Why do devs keep lying about translating time?

[Dominik D]

Translating game involves its re-testing. It's not a book - it's not linear and oftentimes you have to change some code to support different langs due to grammar differences. Small sample for you, so perhaps you'll stop insulting people who work hard for you to play a game.

"You pick up %d apple%s"

English:
count will become %d
as for %s
if (count == 1) -- ""
else -- "s".

Polish:
"Podniosłeś %d jabł%s"
count will become %d
as for %s
if (count == 1) -- "ko"
if ( (count MOD 10 == 2) OR (count MOD 10 == 3) OR (count MOD 10 == 4) ) AND (count < 10) AND (count > 20) -- "ka"
else -- "ek"

This is an easy example. If you're not convinced it is nothing close to translating a book, I can give you a better example.

 

[Xmas]

((count MOD 10 == 2) OR (count MOD 10 == 3) OR (count MOD 10 == 4) ) AND (count < 10) AND (count > 20)

That condition is never true.

 

[Urian]

In the case of Nintendo usually the translation starts months before the game is shown to the press and they send from NCL a lot of material and all of us know how some parts can deleted in the final game and how others can be added at last hour.

The problem for translating is that the people who does this job is the same people who makes guides about how you can complete the game. They are forced to play the game with all the options for getting the things done at 100%.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I suppose the only solution is to hold back all releases until the global versions are ready. At first glance one would say that you'd be wanting to earn back money ASAP, but could a game see a bigger uptake if the momentum is international at the same time? eg. Rogue Glalaxy had a huge delay before US release, and another before Europe. If the game had not been released until fully translated (without the extra features added) would it have sold more overall on a lot of buzz, rather than being released later in the EU with little noise whatsoever? Halo 3 went out worldwide, right? If it came out in NA 6 months before the EU, would it have done as well, or would some of the EU interest have waned?

 

[catisfit]

That depends. If you're talking Halo 3 or MGS4, both of which you know are going to sell bucketloads and even shift a lot of consoles too, then a worldwide release lets you really go to town on the publicity and create a worldwide event which can make national news.

Most games aren't this big, so it's better to stagger releases so that as your first market sales tail off, the second market release causes them to spike again. This makes the week-on-week, month-on-month sales figures look a lot better than a big release week, decent 2nd week, which then pales into obscurity shortly after.

Even if you end up with total sales being equal, consistent sales over a period of months looks a lot better than a spike for a couple of weeks.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Don't know that I agree with that. Looking at something like Uncharted, the response to a lack of a huge launch spike was 'no-one is interested'. That the game then goes on to sell well enough in the coming months, it still is looked on as a flunk. Interest in a title helps to drive sales, so I'm sure a big 'woo, everyone get a load of this new game!' response will do better for sales than a 'I feel like getting a new game, but, I dunno, what's out there?' response. Obviously sustained sales will mount up better than most launch extravaganzas, and RFoM and Motorstorm have done well after initial sales with persistent sales, but I expect a notable presence produced from a big start helps launch a game far better than a monthly appearance in the bottom of the top 20.

 

[catisfit]

Well, Uncharted has hit a million already, I'm sure Naughty Dog and Sony don't see a flunk - and I'd love those sales

Launching on the same day worldwide doesn't necessarily give you anything more than staggered launches would. It can be a benefit, if you can generate so much hype and interest (like Halo 3) that it's in all the papers and on the news, to reach a wider audience. But that only happens to the likes of Halo 3 or MGS4. You couldn't drum up that kind of day 1 interest for Vegas 2, to pick a game at random. I'd say the only games that could realistically do this are the ones which will see people leaving the store with the game in one hand and a console to play it on in the other...

Also, there are difficulties in shipping, and (to add a clearer sense of on-topic-ness ), translation etc, so a worldwide release may mean holding back releases in some territories while the game is prepared for release in others. Only big studios can afford to do this, especially if it's November (for example Epic decided to ship UT3 to meet the Christmas rush in the US, and release the EU version afterwards, rather than align launches).

If you're dealing with an average-to-good game, a staggered release can actually help. For example a US release will result in reviews, blogs, forums and trailers being posted online about the game, which can all add to the hype and expectation for an eventual EU release. Plus let's face it, while it may be irritating for some gamers to have to wait, that means they're going to buy it when it finally gets released anyway

Another advantage of staggered releases is, you can tailor your release dates around when other games will be released in each territory. You'd obviously want to avoid the massive releases like Halo 3, you try to avoid going head-to-head with games in the same genre, and each territory has it's own cash-cows you want to miss, for example FIFA in EU and Madden in US. It can even come down to the price or positioning of advertising. For example F1 Championship Edition was released in late March, and it was never going to be massive in the US, so why not delay it until late May, early June, and cash in on both the Indy 500 and US Grand Prix? A couple of well-placed ads and a significant boost in sales. Would that be worth it? I would have said yes.

 

[admiral_awesome]

I translated a few small applications as a summer job once including a simple documentation and it took me ages. Also I would say rushing something like the text of a game might kill a lot of the atmosphere.

Of course as others have mentioned before bureaucracy (rating boards, publishers, distribution, retail markets) eats a lot of time.
I am used to delays now and since I can't change anything about it I try to live with it and occasionly damn random people while waiting for a game.


Example:

Japanese Launch -> US Launch -> EU Launch -> Censored german version -> small truck -> Austria/Salzburg -> Austria/Vienna -> Austria/Graz and then I have to hope that the big electronic chain was kind enough to even order the game....


BTW: Hi I am new here

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

There are just a lot of moving parts in the translation process.
Text is generally not "done" until you send off the master, although you commonly start translations earlier. Sometimes there are technical ssues with multi language support. You might have to add support for multi-line buttons or text boxes because the German translation is 3 times as verbose as the English version.
For us at least we have translators engineers and testers all in different locations, so closing the loop is time consuming. Getting bounced once by a platform vendor will cost you weeks.
And Japanese developers in particular haven't exactly been known for there forward planning on different language SKU's if some of the stories that float around are to be believed.

And a lot depends on the shear amount of text.

Oke that starts to make sense.

But some things still dont make sense to me as they dont add up. For example, why are sony, ms, EA etc able to do (almost) WW launches while nintendo, for example, with SSBW, which almost doesnt have any text, cant even name a EU date for the launch? The same goes for capcom. Its safe to assume they dont lack manpower and besides that they already did all the translation work for okami on the ps2 version so I just cant believe that is the reason for a delay of a couple of months between the US and the EU version. The same for distrubution etc, companies like nintendo and capcom shouldnt have any problems with those.

 

[admiral_awesome]

Oke that starts to make sense.

But some things still dont make sense to me as they dont add up. For example, why are sony, ms, EA etc able to do (almost) WW launches while nintendo, for example, with SSBW, which almost doesnt have any text, cant even name a EU date for the launch? The same goes for capcom. Its safe to assume they dont lack manpower and besides that they already did all the translation work for okami on the ps2 version so I just cant believe that is the reason for a delay of a couple of months between the US and the EU version. The same for distrubution etc, companies like nintendo and capcom shouldnt have any problems with those.

Strategic planning? I am sure Nintendo can launch every game they want parallel in every country they want - the problem is they don't want to do that.

Europe gets WiiFit before the US, we have a solid date on Mario Kart because if I remember correctly the months from march to june went quite good for Nintendo last year. So they just follow that route again.

 

[ERP]

Oke that starts to make sense.

But some things still dont make sense to me as they dont add up. For example, why are sony, ms, EA etc able to do (almost) WW launches while nintendo, for example, with SSBW, which almost doesnt have any text, cant even name a EU date for the launch? The same goes for capcom. Its safe to assume they dont lack manpower and besides that they already did all the translation work for okami on the ps2 version so I just cant believe that is the reason for a delay of a couple of months between the US and the EU version. The same for distrubution etc, companies like nintendo and capcom shouldnt have any problems with those.

Depends on what Marketting and sales wants to do simultaneous launch (and my current game will launch simultaneously in 22 languages), you launch later everywhere.

If that means missing a big sales season you stagger the ship. In some cases this can be the reason for long delays, If a SKU will be done in what's considered a bad time period (June thru Sept in Europe is usually avoided) the publisher will likely just hold onto it.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

That makes sense. Well, not in the case of the wii because there is next to nothing to buy in EU untill april, and than we only have mariokart so if I were capcom I wouldnt wait untill the summer to release okami here but I suppose they know what they are doing... Still makes me wonder why they blame it on translating than as its quite obvious not the case. Just say you want to release it later because you think you can sell more that way. Atleast you wont piss so many people of with what most concider a bullshit argument (whether that is true or not, as you did make clear it could be the case).

What game are you working on btw? or cant you tell? Atleast you launch all the regions at the same time! I love you

 

[Dominik D]

That condition is never true.

Right - last AND -> OR.

 

[iceberg187]

Isn't Europe just now getting Odin Sphere?