The Witcher - An Hour @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun
 

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a volley of Witcher coverage, centred on a feature called an An Hour With The Witcher. First, there's some discussion about Atari's editing of the original Polish script, based on claims from a poster at Gamefaqs that he worked on the translation and knows lines were cut (Polish fans have discussed the differences on our own forums, so this is not new):
I'm not sure how useful one hour's play is but here's a snip:
More information.

Let's hope there is a Polish Mod team that cares enough about the continuation of the franchise to do a proper translation to English, to help bring new fans to The Witcher, since clearly the Polish dialog is superior. :)

All i can say is, if they think this is bad voice acting, they should spend twenty hours with The Chosen. ;)

I agree there's a lot of obviously incomplete and jumbled translating though.

Ouch, The Chosen must have been painful. :tears:

I was hoping for text, but having the wrong voice dialog with the right text dialog might cause trauma, Weeee! :biggrin:

Okay, what am I missing?

I keep hearing about substandard voice acting and substandard dialog … are we talking about the same game here?

Has no-one played the "Spell Force" games? Or how about "Star Wolves"? THAT is bad voice acting. The version of The Witcher that I've been playing the past week or so is so far beyond "All your base are belong to us" that calling it "poor" voice acting comes off as more than a tad elitist in my eyes.

When it comes to the actual words I'm also confused. If the polish version is actually written by the reincarnation of Shakespeare, then yes, something most definitely got lost in translation. Otherwise, I've played PLENTY of other games with more simplified, less intelligent and less elaborate dialog than what is found in The Witcher.

Am I the only one who hasn't turned into a member of "The New Spoiled Kids on the Block" or have I just become more mellow in my old age? :lonely:

Hey guys, I think you're missing the key point here. This is not about editing the original Polish script, its about editing the original English translation. Most probably to save on voice overs. This has been confirmed by others, see for example Sande Cen's (posting with her real name) post in the official Witcher forum. So what was originally exceptional dialogue ends up being just adequate or even bad.

I'm just curious if the original English script (obviously by CDP) will ever become available.

I think if Atari has skimped on the full original English translation voiceovers in a misguided attempt by some non-gaming beancounter in middle management to save a buck(which would be fairly typical), it would be great to have the full text translations released in some form, even subtitles. That would make the game more comparable to what the devs intended. In addition to stuff apparently being whacked up and shortened, there are a few cutscenes and the like that just don't make sense the way they're worded.

However, I don't think the caliber of voice acting is anywhere near as bad as some of the comments at Rock Paper Shotgun are making out. (Example: the post from just_finished_okami. )

Again, I think this kind of problem comes from conventional attitude toward video games i.e. the majority still regard the games as products and not arts as Mark Wilson hit the nail on the head in his article "Video Game Reviews Are Broken, Please Fix". After reading some reviews on the Witcher, I decided to order UK version, thinking it was more faithful presentation of the original version but…really, could somebody fix it? :'(

We are used to that.

Beyond Divinity - no German voiceacting
Neverend - no German voiceacting

I guess there are several more examples.

Holy cow, the translation really was butchered. (Look for Bukary's post)

Thanks for the link, KazikluBey--I just saved the post to notepad so I can refer to it. That's a huge difference not just in 'ambience', but in meaning.

It's nice to see TTLG is still alive and kicking, too.

Now that I think about it, Cd Projekt could release the original text file so it can be replaced.
Do any of the developers post here at the Watch?
Could we get something started? :)

Polish: Geralt: No, but I'm sure you'll tell me.

English: Geralt: No, but tell me.

Uhh.., not only cut but also changed what stay.

Not that I know, but at least one does at the Codex.

Even you replace the text files there is still the matter of the spoken dialogues and animations. Around 25% of the dialogue has been cut so my best guess is that such a mod would only work with the Polish version, otherwise a very extensive patch including redoing the voiceovers etc, highly unlikely to say the least.

One could simply cut the speech, or use the Polish VA with English subs.

And continuously pausing the game to have time to read the whole sentence before the other guy starts speaking. That's an idea.

You know, some of us do watch subtitled movies a fair bit. And many read faster than they talk (I know I do).

Playing the game with the french version. Perhaps I'm not someone with high expectations but the voice acting seems to be pretty good to me.

It's not the voice acting as such that is being complained about, but all the cut dialog. I don't remember who wrote it where, but supposedly the Polish voices.bif is 627MB whereas the UK one is 478MB (I know the latter is correct), i.e. about 24% less!

What is up with posting a preview based on an hour's play 4 days after it was released? What could you hope to bring to the table when full fledge reviews are already available?

Edit: After finishing the preview this man wasted his time both with the game and writing a worthless article.

Absolutely, I watch plenty of subtitled movies too. This is not what I was talking about however, please reread my post. We know that ~ 25% of the initial script has been cut and that the cuts are random and uneven. So in a situation that dialogues are exchanged fairly rapidly, a cutscene for example, the length of the animation (which is cut as well) that you watch on your screen would be too short, don't you think?

That's why I guessed that a subtitles-only mod would work properly only with the Polish version (the animations are uncut in this one).

@KazikluBey I think it would be also interesting to compare the total size of the UK and Polish versions.

Naturally, I meant that the animations should get their original length as well.

Well, my The Witcher directory consists of 8 511 748 925 bytes. Any Polish members to check theirs?

Same here, about 8,5 GB in Polish version.

But our Polish voices.bif has 627MB. How much is yours?

I presume you mean gibibytes (1024^3 bytes) and not gigabytes (1000^3 bytes). My The Witcher directory is about 7.9 GiB and my voices_3_00.bif is 478 MiB.

So if the above figures are correct that would mean that there is a difference of 8.5-7.9= 600MB between the UK and Polish versions. Subtract 627-478=149MB (the difference in the voice files) and you're left with 451MB of missing content (other than dialogues).

zima98, check both the left and right numbers in your properties sheet and post them both if you please.

I wonder if all the cutscenes are in one file as well, then the Mod would require the Polish language dialog and cutscene files and the English text file.
I guess with the cutscenes and the dialog were talking about at least a gig for the Mod, the main thing woudl be to get an Uncut English dialog text file.

Does the Polish version have English subtitle choice?

No.

I'll do it when I return home. Do you want exactly whole size of Witcher, right?

In bytes would be nice, yes.

I came across another interesting fact. There is a setting in the ini

Language=FinalEnglish_Short

I wouldn't be surprised if the devs have already thought about the matter beforehand. In that case, making such a mod would be as simple as replacing some files. The initial unedited script might even be hidden somewhere in the retail version.

8 687 409 737 bytes - I checked exactly.

Not a big difference then, good to know.

A thing one has to remember is that ANY English text translated to Polish ends up lengthened by a considerable degree, perhaps due to immanent differences between the languages. As for the opposite direction, I know of a good Polish big-scale poem "Pan Tadeusz", which in the original version maintains a consistent 13-syllabic verse, while the verses are shorter in English (see here: http://www.antoranz.net/BIBLIOTEKA/P…oks/BOOK01.HTM ) - if it's of any indication here ;-)

If it weren't for the forum translations I doubt I would really have noticed outside of a few disjointed dialogs but if the post containing the fan-translation examples are anything to go by then a lot of flavor and sometimes even meaning is lost in the English version of the game.

E:Lithuania, my country! You are as good health
P: Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! Ty jesteś jak zdrowie

E: How much one should prize you, he only can tell
P: Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie
*
E: Holy Virgin who shelters our bright Częstochowa
P: Panno święta, co jasnej bronisz Częstochowy

E: And shines in Ostra Brama! You, who yet watch over
P: I w ostrej świecis Bramie! Ty, co gród zamkowy


I don't think English verses are shorter. Btw. good translation, it catches rythm of 13-syllabic poem and at first look translator doesn't miss/cut words in translation.

Well, the number of syllables is USUALLY lower, so I guess the number of letters should also be lower in the long run - but of course you're right about the examples.

I suddenly lost all interest in either discussing or playing The Witcher. I know I'll be missing on a great game but I just want the full experience, so I'm not going to bother until if and when a proper mod is made. Not to mention that I don't particularly enjoy being treated like an idiot, and all this pr bs I have been hearing lately has absolutely no effect on me (no to anyone else who is able to read I would presume).

It does make things difficult to say the least, at first I wanted to blame the editor at atari but I have come to realize that it was probably just a person whom got the job saying, "Cut 25% of the dialog, we can't afford it, No wait make that 40%, I got to take my family on a ski trip for the holidays.".

Hence, atari = asshats!

Seems to only solution is to get the original English dialog file from the devs.