About the Spanish Translate

Hi there. People try to work on FFXIV traslate.

https://www.youtube.com/user/FinalFantasyXIVSpain

How much you need for translate the game? about 10k$? Easy to pay thinking about the profits. On Social media you announce the game in Spanish and the game still not translate. LIARS?. why the game isnt translate yet? The community can help for free to traslate. You can not let the initiative like being forgotten. We are a lot of players, and we can be much more. The english used on the game isnt a low level english skill, so sometimes is a mass for us. Respect the lore, respect your players. Translate the game.

$10,000 wouldn't pay for translating more than a small fraction of the game.

Remember, it's not only the story quests and dialog, but also every cutscene, all the side quests and incidental dialog of *every* NPC in the game, as well as all the other text in the leve-quest descriptions MB items, menus, item descriptions, tooltips, item help, game help, etc... There is a lot of work involved in fully translating any game.

If you contract a person in Spain, cost still less like 2k$.

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Originally Posted by Mastodom

If you contract a person in Spain, cost still less like 2k$.

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Sorry, a) I know you're wrong, b) you're beginning to sound like you're just trolling and c) I won't feed you any more if you are.

Problem isn't the translation or the money being that MMO are constantly being updated. The best thing would be to petition a Spanish version of it for MMO. ( It would be a very expensive monthly fee though ) Also you can translate certain games, mainly non online games, and some you don't need to pay people they are made by fanbase who love the game and can perhaps request for it. You will need a bit of experience with scripts though and own the game in order to do it. Their are also some third party translation tools, however I've yet to find one that can translate properly and accurately in PC versions. Mainly non MMO's.

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Originally Posted by Mastodom

If you contract a person in Spain, cost still less like 2k$.

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Sorry...you're never going to find someone that will translate 4 years worth of an mmo into Spanish, both text and voice acting for that misery of a pay.

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Originally Posted by Natashio

Sorry...you're never going to find someone that will translate 4 years worth of an mmo into Spanish, both text and voice acting for that misery of a pay.

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In Spain 800€/monthly any translator will work.

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Originally Posted by Mastodom

In Spain 800€/monthly any translator will work.

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...dont tell me you actually believe that ONE person could translate the ENTIRE game (thats is a lot more than just the dialogues!) in two and a half months...

The lack of thought you put into this is almost cute... and pretty naive. Asking for a spanish version seems totally legit to me - but the way you propose it could work just shows that you have simply NO idea about the work that is involved, the complication that might arise and that the whole process of translating a game isnt as easy as you make it sound and seem.

In regards to voice acting, they could simply leave it in English with Spanish subtitles.
I always found it funny that games get translated to French or German, but not to Spanish, which has actually a much broader audience.

I think the Spanish public is very few and the investment don't worth it. I'm not sure, but I think Spanish people don't reach even the 1% of player base. It is not a popular game in Spain, neither on South America. I'm Spanish and I find difficult find Spanish players. There are only like 1 or 2 forums dedicated to the game, while you can find a lot for other languages.

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Originally Posted by Xlantaa

I think the Spanish public is very few and the investment don't worth it. I'm not sure, but I think Spanish people don't reach even the 1% of player base. It is not a popular game in Spain, neither on South America. I'm Spanish and I find difficult find Spanish players. There are only like 1 or 2 forums dedicated to the game, while you can find a lot for other languages.

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Probably because it's obvious there's no interest in the hispanic playerbase.
I've had a few friends join and have difficulty following the cutscenes/dialogs, so in the end they basically skipped the story and had little to do besides some casual raiding.

I have, however, found a very active group of latin americans in my server. But I was a year and a half into the game when I met them (and they had been playing for 2 years+). Most people who do stay, like me, play solo or join an English FC.

Still, way more people speak Spanish than French or German. But I'm sure they must have done their research.

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Originally Posted by Mastodom

In Spain 800€/monthly any translator will work.

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Wishful thinking on your part. Maybe you should put some of that time complaining in actual research. Also while we do have spanish speakers it's not a huge crowd. Most can and will speak english and make it through the game just fine, there's no reason to hire a translator and spend extra money to translate that game into spanish.

As a language, a large number of people speak Spanish. As a monolingual community, that number dives drastically. The majority of spanish speaking people are bilingual with English. So the hispanic language used in FFXIV is English.

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Originally Posted by Xlantaa

I think the Spanish public is very few and the investment don't worth it. I'm not sure, but I think Spanish people don't reach even the 1% of player base. It is not a popular game in Spain, neither on South America. I'm Spanish and I find difficult find Spanish players. There are only like 1 or 2 forums dedicated to the game, while you can find a lot for other languages.

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I mean, to be fair, the lack of interest might at least partially be due to the lack of a version of the game they can understand easily.

Here we go again. When games get translated into German and French for the European client (in any game), it's not based on the amount of people speaking it. Europe has many countries with different languages, but in the European Union, English, French and German are the ones that have the highest priority as 'official European languages", and European versions of videogames need to be translated into those 3 languages minimum, other languages are optional and it's up to the company doing the localizations to decide if the cost of new clients and supporting them would be worth it.

In Europe more people speak French than Spanish (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg).
In Canada, Africa, a part speaks French too.
All over the world, more people speak Spanish than French. But are these countries a marketing target ? this is the question ^^ (for German i don't really know many countries where it's an official language ^^)

The U.S. Is a marketing target and has as of 2015, 41 million Spanish speakers, so the answer is yes. I don't know why people forget that the U.S. Has one of the largest collection of Spanish speakers in the world.

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Originally Posted by Antonio_Xul

The U.S. Is a marketing target and has as of 2015, 41 million Spanish speakers, so the answer is yes. I don't know why people forget that the U.S. Has one of the largest collection of Spanish speakers in the world.

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Yes, but the USA is an officially English speaking country and any Spanish speaking people would also speak English, most likely.

From what I know literally EVERYTHING in Germany is translated or dubbed in German, it's a culture thing for them and maybe a remnant of WWII. As to why they translate the game into German and French specifically for the EU, I'd pin it down on SE (being Japanese) is a bit old-fashioned and sometimes still have the mind-set of Europe market being the third after Japan and North America. I also think the French and German countries have a vast history of translating things into their own language, and as such they have the resources easilly accessible. I would wager there's just a LOT less translation agencies available in Spain. Do correct me if I'm wrong there though, it's just an assumption I'm making. In the end all is fair though, they don't owe us anything and as a Japanese company it can be hard to make it, or even want to, outside of Japan as it's a very big investment. SE, and us in extension, are incredibly fortunate they have someone like Koji-Fox, a professional literate and multi-langual person who's very passionate for this game and their company. Sadly, I think his Spanish is a bit rusty, otherwise he might have actually opted to do Spanish as well.... as if he isn't busy enough already. xP

Anyway, by this time I would not count on there being a Spanish translation of the game. It would just take way too much resources from not only catching up, but also keeping everything updated. Remember, this game's patches are being released simultaniously in all translations and adding another language could cause more delays in the patches being released. I know I just said SE was old-fashioned, but with regards to translated simultanious releases they're showing to be ahead of many other Asian (MMO) companies.

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Originally Posted by Valenth

From what I know literally EVERYTHING in Germany is translated or dubbed in German, it's a culture thing for them and maybe a remnant of WWII. As to why they translate the game into German and French specifically for the EU, I'd pin it down on SE (being Japanese) is a bit old-fashioned and sometimes still have the mind-set of Europe market being the third after Japan and North America. I also think the French and German countries have a vast history of translating things into their own language, and as such they have the resources easilly accessible. I would wager there's just a LOT less translation agencies available in Spain. Do correct me if I'm wrong there though, it's just an assumption I'm making.

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It's mostly because living in the EU gives you the Option to learn : Your Mother Language dependend on the Country, English as the Second Language (World Language to say), French / German / others being Optional.

In Germany as example, we get teached German in School and English is one of the Languages that you're going to learn 100% (if you want or not, you can't really influence that).
Languages such as French/Spanish and others are completely Optional (Tho is also a Must if you want to Study later on)

It's a Fact though, that French gets picked more so then Spanish in the end.

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Originally Posted by Kaethra

As a language, a large number of people speak Spanish. As a monolingual community, that number dives drastically. The majority of spanish speaking people are bilingual with English. So the hispanic language used in FFXIV is English.

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Please stop pulling statistics out of thin air. Majority of Spanish speaking people are not bilingual.

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Originally Posted by Valenth

From what I know literally EVERYTHING in Germany is translated or dubbed in German, it's a culture thing for them and maybe a remnant of WWII.

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As a german I dont know the reason behind this either, but yes - we're getting translations for EVERYTHING.

And frankly... I dont think thats such a good thing - I've learned most of my english from games and movies that I played/watched in english (even though I have to admit that I play FFXIV in german because thats a closer translation to the japanese version than the english one is). Being able to speak english is very important in this day and age - and being able to learn it by just doing what you already like to do seems so much better than reading textbooks.
I always have to think of my younger brother who claimed when he was around 17 that there was no need for him to learn english because everything was translated anyways -.-

While I understand that some people might prefer to play in their own language, games are such a great way to actually learn english! (Granted, would be better if the game wasnt written in such a special... way) Personally I wouldnt mind if they just stopped to translate everything to german (except for kids stuff, maybe - but once you're older than 15... you should really learn english)

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

Yes, but the USA is an officially English speaking country and any Spanish speaking people would also speak English, most likely.

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There is no official language for the United States.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

Yes, but the USA is an officially English speaking country and any Spanish speaking people would also speak English, most likely.

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Sorry, but not likely. Only 17% are fully Spanish / English bilingual. The rest either have limited English or no English at all.

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Originally Posted by Mwynn

It's mostly because living in the EU gives you the Option to learn : Your Mother Language dependend on the Country, English as the Second Language (World Language to say), French / German / others being Optional.

In Germany as example, we get teached German in School and English is one of the Languages that you're going to learn 100% (if you want or not, you can't really influence that).
Languages such as French/Spanish and others are completely Optional (Tho is also a Must if you want to Study later on)

It's a Fact though, that French gets picked more so then Spanish in the end.

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True, the same applies here in the Netherlands except I also had to chose between German or French on top of that, or if I really wanted, both.

That being said, I know from experience and from plenty of German friends too that Germans don't like or are comfortable enough with English to the point of almost always picking the German client over the English one. This may sound logical, German being their native language after all, but here in the Netherlands you'll see most people actually pick the English language in a game when given the option between NL or Eng. To Dutch people Dutch gametexts usually sounds incredibly... cheesy, corny, uncool and even cringe-worthy. I think it has to do with the amount of dubbing and subbing/translating everything into German in daily life over there though. In the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam, there is so much English in daily life that there's entire parts were you really don't need to be able to speak Dutch in order to make a living. We also usually leave foreign media in their original language and just add subtitles. Heck I can even say half the day I think and talk in English too, often not being able to find a word in Dutch, but knowing the English one instead.

All in all, it seems to be a cultural thing, if you'll allow me to encapsulate the earlier mentioned 'daily life' in this. This is why I was guessing in my previous post things are a bit different in Spanish and Spain regarding translations. I'm not sure how much English (speaking) outside influences they have in their daily life, or if they stick more to media created by Spanish for Spanish. I'm don't know this for sure though, so if a Spanish person could fill me in that would be great. xP Germans have plenty of English influences in their life, but they have set up a very big industry of localizing and translating everything first from what I know. I think there is barely any TV show or movie that is in it's original language in Germany, right?

Ps. Don't American schools also give Spanish like European non-UK schools give English? I was under the impression they did.

Spanish is commonly offered in US middle/high schools, and is the most popular second language choice. It's common for schools to require some foreign language credits. Also, in areas with a large Spanish speaking community, there are plenty of businesses that provide service completely in Spanish, without need for any English knowledge within the US.

I am in a latino FC, and there is a range of comfort levels in English - including some people that cannot understand it at all. I think even just a Spanish language flag for DF/PF purposes would be helpful, though maybe queue times would lead to DF queues in all languages anyway.

SE does have a Spanish translation team that appears in ARR and HW credits. Several single player games do have text-only translations as well - for example, FFXIII and FFXV. Would be lovely to see it happen here, but I wouldn't get any hopes up.

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Originally Posted by Valenth

To Dutch people Dutch gametexts usually sounds incredibly... cheesy, corny, uncool and even cringe-worthy.

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My mother language is German and to me German game translations are also EXTREMELY cheesy, corny, uncool and cringe-worthy. That's why I play all games in English and watch shows in English too if possible.
But it's true that even though in German / Austrian schools the children learn English very, very early nowadays, German speakers tend to be very uncomfortable speaking English. One reason surely is, how you said, because almost every game, show etc. gets translated AND dubbed. So you won't really learn English anywhere if you don't look for it. That's why most Germans are really bad at English. Even if you only know the bare minimum you can still graduate from school. So no real reason for them to even learn it properly. They don't WANT to speak English. If some advertisement is in English because it's "cool" they just complain because we're in a German speaking country so it *has* to be German. I know of some people here at about 30 years old or even younger that can speak English barely good enough to speak very simple sentences. And they refuse to pronounce the "th" sound or the "r" properly.

If you're living in a country where it's unusual that everything gets translated into your language, you would still play FFXIV in English because you'd have no other choice and because it would be normal. In Germany, people are extremely upset if the text of a game is translated but it isn't dubbed in German, so that some of them wouldn't even play it. They'd rather take a cheesy, cringe-worthy version of the game than play it in English. So Square Enix would lose like 80% of their German speaking playerbase if the game wouldn't be in German. I truly believe it is even worse in France because I've met so many French players that can't understand a single English word. Most Germans at least understand very simple English.

Maybe it's similar in other countries that even though people learn English in school, they can't really use it because either English class is so bad or they don't use English in their daily lives at all a well. But it seems like it's not bad enough that Square Enix translates it into those languages.

(Btw, why is it that when doing 24-man stuff in this game and you have at least one German player and something goes wrong, they start spamming the alliance and party chat in German even though no one might understand them? xD Happened sooo many times.)

OP, if you ever thinking one single man can do the work of three, you just fall in the cheap zone of things that were better not being done than poorly done.

Just look at endgame titles to see how many people are involved for voice acting alone of one language, then rethink about how much it takes for a brand new language to add.

And no, SE is not a charity and if they are needed 12 people they hire 12 people not 20.

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Originally Posted by Limonia

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Yeah, the German friends I mentioned earlier all had to learn their English by playing MMO's. Several of them told me jokingly how they would learn English by playing these games and having a dictionary next to them, haha. To stick on-topic though, I could imagine SE would possibly add Spanish subtitles at some point. It will be a hell of a job, but they could. Voice overs I wouldn't expect anymore in this stage of the game, that would take way too many resources.

It was explained to someone at fanfest like this:

They have the resources to hire translators/localization teams, but the problem becomes their need of support in those languages as well. Much like you see forum sections for EN JP DE and FR, they'd need a team to man the Spanish section as well...so it wouldn't be just the cost of a translator(s). Nevermind actually hiring voice talent.

And this is where SE deems the Spanish market not good. The market is the main reason they haven't done it yet. They cannot justify the costs of operating an official Spanish language.

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aqui una traduccion de mi informacion, perdon por no usar tildes, ya que mi teclado es estadounidense ;D

Como negocio, SE tiene los recursos para emplear equipos de traductores, pero el problema es mas alla de tener traducciones. El problema viene de tener que ocupar personas tambien para un equipo de apoyo (support), para cosas como los forros, GMs etc. Para EN, JP, DE, FR, no nomas es la traduccion del juego, sino que tambien tienen sus propios secciones de foros en sus idiomas, y tienen representativos de SE que pueden hablar estas idiomas y responderles adecuadamente.

Aqui es donde SE decide que el mercado para producir este juego en espanol no es bueno.

Espero que esto cambie pronto, ya que hicieron un trabajo enorme con lanzar FFXV con multiples idiomas. Hasta se lanzo con espanol latinoamericana y castellano :D

I've overseen national language support (NLS) in multiple products. For things like publications general translation skills are fine but for text or messages issued from code you typically need someone with enough programming skills to be able translate the message/text files and compile them for verification. You also add onto the product test cycles as each language gets tested independently. Another cost during translation, at least for English, is developer time taken up explaining ambiguous words. Take invalid, one meaning is a disabled person and the other is the opposite of the word valid. There are many other multiple meaning words like this. None of this comes cheap nor can it be done overnight. I will say Spanish was one of the languages we always got asked to support and rarely did we do it. The fact was with limited funds for NLS we had to cover our largest revenue bases. These were usually Arabic, French, German and Japanese. Towards the time I retired Chinese was also hitting critical mass. My guess is SE is in a similar position.

I've also seen some comments as to Latin countries. Many of these countries actually speak Portuguese so translating the game into Spanish still only serves part of the market.

Lastly, which dialect of Spanish? While Spanish speakers can understand each other much like we English speakers there are enough different dialects that sometime you wonder are we all speaking the same language?

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Originally Posted by Claviusnex

I've also seen some comments as to Latin countries. Many of these countries actually speak Portuguese so translating the game into Spanish still only serves part of the market.

Lastly, which dialect of Spanish? While Spanish speakers can understand each other much like we English speakers there are enough different dialects that sometime you wonder are we all speaking the same language?

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Er, what? No, Latin America is definitely Spanish dominant. Brazil is the only South American country that speaks it primarily. There are however a few African countries that also use it officially.

The people in my FC seem fairly aware of what is "regional" and what is "neutral" dialects, and usually go with neutral language when in a mixed group. I'm in NA, though. Really though, FFXV was able to condense dialects without an issue, so it's not like that should be a stopping point for SE. Don't get me wrong, I can see cost and time being two very good reasons for FFXIV not getting a translation - but dialect, not so much. Hell, it could even feed into regional flare like we get in English...

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Originally Posted by raela

Er, what? No, Latin America is definitely Spanish dominant. Brazil is the only South American country that speaks it primarily. There are however a few African countries that also use it officially.

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You aren't wrong, but I just want to point out that while Brazil is the only country that speaks Portuguese, it also home to at least half of the continent's entire population. So numbers wise, at least half or close of South Americans don't speak Spanish as a first language.

Now, if you include Central American countries like Mexico, then yes, the scale will tip back toward Spanish, but the Brazilian population still takes a huge chunk (about 1/3rd population) out of the numbers of Central/South American people who would play this game. It's likely that this has some influence on SE's decision to translate or not.

It would be easier for non-translated players to play and understand too if SE and Koji let us have a more normal text version in English instead of their old style fluff speak that is like bad shakespeare. I've had a few of my friends in-game ask me for clarification of many things because they can't understand what the text says.

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Originally Posted by Kingmanath

In Europe more people speak French than Spanish (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg).
In Canada, Africa, a part speaks French too.
All over the world, more people speak Spanish than French. But are these countries a marketing target ? this is the question ^^ (for German i don't really know many countries where it's an official language ^^)

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French is one of Canada's two official languages(equal status with English in our government ^^), although it's only the mother tongue for 22% of our population.