|
Your donations keep RPGWatch running!
RPGWatch Forums
» Games
» The Witcher Games
» The Witcher
»
English translation - you guys miss all the fun.
English translation - you guys miss all the fun.
December 3rd, 2007, 19:23
Ok so i've seen one dialogue in original and in translation. I presume it was the american censored version. And it hurts my ears to hear such neutral language from a dwarf. Here are the two versions:
Original: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SctrHjdoAzk
Translated: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HS1hLGyJvZ4
You might notice that the original is considerably (about 1/3 longer) than the English version. Not only is it voiced better (that you might notice even without understanding the dialogue itself), but also it has some climate-making stuff that either has been cut from or never even introduced into the English version. So here's my translation from Polish. Sorry it's not too good, but it still hints the real experience Polish gamers have compared to you guys.
I put it in spoiler tags, cause I've tried to stay as much true to the original as I could - that including the occasional vulgar language. So if you are easily offended by language - don't read it.
D: Dwarf speaks.
G: Geralt speaks.
[G]: Geralt speaks the choosen dialogue option.
Also i have separated the different dialogue paths which start from the root of the conversation, so the "What?" doesn't feel out of place.
I don't know if you feel the difference, but I definately felt it very strongly. The only solution I've got for you all is: learn Polish! You probably have some time till the sequel comes out.
Original: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SctrHjdoAzk
Translated: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HS1hLGyJvZ4
You might notice that the original is considerably (about 1/3 longer) than the English version. Not only is it voiced better (that you might notice even without understanding the dialogue itself), but also it has some climate-making stuff that either has been cut from or never even introduced into the English version. So here's my translation from Polish. Sorry it's not too good, but it still hints the real experience Polish gamers have compared to you guys.
I put it in spoiler tags, cause I've tried to stay as much true to the original as I could - that including the occasional vulgar language. So if you are easily offended by language - don't read it.
D: Dwarf speaks.
G: Geralt speaks.
[G]: Geralt speaks the choosen dialogue option.
Also i have separated the different dialogue paths which start from the root of the conversation, so the "What?" doesn't feel out of place.
Spoiler
I don't know if you feel the difference, but I definately felt it very strongly. The only solution I've got for you all is: learn Polish! You probably have some time till the sequel comes out.
Last edited by Furia; December 3rd, 2007 at 19:57.
Traveler
December 3rd, 2007, 19:45
Nice Polish voice acting on Geralt. I feel a bit of a difference, but I think the basics come through. Something is always lost in translation, unfortunately. But I agree the Polish seems both more vehement and more expressive of scorn/anger from the dwarf.
--
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Hedgewitch
December 3rd, 2007, 21:59
Yes it's been known for quite a while that Atari massacred the original English script (the American script isn't censored AFAIK) made by CDP's contractor, Writer's Cabal. Apparently, Polish is supposed to be a very long-winded language compared to English and CDP's Polish translations of RPG:s usually end up using 20% more words than the English original, yet the English translation was about as long as the Polish original. I think it was Sande Chen, one half of the Writer's Cabal duo, who said that.
The problem with the translation in the game isn't just atmospherics but how they're actually very disjointed at times and don't always flow naturally, like the characters were talking past each other.
The problem with the translation in the game isn't just atmospherics but how they're actually very disjointed at times and don't always flow naturally, like the characters were talking past each other.
Sentinel
December 4th, 2007, 01:21
Hi,
I looked in depth into the file dialogue00.bif these days and I registered to share my observations. (sorry for my terrible english)
First, the script wasn't censored, because the cuts are non related to strong langage at all. The OP's example with the dwarf seems merely to be a coincidence. Unfortunatly, these cuts aren't limited to swearing or some secondary NPCs, they can affect the main dialogues too.
It's look like someone really need to cut 20% by any mean. So they cut some atmospheric sentence, remove some lore information and compact. What really annoy me, it's that sometimes the NPCs express their feeling in the dialogue but after the cuts they just deliver the information and that's it.
However it's not a complete butcher, there is also a lot of sentence without cut. Ingame, you don't really notice they, because the vital informations are still in, but there is this disjointing feeling sometimes.
Good news for the english speacker : The original script is in the files ! So, we can certainly restore it with the toolset.
But bad news for the french, german, spanish and other langages : There is only one script for each and its come directly from the english short script. (100% positive for french and german and very likely for spanish and italian), no restoration possible.
Here is a lot of example, so you can see what the cuts look like. So, basically there is 3 distinct scripts in the file dialogue00.bif:
A: original long script
B: improved script, no cut (I can hardly measure; but I believe that the syntax and the vocabulary is a bit better)
C: short script
I looked in depth into the file dialogue00.bif these days and I registered to share my observations. (sorry for my terrible english)
First, the script wasn't censored, because the cuts are non related to strong langage at all. The OP's example with the dwarf seems merely to be a coincidence. Unfortunatly, these cuts aren't limited to swearing or some secondary NPCs, they can affect the main dialogues too.
It's look like someone really need to cut 20% by any mean. So they cut some atmospheric sentence, remove some lore information and compact. What really annoy me, it's that sometimes the NPCs express their feeling in the dialogue but after the cuts they just deliver the information and that's it.
However it's not a complete butcher, there is also a lot of sentence without cut. Ingame, you don't really notice they, because the vital informations are still in, but there is this disjointing feeling sometimes.
Good news for the english speacker : The original script is in the files ! So, we can certainly restore it with the toolset.
But bad news for the french, german, spanish and other langages : There is only one script for each and its come directly from the english short script. (100% positive for french and german and very likely for spanish and italian), no restoration possible.
Here is a lot of example, so you can see what the cuts look like. So, basically there is 3 distinct scripts in the file dialogue00.bif:
A: original long script
B: improved script, no cut (I can hardly measure; but I believe that the syntax and the vocabulary is a bit better)
C: short script
Spoiler
Last edited by arzar; December 4th, 2007 at 01:52.
Traveler
December 4th, 2007, 02:37
This is great news. Now, just have to wait a few more days for the patch and toolset to be released 
--
Despite all my rage.
I'm still just a rat in a cage.
Despite all my rage.
I'm still just a rat in a cage.
Little BRO Rat
December 4th, 2007, 02:55
Yeah, the full dialogue mod will probably be one of the first mods out there.
Watchdog
December 4th, 2007, 05:07
It's great to know that all that dialogue is in there. Some of the cuts really do make a serious difference to the whole "feel" of things. Thanks for posting, arzar.
--
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Hedgewitch
December 4th, 2007, 14:47
Originally Posted by KazikluBeyThat is always a problem with translations, whether in movies or games … I guess the only consolation is the thought of how good the English game is regardless
The problem with the translation in the game isn't just atmospherics but how they're actually very disjointed at times and don't always flow naturally, like the characters were talking past each other.
--
-- Mike
-- Mike
SasqWatch
December 8th, 2007, 16:25
When translating the unit descriptions for the unofficial patch 1.4 of Age Of Wonders: Shadow Magic, I had to stick to a certain limit of characters.
It felt kind of cruel to me to have to cut almost all of my imho fine translations to meet this character limit.
Maybe this was the case in this game as well ?
Contracts with translators of books are usually bound to the number of characters or words, I heard … - maybe Atari just made a guess over the needed words or characters and made the translators stick with this ?
It would explain some things.
It felt kind of cruel to me to have to cut almost all of my imho fine translations to meet this character limit.
Maybe this was the case in this game as well ?
Contracts with translators of books are usually bound to the number of characters or words, I heard … - maybe Atari just made a guess over the needed words or characters and made the translators stick with this ?
It would explain some things.
--
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)
TL;DR
Original Sin 1 & 2 Donor
slight chapter 1 and 2 spoilers
December 10th, 2007, 11:08
Good god, this explains a lot! I was wondering how Geralt came to the nonsensical conclusion about the origins of the Beast after he'd spoken to that kid. The way the little boy rambled that nonsense I don't see how anyone could have made sense of it. This explains a lot!
Oh, btw, after I talked to Siegfried about naming his unit, a line of text was added to his character description, saying that he realized that the morality of his actions wasn't so simple. He never said anything like this in the game!!! Does anyone know if this is an error on the part of the developers or just another case of missing translated text? Man, I really want to love this game, but it's mind-boggling quirks like this that make it really hard. :I
Oh, btw, after I talked to Siegfried about naming his unit, a line of text was added to his character description, saying that he realized that the morality of his actions wasn't so simple. He never said anything like this in the game!!! Does anyone know if this is an error on the part of the developers or just another case of missing translated text? Man, I really want to love this game, but it's mind-boggling quirks like this that make it really hard. :I
Traveler
December 10th, 2007, 15:55
Watchdog
December 10th, 2007, 17:28
I'll have to try this for the next playthrough. What I don't understand is the purpose behind limiting the dialogue in the first place if they left it in the game??? How does that save Atari any money if it's all already been done? I mean, how much more could it cost to have the voice actors say a few more lines of text?
--
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Hedgewitch
December 10th, 2007, 18:33
Obviously a lot - certainly much more than the cost to leave a few more megabytes of text on.
Sentinel
December 10th, 2007, 18:37
I didn't realize voice acting was such a well paid profession. Maybe that explains all the terrible voicing we get--it's everybody's wives, sisters and brother-in-laws sitting around a mike reading script.
Maybe that explains all the terrible voicing we get--it's everybody's wives, sisters and brother-in-laws sitting around a mike reading script.
--
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Where there's smoke, there's mirrors.
Hedgewitch
December 10th, 2007, 22:52
Thanks Ausir, very helpful info.
Does anyone know/remember what the original setting was for the Witcher.ini?
[Djinni]
Language=
Currently I have mine set to, FinalEnglish, since I keep trying the different ideas people keep posting.
I am worried that might effect this new idea and I can't find an original I backed up or could someone whom hasn't tried to change there settings look at the Witcher.ini in your The Witcher/System folder?
I guess we will need to check to make sure these changes aren't changed in the new upcoming 1.2 patch.
Thanks.
Does anyone know/remember what the original setting was for the Witcher.ini?
[Djinni]
Language=
Currently I have mine set to, FinalEnglish, since I keep trying the different ideas people keep posting.
I am worried that might effect this new idea and I can't find an original I backed up or could someone whom hasn't tried to change there settings look at the Witcher.ini in your The Witcher/System folder?
I guess we will need to check to make sure these changes aren't changed in the new upcoming 1.2 patch.
Thanks.
--
Trust me, most of the names I have been called you can't translate in any language…they're not even real words as much as a succession of violent images.
Trust me, most of the names I have been called you can't translate in any language…they're not even real words as much as a succession of violent images.
SasqWatch
December 10th, 2007, 23:06
The Djinni setting was EnglishShort. By the way, Djinni is the name of the toolset, so I think this setting does not affect the game itself, but only the upcoming toolset.
Watchdog
December 11th, 2007, 00:21
Well if the german, french, spanish, italian, russian, czech and hungarian translation are based on the short english script, each english word you cut save a lot of money (translation+voice recording!)
Besides, I continued my investigation into the various files (wordpad FTW!), and I found this in 2da00.bif :
Each langage seems to have an id.
I installed my witcher game in french and I have the files dialog_11.tlk, lang_11.key and voices_11_00.bif . I bet that english version have dialog_3.tlk, lang_3.key and voices_3_00.bif files.
If you look in dialogues00.bif (with wordpad again), you will see that it contains all dialogues in each langage. Each line follow the order debug(polish), english, finalEnglish, finalEnglish_short, polish(another?), german, french, spanish etc.
So, what I labell script A, B, C in my previous post, may be : A = english, B = finalEnglish, C = finalEnglish_short.
Edit :
Someone else found the same thing today too !!
http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=6977.0
Besides, I continued my investigation into the various files (wordpad FTW!), and I found this in 2da00.bif :
Code:
id name codepage FallBack FallBackInfo 0 0 Debug 1252 **** 1 1 1 English 1252 Debug 1 2 2 FinalEnglish 1252 English 0 3 3 FinalEnglish_Short 1252 Debug 1 4 5 Polish 1250 Debug 1 5 10 German 1252 FinalEnglish_Short 1 6 11 French 1252 FinalEnglish_Short 1 7 12 Spanish 1252 FinalEnglish_Short 1 8 13 Italian 1252 FinalEnglish_Short 1 9 14 Russian 1251 FinalEnglish_Short 1 10 15 Czech 1251 FinalEnglish_Short 1 11 16 Hungarian 1251 FinalEnglish_Short 1 12 17 Reserved0 **** **** **** 13 18 Reserved1 **** **** **** 14 19 Reserved2 **** **** **** 15 20 Korean **** FinalEnglish_Short 1 16 21 ChineseTrad **** FinalEnglish_Short 1 17 22 ChineseSimp **** FinalEnglish_Short 1 18 23 Reserved3 **** **** **** 19 24 Reserved4 **** **** **** 20 25 Reserved5 **** **** **** 21 26 Reserved6 **** **** **** 22 27 Reserved7 **** **** **** 23 28 Reserved8 **** **** ****
I installed my witcher game in french and I have the files dialog_11.tlk, lang_11.key and voices_11_00.bif . I bet that english version have dialog_3.tlk, lang_3.key and voices_3_00.bif files.
If you look in dialogues00.bif (with wordpad again), you will see that it contains all dialogues in each langage. Each line follow the order debug(polish), english, finalEnglish, finalEnglish_short, polish(another?), german, french, spanish etc.
So, what I labell script A, B, C in my previous post, may be : A = english, B = finalEnglish, C = finalEnglish_short.
Edit :
Someone else found the same thing today too !!
http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=6977.0
Traveler
December 11th, 2007, 05:07
Debug must then be the first version for beta-testing. To see if dialogues made sense etc. Then came English, derriving from Debug, which is the english beta-testing version. Then from English they've made FinalEnglish.
Understanding this list further one must notice that FinalEnglish_short derrives from Debug, which make NO SENSE AT ALL! It looks like there were two translations made for english itself! WHAT THE HELL????
The missing id #4 would probably be FinalEnglish_short1, which is the ancestor of all other language translations. But what the hell is with having two translations? Did CDP do an independant translation from the one done by Atari? HUH? That makes even less sense. Well that still doesn't explain the missing #6-9…
Now the link posted states to change the ID of your language files from 3 to 1, which also makes little sense, assuming the author of that solution also bumped into this list. Why? English (id 1) is the version which was NOT altered after beta testing - instead FinalEnglish was created. That given it's probably better to switch the language id to 2 instead of 1.
The codepage column is obvious for anyone who's not an english speaker. Why? The character encoding for the Polish language is Windows1250. That makes Windows1252 the encoding for western Europe and Windows1251 the encoding for non-polish slavic languages (or eastern Europe). That too makes little sense. I mean is Russian not written in Cyrylic in the Russian translation? WHAT THE HELL???
The only reason for the game having all language versions in each copy is… NONE! Although it might be… maybe all copies all over the world are EXACTLY the same? That would mean that the language choosen for your gameplay would depend on your windows localization settings… But then……..
This might be a fun thing to test for someone. Change your locale from US to UK and install and test the game. If UK users didn't get FinalEnglish_short, but the FinalEnglish - that would get You the uncut dialogues without messing with the files… that is: if my theory is correct…
EDIT: just a thought: it also might take your installshield language settings and configure depending on those…
Understanding this list further one must notice that FinalEnglish_short derrives from Debug, which make NO SENSE AT ALL! It looks like there were two translations made for english itself! WHAT THE HELL????
The missing id #4 would probably be FinalEnglish_short1, which is the ancestor of all other language translations. But what the hell is with having two translations? Did CDP do an independant translation from the one done by Atari? HUH? That makes even less sense. Well that still doesn't explain the missing #6-9…
Now the link posted states to change the ID of your language files from 3 to 1, which also makes little sense, assuming the author of that solution also bumped into this list. Why? English (id 1) is the version which was NOT altered after beta testing - instead FinalEnglish was created. That given it's probably better to switch the language id to 2 instead of 1.
The codepage column is obvious for anyone who's not an english speaker. Why? The character encoding for the Polish language is Windows1250. That makes Windows1252 the encoding for western Europe and Windows1251 the encoding for non-polish slavic languages (or eastern Europe). That too makes little sense. I mean is Russian not written in Cyrylic in the Russian translation? WHAT THE HELL???
The only reason for the game having all language versions in each copy is… NONE! Although it might be… maybe all copies all over the world are EXACTLY the same? That would mean that the language choosen for your gameplay would depend on your windows localization settings… But then……..
This might be a fun thing to test for someone. Change your locale from US to UK and install and test the game. If UK users didn't get FinalEnglish_short, but the FinalEnglish - that would get You the uncut dialogues without messing with the files… that is: if my theory is correct…
EDIT: just a thought: it also might take your installshield language settings and configure depending on those…
Traveler
December 11th, 2007, 07:06
Thanks Ausir.
Wow, great work arzar.
Furia, lol now I am confused.
Wow, great work arzar.
Furia, lol now I am confused.
--
Trust me, most of the names I have been called you can't translate in any language…they're not even real words as much as a succession of violent images.
Trust me, most of the names I have been called you can't translate in any language…they're not even real words as much as a succession of violent images.
SasqWatch
December 11th, 2007, 21:13
Wow furia, great deduction.
Yes, the 0 debug(in polish) and 1 english must be some sort of beta version.
But for the font's problem, sorry it's my fault. I tried hard to make something not distorded by the forum presentation, finally gave up, made a dirty copy&paste and forgot the last column.
So there is a fonts column, with "fonts_rus" for the russian line and "fonts_zh "for the chinese.
And all copies over the world are not the same. My guess : The files with a 00 are the same for everybody (djinni00.bif, dialogues00.bif, cutscenes00.bif) because after all, text is cheap. You can have the whole script in each langage in the file dialogues00.bif( around 40 Mb). But the big files, like voices_X_00.bif are localized, and the X match your langage (3 for english, 5 for polish, 11 for french etc.)
I didn't notice that FinalEnglish_short derrives from Debug, but now , wow, it's puzzle me as well. Same conclusion : It make no sense AT ALL!
We realy need the toolset now to understand this mess.
Yes, the 0 debug(in polish) and 1 english must be some sort of beta version.
But for the font's problem, sorry it's my fault. I tried hard to make something not distorded by the forum presentation, finally gave up, made a dirty copy&paste and forgot the last column.
So there is a fonts column, with "fonts_rus" for the russian line and "fonts_zh "for the chinese.
And all copies over the world are not the same. My guess : The files with a 00 are the same for everybody (djinni00.bif, dialogues00.bif, cutscenes00.bif) because after all, text is cheap. You can have the whole script in each langage in the file dialogues00.bif( around 40 Mb). But the big files, like voices_X_00.bif are localized, and the X match your langage (3 for english, 5 for polish, 11 for french etc.)
I didn't notice that FinalEnglish_short derrives from Debug, but now , wow, it's puzzle me as well. Same conclusion : It make no sense AT ALL!
We realy need the toolset now to understand this mess.
Traveler
RPGWatch Forums
» Games
» The Witcher Games
» The Witcher
»
English translation - you guys miss all the fun.
|
|
All times are GMT +2. The time now is 11:09.