Nuevas traducciones de aventuras

[Risingson]

Has hecho una traducción directa del español al inglés. Intend no es "intentar" sino que connota mucha determinación. El tono es muy invasivo en inglés, y el uso de la puntuación, incorrecto.

[kelmer]

Independientemente de que el Dan haya respondido un poco como el asshole que tiene toda la pinta de ser, Risingson tiene razon y tu mensaje es involuntariamente demasiado agresivo.

"I was planning on translating..." habria sido mucho mas correcto.

De cualquier modo yo estoy en contra de estas traducciones de juegos todavia a la venta, si quieren su juego en multiples idiomas que se gasten los cuartos

[Jose]

Vamos, si yo hiciera un juego y me enterase de que alguien me lo ha traducido al frances sin mi permiso tambien me sentaria mal, porque no hay control de calidad alguno.

Es cierto que tiene que ser molesto que alguien toquetee las entrañas de tu juego. Pero si no tienes intención de traducir el juego... te jodes. O te lo tomas con filosofía como hace Mark Lovegrove que incluso da soporte oficial a las traducciones (aunque el Lovegrove este es más punki que estos pielesfinas).
Dejando de lado el tono del mail de walas, si el Dan Marshall tiene dudas de que le van a colar el negro del wassap en una traducción fan puede pedir referencias a las webs de aventuras. Digo yo que mandando un mail a Lehmann o Adventuresplanet puede respirar tranquilo.
En los mods, que al fin y al cabo viene a ser lo mismo, no pasan estas cosas. No veo yo a Rockstar poniendo el grito en el cielo porque hayan sacado un mod fotorealista del GTA V.

[walas74]

Perdonad, pero el uso de "intend" es totalmente intencionado, puesto que significa "tengo intención de" o "tengo pensado". O sea que de agresivo no tiene nada.

Otra cosa sería si hubiera escrito "I am going to translate" o ya puestos "I am translating..."

[walas74]

Colar al negro de wasap jajaja

Eso no, pero a lo mejor resulta que Dan y Ben son amantes...

[Jose]

Risingson y Kelmer tienen razón. No es lo mismo "me gustaría encularte" que "pretendo encularte".

[David_Holm]

Wormwood Studios, los de Primordia, han publicado al respecto un mensaje en Facebook.

Here follows a longish post about why game developers should support fan translators. I hope it's read in the spirit of camaraderie in which it was written.

Yesterday, I was surprised to stumble across an exchange in which a number of AGS developers were lamenting a fan's poorly phrased request to translate an AGS game. Because the specific concerns they articulated seemed to me implausible (e.g., "If something libelous were added to the game, I might be sued over it!" and "He might insert racist things into the game!" and "It is not technologically feasible.") and because the translator at issue was the same one who did a marvelous job with the Spanish localization of Primordia, I commented that it was unfortunate that they were so reluctant to have him translate their games.

Of course, the underlying fear -- that a fan translation of their games was an imposition, at best, and some form of violation, at worst -- was sincere, and thus real as all true feelings are. But I think it's also a misplaced fear, notwithstanding the truism "Traduttore, traditore." Having spent the day reflecting on this some more, I want to add some more thoughts to hopefully persuade fellow developers to be more open with fan translations.

I am old enough that when I was a teenager, the availability of foreign nerd-culture items was extremely limited. Only a small sliver of Japanese role-playing games on consoles, wu xia and anime movies, European scifi comics, and similar sorts of stuff were available in the U.S. In the mid-90s, however, a string of technological changes (emulation, the Internet, fan-subbing software) suddenly opened a wider window into world media. Perhaps lamentably, much of what passed through this window consisted of pirated works. And some of the translations were probably too liberal and inappropriate in how they handled translations (I seem to recall the Tales of Phantasia translation suffering from this flaw). Others were downright bad, or incomplete, and didn't fairly showcase the original work.

But despite these shortcomings, fan translations had a positive, transformative effect on nerd culture (and, eventually, broader English-speaking culture). They opened up a commercial market for the kind of works that previously were being back-channeled, and they fertilized the creative landscape. For example, it is hard to imagine that the beloved To the Moon would exist today absent (1) fans translating RPG Maker 95, and thus revealing the market for Ace's software in English, which led to the availability of the software used to make To the Moon, and (2) fan translators introducing and amplifying tropes and devices that came from Japanese cartoons, comics, and games.

Setting aside those kinds of broad changes, fan translations made available certain specific works that otherwise would have been limited to, say, Japanese- or Chinese- or French-speaking audiences. To take another gaming example, Mother 3, a game that many laud as revealing a way of telling more humanistic stories through console RPG conventions, exists in English only because of a fan translation. Absent Mother 3, it is hard to imagine there would be an Undertale, a game considered by many to be among the best RPGs ever made. (I take no position here -- I backed Undertale but never had time to play it.)

Nowadays, the English-speaking market for foreign nerd culture is so obvious that it is to be expected that any significant, or even fringe, work of nerdly interest will be translated and sold in English by a professional outfit. It is easy, therefore, for people who speak only English (or primarily English) to be complacent about fan translations. It is, sadly, a commonplace human trait to condemn as unfit for use the very ladder that one has used to climb to the top.

But while English speakers can expect to get commercial translations of foreign-language adventure games like Tormentum or Dog Mendonça, the same can't be said of English-language adventure games. For example, almost no independent adventure games (at least, those made in AGS) have commercial Spanish translations, even though there are thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who would be interested in playing those games. Some of those primarily Spanish speakers can understand English fluently; some can get by catching most of the meaning; and some don't understand English sufficiently to enjoy the games at all.

It seems to me that those players have an interest -- not a right, to be sure, but an interest -- that adventure game developers should recognize. Dismissing the tireless fan translators who are trying to serve that interest is bad, even if the dismissal springs from a real and understandable worry. It's bad manners, because there's almost never good reason to publicly (and cavalierly) dismiss someone who is earnestly trying to help someone else. It's bad business, because adventure game developers have every reason to want to open up foreign markets. And it's simply a bad mindset to think that because a work might be tarnished in translation, it should not be translated at all. The desire to create a perfect work is a good one, but given the plenty we enjoy, we should be mindful of the scarcity others face.

Anyway, look: if developers don't want people to translate their games, that's fine and it's probably their right. But it's a loss to them, to the translators, and to the non-English-speakers for whom a window into another world is being shut. At the end of the day, getting to look through that window into Primordia or any other particular game isn't very important. But the accumulative effect matters, and we should be mindful, as developers, to do our part in sharing our creations.

Finally, it seems important to repeat some facts I've mentioned before: Primordia's coder was Greek; its most thoughtful beta tester was Russian; its widest print coverage was in Polish; about 15% of its Steam reviews are in non-English languages; some of its most passionate fans are Korean, Israeli, Colombian, French, Brazilian, Danish. There are some game developers, just as there are some people, who are strong enough to stand without anyone else's help. That is a wonderful thing. But it is also a wonderful thing to know that you are surrounded by others who are eager to help you stand, and hoping for your help in pulling them up with you. Wormwood Studios and I are decidedly in the latter category, and with all the hands up we've gotten, we still have a lot of giving back to our fans -- including our fan translators -- before the balance is even.

[walas74]

Sí, estuve hablando largo y tendido con Mark sobre el tema y decidió escribir ese precioso ensayo.

Por cierto, en su twitter publicó hace unos días lo siguiente:

Wormwood Studios ‏@WWSGames 4 oct.
Striking that although the Spanish-speaking market is criminally underserved by adventure games, @Indiefence has the most in-depth analysis.

[walas74]

Bueno, finalmente he decidido no traducir ningún juego de este personaje. Lo siento por aquellos que se quedarán sin jugarlo en castellano, pero que sepáis que me solidarizo con vosotros, porque yo tampoco pienso jugarlos, ni Ben There, Dan That ni Time Gentleman, Please.

Me tomaré un descanso de traducciones propias cuando termine el testeo y publiquemos de The Shivah, que será antes de fin de mes. En Diciembre haré una macroencuesta en Guías Asperet de juegos para traducir en el 2017, y en Enero de vuelta al tajo.

[Jose]

Por cierto, el tweet de Dan Marshall con la captura del mail ha desaparecido. ¿Tal vez ha recapacitado y ha visto que tampoco eran maneras? Mi voto es que ese hilo ha dado pie a ese mucho más sensato manifiesto en Facebook de Woormwood Studios y para más inri, no todo el mundo le ha aplaudido su tweet. Y eso en tuita no mola.

[walas74]

Es cierto, ha desaparecido. Debe ser cuando leyó el mensaje de Mark Yohalem y se vio señalado: te quejas de que alguien quiere traducir tu juego sin tu permiso, y publicas su email privado sin su permiso. Irónico, ¿no?

[Descard]

Lo bueno es que ahora eres famoso y hasta Mark Yohalem te dedicó un ensayo. =D No entendí muy bien todo el rollo pero es apoyable tu decisión de no traducir el juego viendo lo gilipollas que son Ben y Dan.

[walas74]

Es que hablo por email con Mark Yohalem tanto que mi esposa le ha puesto el apodo de "tu novio" jaja

Hay muchos juegos interesantes para traducir: Technobabylon, Shardlight, Kathy Rain, Kentucky Road Zero, The Dream Machine...

No nos vamos a quedar sin trabajo

[Descard]

Y los que no tenemos pajolera idea de inglés te lo agradecemos enormemente.

Hablando de traducciones, viendo que por alguna razón algunos desarrolladores se cabrean porque suban traducciones de sus juegos, hasta comienzo a pensar que el rollo con Lino y la traducción de Memoria pudo haber sido una especie de venganza por su trabajo con Chains of Satinav. No quiero sonar paranoico pero estuve leyendo las respuestas de los desarrolladores y realmente parecía como si le hubieran estado jugando una broma de muy mal gusto. De lo más sick sad world.

[Jose]

Lo de la traducción del Memoria no tiene nombre. Aunque el primer error fue trabajar de gratis para una grande como Daedalic.

[walas74]

He traducido "Fallen", una historia escrita por el creador de Primordia y que acontece después del juego, aunque es independiente.

La podéis descargar desde aquí:

http://primordia-game.com/Fallen/Caidos.pdf

[walas74]

Publicada la traducción de The Shivah en Guías Asperet, versiones GOG y Steam.

[walas74]

Buenas. Se ha corregido un error que causaba que no se desbloquearan los logros en Steam con la versión en castellano. Sólo hay que volver a descargar el parche desde la página de Wormwood Studios.

[walas74]

raulpuro ha publicado en Guías Asperet una traducción de Memoria (sí, aquel juego que tenía una traducción oficial hecha por linotype y que Daedalic tuvo los santos cojones de no publicar nunca).

[Descard]

¡Genial! Hace mucho que le tengo ganas a esa traducción.