bet this game would be a hit in Japan... but im just thinking out loud here. The 8-4 guys are rad and seem to dig on Neverending Nightmares. Maybe a little bit of 8-4 localizing should be in the cards for Japanese audiences?? I don't know what the realities of that would be. Those guys all worked on the Mighty No. 9 kickstarter and are tied up working on that. And if you do end up crowd sourcing it, then hey! If someone really wants to make a Japanese language version of neverending nightmares happen, then it'll happen.

Re: More languages?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 7:52 pm
by ranger_lennier
Does Kickstarter provide information about where the backers are from? It seems like that would be a good indicator of the most important languages to target.

Re: More languages?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 8:06 pm
by loudERIC
I feel like the ones Matt listed are the main ones you want to hit at launch. If things need to be downsized those numbers may be a good starting point for that deciding which languages to prioritize at launch. Others can be patched in later either as the crowd sourced version or officially backed by infinitap.

Oh and Matt Brazil has a constantly growing game market so that might be helpful for the decision with which ver. of portugese to go with.

Re: More languages?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 8:29 pm
by matt
I don't think kickstarter provides any demographic information, which is a bit unfortunate. Localizing for Japan is always a challenge because of all the different characters, but it's definitely something we'll consider. We are trying to design our font system to support a wider range of characters than we did on Retro/Grade.

For Brazilian vs. regular Portuguese, I would probably want to choose the one that is more widely understood, so if people in Brazil understand regular Portuguese that may be a better choice. I really don't know anything about the languages yet, so something to research later...

Re: More languages?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 3:37 pm
by albigiusti
Thanks for your answers :)

Re: More languages?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 7:03 pm
by matt
My pleasure! :)