Everyone knows that the recently released game masterpieces have been in the Chineseization process one after another.
Although the Chineseization issue has not extinguished the enthusiasm of players, the quality of the game is there, and you still have to play it when you need to. However, the obscure Chinese expression in the game still affects the game experience more or less, so there are many netizens who break and defense.
faces the frequent problems of game translation, and I can’t find the topic recently. As a member of the current Jianjia Chineseization Group, I would like to briefly talk to you about the Chineseization of games and the current Chineseization market through this article.
Unexpectedly, the most criticized thing about "Blade of the Alien 3" is the Chinese quality
Starting from the recent Chineseization incident of "Monster Hunter Dawn", it exposed the lowest and most serious translation errors. The introduction of the skill "Quick Strike" is translated as: "When avoiding, when you are hit by a monster at the right time, the attack power will increase within a certain period of time", while the correct translation of the Traditional Chinese version is: "After seizing the right time to avoid the attack of a monster, the attack power will be increased for a period of time."
compared to the translation problem that is not satisfactory but innocuous in the dialogue. The error in skill translation not only affects the gameplay, but also the induction of the wrong text is also likely to cheat you several times openly and secretly, which directly affects the player's game experience. In the comment section of Bilibili, people asked to fire the translation of Jianzhong and whip the corpse of "Blade of the Alien 3".
However, this level of translation error can only be regarded as a small fight. In the action competitive game "Thunder Strike", "respawn" is translated for "spawn", so players have to "wait for egg laying" every time they die, and they have to "wait for egg laying" after eggs to give birth to animals.
and in " World of Warships ", "le Terrible (Horrible)" was thrown into the translation software by the translator, and the machine was translated as "too scary", but I don't know which genius changed "too scary" to "shock my mother". The subsequent game "Horrible 360-day bundle" was once again changed to "shock my mother for a whole year". This meme that caused the translation was even more popular than "World of Warships".
However, like in the picture above, the text machine was translated online hastily, and the situation of making big jokes has become a thing of the past. Although the translation of "Blade of the Alien 3" However, it is a bit outrageous, but it will not have much impact on the normal gameplay and understanding the plot. However, today, when even independent games can produce a qualified official, it is difficult to say that this highly anticipated celebrity player is at this level.
is attributed to the work mistakes of the Chinese team. The translation of "The Avant-garde was encircled" is a serious Chinese error, but on the other hand, the Chinese issue of the Chinese game is indeed not simple. How to localize the game,
, how to do it
Compared to the saying "Chinese" that has been passed down by the majority of players, translators prefer to use the word "localization" to summarize the work they have done. However, translating foreign languages to Chinese is only part of it. A complete game localization process also includes review, proofreading, embedding, debugging and other steps.
Generally speaking, translators' translation work will be carried out on software such as MemoQ and Trados. The operation of such software is not difficult, and you can master the basic operations and work after half an hour of study. Process. The text translated by
in the software will be directly entered into the memory library and will be filled directly when encountering similar text next time. This not only avoids duplicate work, but also unifies the language style of the project. The interface of the
translation software, and the red annotation also makes certain requirements for the translation
0 The most troublesome problem that each translator encounters during the translation process is the lack of context. The texts obtained by the translator are all sentences without context, and the context of the dialogue and plot will not be explained in detail most of the time.In order to reduce errors in the translation, some customers will provide a trial version for the game, and some customers will provide relevant background information. However, when there is nothing, translators can only guess the meaning of some text through their understanding of the previous translation and the plot.
Take the word "Master" as an example. It can represent different meanings such as "master, master, master". If the words and context do not match, the relationship between the characters will change and the player's game experience will be affected.
Although the difficulty of game translation is not as good as creating literary works, it still has certain requirements for players' Chinese level
In addition, what interferes with the translator's judgment is not only the problem of lack of context, but the disrupted text order can sometimes make people confused. Generally speaking, each text has an internal logical relationship. It may be a series of task introductions or a related plot dialogue. However, no matter what, the related content will be presented to the translator in paragraphs in the text. As long as it is translated in sequence, there will be no incomprehensible sentences.
But when the original text is disrupted, the translation process is like reading a bullshit novel, with no correlation between the previous and next sentences. Each scattered sentence requires searching background information to ensure the accuracy of the translation. Some extremely trivial short sentences cannot understand the meaning of them without the blessing of context, and can only make vague judgments through communication with other translators.
"World of Warcraft: The Mystery of the Panda Man" can be described as " Xinda Ya "
As I said above, translation is not an ordinary language and text conversion. A qualified game translator must also make style adjustments to the translation according to different situations.
Take the translation of the " Elder Scrolls " series as an example. If the dialogue comes from the mouth of a rigorous and arrogant high-end elves, then the translation should be written and choose relatively advanced vocabulary.
If you are a bold and refreshing Nord man, you must translate it carelessly and use more tone words.
And the most special tiger man among them usually calls himself in a third person: the tiger man named A Fan said "A Fan is hungry", which means "I am hungry". After the translator checks the information and determines the race, he must replace the name of the person who refers to him in the conversation with "I" and deal with the he/she in the text accordingly.
An excellent Chinese version will not only bring a significant improvement to the player's gaming experience, but also reflects the craftsman spirit . In fact, in today's game market, whether there is any official Chinese has become an important indicator for players to choose games. If a game does not support official, then the "Eight-Nation Alliance" formation will likely be arranged in the comment section of steam to promote Chineseization, and even the positive review rate of the game will be affected.
standard "Eight-Nation Alliance" formation
Although the official Chinese has become the standard configuration now, in the game market more than ten years ago, Chineseization was a very luxurious thing.
Chinese
More than ten years ago Chinese
If you are an old fry who has been living in the game circle for many years, then you must be familiar with the names of Chinese groups such as "Jian Jia", "Xuanyuan", and "Tian Miao". Before the official Chinese was popular, these Chinese groups were once the "life-saving straw" for players to enjoy foreign 3A masterpieces. Their translated works such as "Call of Duty" and " Black Luocheng " are still high-quality translation texts even now.
The Chineseization of "Black Luo City" gave me an excellent gaming experience
Although there were many major Chineseization groups at that time, they were private organizations after all. If you want to get the original text, you can only ask the technicians to extract it after the game is released, and then start to translate it. Therefore, most of the high-quality translations at that time were "come to come out after the game is released for a while.
In the environment where Chinese resources are very valuable, players do not have high requirements for translation as they do today.It is naturally good to use "credible and elegant" translation, but if the text quality is average, you can also make a living. As long as you understand the general idea, everything will be fine if you can play the game normally.
More obvious machine-turning traces
Since players do not have that high requirements for translation quality, the Chinese group will start to compete for speed. Most players hope to play the latest game on sale as soon as possible. If they are not released as soon as possible, others will naturally fill in this vacancy. Even if quality-saving Chinese patches are released later, they will be a "re-cooked pork" at best, and their popularity will be much worse than that at that time.
can be translated is a slow and meticulous job. Blind pursuit of speed will inevitably lead to a decline in quality. Some Chinese patches are only translated into the UI and are published with the name "Chinese V1 version". When players enter the game, they find that most of the text is still in awkward English. Even in the patches of V2 and V3 versions released later, it is a common phenomenon to obtain unknown number of refilling machines.
Jianjia Chineseization Group leader mentioned in an exclusive interview in an earlier year that the company's requirement for them was 5,000 lines of text per day. For a professional translator, translating 4,000-5,000 words per day is already a good output level, and the workload of 5,000 lines is nothing different from a fantasy. Under this high-intensity working pressure, the decline in translation quality seems to be an inevitable result. The battle between the Chinese-Chinese groups of
is gradually becoming fierce. Many people are exhausted in the fierce inverted and choose to quit. The Jianjia, Luanxiao, Blade, and Qianlong Chinese-Chinese groups under DM have announced their disbandment and will no longer tread this muddy water. The history of
DM Chinese group , one of the pillars of Chinese group
, was the time when game consoles entered China, and Steam also opened the country a year later. Game manufacturers smelled the potential of the Chinese market and successively started the work of localization of Chinese. The competition among major Chinese groups gradually ended with the popularization of official Chinese.
3DM integrates the studio at hand and begins to take over the commercial localization business. After the reorganization of
, Jianjia is still recruiting people on Weibo , and still implementing the concept of "only doing fine products".
And after the Chinese groups such as Luanxiao and Bladefeng were disbanded, they disappeared.
Folk Chineseization Group is gradually declining, and the game localization industry has emerged. Translators no longer only do odd jobs in their spare time like before. The profession of game translator has become a regular full-time job.
Today's Chinese pattern
Judging from the information on a certain recruitment software, the translation company's requirements for game localization staff are not very low. It not only requires a certain degree of education, but also requires a long-term understanding of the use and workflow of the translation software. Localization companies such as Yihe and other slightly large-scale will also set up entry exams for job seekers. If you do not have a solid foundation in English and years of translation experience, you will likely be wiped out.
Even so, the threshold for game translators is actually far from that high. In order to save costs and speed up project progress, some localization companies will also recruit some part-time translators. Since he has entered society, old translators who are plagued by trivial matters have less free time, and college students have become the main force in Chineseization.
Most of them are game enthusiasts. Some want to earn some pocket money, while others are passionate about participating in game production. However, because their profession is not programming or art, joining a localized team can be considered a dream to some extent. The salary of about 80 yuan for a thousand words is not high, but the translation process is an excellent training opportunity, and they are cheap and stable output for translation companies, which is undoubtedly a win-win deal.
However, the lowering of the translator threshold means that the quality of the initial translation is uneven, and it also means that a good team needs several extremely responsible and careful proofreaders to ensure the quality of the finished product and not cause a fallout due to the negligence of some translators. The quality problems in simplified Chinese in "Alien Blade 3" are likely to occur in the proofreading process.
Some companies provide localization while also providing Chinese dubbing business
However, this does not mean that game translation is only two types of large companies and part-time jobs. Many independent Chinese groups have also made a lot of contributions to the increasingly mature localization industry. There are only six core members of the translation team of " Outer World ". They started with small works, gradually accumulated fame, and conquered Obsidian with a free and easy trial translation draft in the bidding, winning the localization project of "Outer World".
"The World Outside" is humorous and meaningless. In addition to the for-profit localization work, the people who "generate power for love" are also sweating silently. In 2020, a group of people who love games established the "Unknown Chineseization Group" for the Chineseization "GTA4". They do not have professional Chinese tools, and the translation process is basically carried out in TXT, and there are no fixed translation standards, all based on feelings. After more than a year of work, the "No Name" Chinese patch was released in June this year. The translation level is not bad. Some unrestrained translation processing is more charming in "GTA4".
"GTA4" has attracted many people to recall this classic work
Today's localization pattern is developing in a healthy direction. The masterpieces on the market can basically deliver a qualified answer, including " Borderlands " series and other works with impressive localization levels. With the previous lessons of "Blade of the Alien 3" and "Rise of the Strange Hunter", game manufacturers will inevitably focus more on localization work to avoid the reappearance of "sparse" Chineseization.
This is the demand of players and an inevitable result of the development of the Chinese game market. As a translator, what I can do and will work hard to translate every text to bring you the best gaming experience.
