About the Spanish Translate

[Ghastly]

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.

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

[Vidu]

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 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)

[Ghastly]

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

There is no official language for the United States.

[Antonio_Xul]

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

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

[Valenth]

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.

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.

[raela]

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.

[Limonia]

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

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.)

[LalaRu]

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.

[Valenth]

snippet

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.

[Vilhem]

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