Spanish Translations - Testers still needed?

#1

I’m a lurker by nature so this is my first post. I created an account because I saw on Twitter that Lars asked for Spanish speakers to check over the translations but I don’t have a twitter account so I couldn’t ask over there. Is Spanish translation testing still needed? If so, I’ll download it and play with it over the weekend.

As an aside, I got DQ1 a while back and really enjoyed it. Later I found the website and really enjoyed reading the blog posts. I ended up preordering DQ2 but it was more to support Lars (because he seems like a genuinely good person) than because I was dying to have the game on day 1. I even ordered a slightly higher tier than I really cared for specifically to funnel a few more of my dollars that way. (It was still a pretty low tier, so don’t anyone get too excited. . .) I guess the point is kudos to you (everyone involved, from what I’ve seen) for making a fun game, having crazy levels of transparency and knowledge sharing and for being good people in general. Fun to see that.

#2

Yes! :slight_smile:
If you’d like to test the Spanish translation (I don’t think it’s on Steam/GOG/whatever yet). Just ask @larsiusprime and he’ll see if he can give you permission to get a testing copy of DQ1 (if the translation isn’t public yet, of course). Then you’re good to go!

And remember, have fun. :wink:

#3

Nah, it’s in public beta on Steam you just have to go select it.

I just started and played a few minutes. It’s obviously Spanish from Spain which is somewhat different from Latin American Spanish, which is what I know best. I learned Spanish by spending some time living in Mexico. The Spain Spanish is a bit jarring for me in that Spain Spanish vs. Latin American Spanish is like old English vs. modern English. It would be like talking to someone who says “thy” and “thou” all the time. I wouldn’t stress it, though, because the only solution is to have a separate translation for Latin American Spanish vs. Spain Spanish which is fairly pointless.

Good news is everything I’ve seen so far at least makes sense and seems to be accurate. It’s not always how I would have tried to say it, but I’m not a native Spanish speaker so I chalk that up to the fact that the translation is done by someone with a better grasp of the language than I have, me being fluent notwithstanding.

In the few things I saw (I went through the menus and the first 2 levels with their cutscenes) I was able to understand everything and the translator did a good job of capturing the feeling behind the dialogue and not just individual words. For example, Slak’s attitude when he says something like, “So you want me to impress you with manly feats of valor and violence,” (or whatever it is word for word) comes across with the same feel and attitude as it does in English. In my opinion capturing that personality and attitude is the hardest thing to do in a translation and from the tiny bit I’ve seen the translator does a good job of that.

I’ll post back at some point when I’ve toyed around with it a bit more.

1 Like
#4

I didn’t notice th public beta thing haha. Feel free to report any mistake you might find.

#5

Thanks so much for helping out!

#6

I spot checked the Spanish stuff and everything I saw looked good. I ran into one thing, but then realized it happens on the English stuff as well. I’ll admit that I haven’t looked through any kind of bug reports in the past so I have no idea if this is known or not.

I tested this on version 1.1.49

The summary is that there are some interesting inconsistencies in how the special abilities for special items (the Plus version) have their name/abilities/description shown in the equipped item tile for characters. Here are some reproduction steps:

1 - Load a save game that has someone with special+ items equipped in either New Game or New Game+ (reproduced on both).

2 - Highlight a character with a special item. In my case I did Bakal with Kozomon’s Scepter+, but it really doesn’t matter.

3 - Hover over the weapon that user has equipped. Note that The information box shows Name of Item, Description of special abilities then Special item standard description (the storyline about it). In the case of Kozomon’s Scepter+ this actually causes the name itself to be off the top of the screen. (This is possibly something else to look at, but not the interesting thing I’m getting to. The fact that I’m not writing this up as a separate bug report is probably why I’m a developer instead of a tester.)

4 - You can check that all special+ items of the same type behave the same (ie, Beasts Weapon+ on Wrenna, Archshepherd’s Staff+ on someone else, but NOT Evni+ on someone, special armor, etc.). Additionally you can go to the map and back to the party screen an arbitrary amount of times and it stays the same.

4a - If you want to see the same behavior for other item types (such as swords) you can change the equipped sword on anyone in the same manner. It’s interesting that this is item class specific.

5 - Change someone’s equipment, ie give a healer with a regular item a different staff (even if it’s of the same type, ie Pilgrim’s Staff+ to a different Pilgrim’s Staff+ you have in your inventory.) or even unequip and re-equip the exact same weapon (I’m guessing anything that triggers a “this changed and needs to be saved” state).

6 - Go to overworld map and then back into party.

7 - Note that for all staffs that are equipped if you highlight the character and then hover over the weapon it no longer shows special abilities. It just shows name and standard description. (This makes Kozomon’s Scepter now fit on screen, so that’s a plus, I guess).

8 - Note that you can now leave the game your in and re-open that save (or even a different save) and the behavior is now the same: show name and standard description only. However, if you close the game entirely and start it up again you are back at step 1 where you show Name, special item abilities, description.

9 - Note that now if you go to any character and change weaponry you’ve switched the scenario as long as you remain in the party screen all items of that class will now show name, special abilities, description. Unlike before, however, this status is just temporary until you go to the overworld map and return to the party screen. Then the equipped item will just show name and description again (unless you unequip/re-equip). Again, this is item class specific so when you change a staff the swords are still in whatever state they were in when you got there, etc.

So, I’m used to a severity rating scale of 0 - 4 where 0 is something like your software is causing servers to catch and eat small animals and endangering children, 1 is critical and top priority but not melting servers or anything, 2 is important enough that not fixing it would delay shipping, 3 is a “nice to have” in that it would be great to be fixed in the ephemeral ‘someday’, but in reality is of such little consequence it could be ignored forever with no real detriment to anyone involved and 4 is something like a customer requesting that your entire product be translated into Klingon or that you add Novell Netware as a supported platform. In that scale I’d classify this as a solid 3. Maybe 3.5.

Sorry that got long. Hopefully it’s clear enough to explain what I saw. If not, let me know.

Edited to clarify a few steps and fix a few inconsistencies.

#7

Thanks for this in-depth note!

Probably our best bet is to just make sure that this is properly patched and fixed for the upcoming HD update, as our UI system is much more powerful and easy to manage there. The original game is kind of strung up with duct tape at this point :slight_smile:

#8

Works for me. As does doing nothing about it.

Spanish looked good from what I saw (spot checked only, not a comprehensive analysis).

And now I’ll melt back into the shadows from whence I came.