I do all the other things my unfortunate colleagues do, those who don’t localize video games but translate business reports or medical examinations. O how I pity them. I watch German TV. I have German friends. I visit Germany and am surprised as to how many cooking shows are on in prime time. I read German books. Also, this internet thing, they just got it over there too.

I have to play video games, it comes with the job. When I work as a project manager, I often ask my translators questions about the games they played recently. Detailed questions. But this is another post, let me just say that Duke Nukem is by definition not recent.

Playing MMOs on German servers or realms gives me also the opportunity to catch up on German gaming slang. Mostly, these are terms I would never use in localization, as we translate not only for the hardcore players out there. Any game text should be accessible to beginners, so when I read “spec your alt” or “when you are oom, drink a pot”, I know that the game was written by a gamer, not a writer. Hard to find both it seems, just as hard as finding gaming translators. Again, another post.

One of my favourite pseudo-anglicisms is “Skillung”. We all know what skills are and how they differ from talents (see the above spec). For some reason, the German term for spec or talent tree is Skillung, whereby “Skill” is skill and “ung” simply a German suffix. Ironically, is is mostly used to nominalize verbs. Real anglicisms sometimes make sense and can be explained. For example the use of “item”, the German “Gegenstand” is just too long it seems. But how did it happen that Germans use “account”, since the German “Konto” is even shorter? Sounds too much like a boring bank?

Even better to stay in touch with your native language and your localization field: Join a guild and hop on vent (or in Germany, the more popular Teamspeak). There you might hear sentences such as: “Okay, du pullst den Boss, dann atten wir, bis er sein Loot droppt.” You don’t have to read German to not understand this sentence.

(pcgames.de)

A popular topic when gamers from different cultures, countries ore continents are sitting together with a cup of coffee: How come a game such as Anno 1404 is so popular in Germany while nobody knows of it in the US? Nice compilation by German magazine PC Games, no need to speak German, just click through the gallery.

2. Funny Mox is funny

As a German, I have no sense of humor, but one of my French colleagues recommended this cartoon blog about the life of a translator to me. Even though the punchlines escape me, I am quite impressed by the masterful stroke of MS Paint.

3. The internet is for rants

(EA Louse, anonymous)

By now everyone and his Kodo have heard about anonymous blogger EA Louse. I hope it’s all a fake, especially the doomsday remarks about how bad SWTOR is going to be. Should the investment really be 300 million dollars and the game will not end up as a at least somewhat serious WoW challenger, it would be very bad for the MMO industry indeed.

The free to play model is increasingly popular, and I love it. The Wall Street Journal has recently written about this development in the gaming industry and I will add to this very good article a short list of games that are already, and have been for a while, F2P. So, if you are a translator trying to get a foot into the wonderful world of MMO localization, try them out – for free.

• Allods Online. “The free WoW”.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online. F2P since September 2009.
• RuneScape. A browser game. Old school and still rocking the F2P world.
• Silkroad Online. Set in the 7th century in China and Europe. A lot of grinding, but worth it.
• Free Realms. Very cute game for a younger target audience.

Now they made a mistake . They translated “leader” with “Führer.” Yep, the word you English natives pronounce like furor.

I have been in this situation many times and always chose the word “Anführer” (synonym), Blizzard’s team corrected their mistake and replaced it with “Leiter” (synonym).

A mistake it was. In German, we try and avoid the stand-alone version of the word (“Reiseführer” (guide) is just fine). Since there are so many synonyms, really not a problem.

It’s not a big thing. It was corrected. Let’s move on. Lest we forget.

Links to discussions about this in the German WoW forums here and here.

I want to localize your new MMO “Lego Universe” into German. Real bad. I would do it for free. Hell, I’d pay you money for it. Most probably.

While awaiting your response, I shall be watching the trailer below over and over again.

Kind regards,

Patrick

P.S.: I would not use words such as “hell” in my translation. Promise.

Immersion has been a buzzword of the gaming industry for a long time. Yet, long before developers, designers and translators discussed the importance of making the gamer forget that he or she is sitting in front of a screen, roleplayers wanted exactly that – to be the character and close the forth wall tightly around themselves.

The active roleplayer accounts for only a small fraction of the MMO player base. Market leader World of Warcraft designates only 10% of its US servers ‘RP’ and not every player on these realms actually roleplays. Why should we translators cater to such a small group of players which is so difficult to satisfy?

Even though roleplayers appear as a tight-knit group, their effect on the rest of the community should not be underestimated. Roleplayers create content beyond the backstories of their characters and beyond the borders and control of the game. Fanfic, comics, machinima, fanart: roleplayers are creative and know how to express themselves. They constitute an authority in the community. They are disseminators. They are the highest common denominator and with that, exactly who we should aim for when localizing a video game. If we, as localizers, pass the test of the roleplayers, we have successfully transported a game from one language into another.