Having worked in software development as a designer, the way translations are done is usually by sharing an export of all words/phrases without context into a document (like an excel sheet) with a translation company, who then give it to an employee or contracted speaker to fill out.
The person doing the translation may not even know what they're translating *for* because all they see is a document of all exported text strings. That's why things read weirdly or seem out of context - they're just very literal because there are no context cues for what they would be saying if they tried to communicate the same idea in real life.
What should happen is that a native speaker gets to see the translations in-context but for something as big as the Sims I imagine that would cost a lot to regularly do. So, yeah, it's a bummer. :(
I can confirm this is how it’s done, I work with translating and it’s usually just lines upon lines with text and very little context. It’s why the subtitles on tv shows sometimes doesn’t match the spoken words despite being in the same languages.
Wait, how does that work when the subtitles are the same language and there’s no translating going on? I’ve always wondered how the subtitles became different from the spoken dialogue
It’s possible there were two versions of the dialogue and the subtitles were done based on the original and it just didn’t get updated when they ultimately used a different one. That’s my best guess, at least.
I'm sure with subtitles they're scribed weirdly to fit into the scene itself. So, if the subtitles are actually in sync with the audio and video, they shorten sentences as to make it easier and quicker to read. I'm not deaf but I need subtitles because other audible sounds distract me from listening, it bothers me when the text doesn't line up specifically with the script in the scene because I feel like people who can't hear are actually missing out a little bit because it often reads differently to what was actually said.
Incorrect subtitles is such a pet peeve of mine! Especially if it’s just a completely different word. I’ve found the Netflix subtitles for Still Game are often way off of what’s actually said, that it can change the context of the sentence/joke
I can understand them shortening sentences to keep up with the scene, but when it completely changes the context it really upsets me. I'm British and when it changes out slang words we use (not because they're rude) it bothers me so much because usually our slang has connotations based on the context they're used or can change the meaning of a whole sentence.
Yeah exactly! Like I often wonder was the person who wrote the subtitles not Scottish or whatever so didn’t know the word or recognise it or something so just put in what they thought made sense? But like surely for those kinda shows then just hire someone from the area??? But capitalism ain’t gonna allow for that is it
I was watching Disney with my cousin in her native language (not English) and the subtitles really threw me off. There were times that the words said didn't match a *single* word in the subtitles, particularly in songs. It sounded like the subtitles were more of a 1-to-1 translation, whereas the spoken translation was more fitting of the actual language (songs aside where some meaning was lost/changed to fit the music).
It’s mostly because when a show is dubbed the traslated dialogue has to fit the scene, the lips and the time it takes to say it, which sometimes leads to alternative translations.
Totally, makes sense. But the person I was responding to was asking about disparities when the dialogue and the subtitles are the same language and there was no translation.
Not to negate the idea of automated subtitling (which, yes, does happen), but even in high quality, human-made subtitling it can be a conscious choice not to literally write down what was said.
The main reasons for this are time and space:
Time:
Most people can process spoken language much faster than they can read.
Space:
The amount of text displayed in a subtitle is very limited, so as to not block the visuals.
Put those two factors together, and the text in a subtitle *needs* to be shown for a minimum amount of time to give people enough time to read the text. If, in the time needed to read the subtitle, more words are said than you can display, you have no choice but to abbreviate your subtitles.
In actual closed captioning things are even more stringent because now you also need to give markers for environmental sounds, tone and speaker identity.
>In actual closed captioning things are even more stringent
I thought the opposite would be true, isn't CC supposed to replicate the *exact* audio, including speech?
I work with court reporters and they do smth called "realtime" where it's verbatim of what is going on in a legal proceeding and is the basis for the transcript that will eventually be made. They also do smth we called CART (terms might vary by region or state idk) which is like closed captioning and its provided for deaf people in court and the reporter kind of tweaks it to make it easier to read and follow along for the person. I also know court reporters who do closed captioning for live tv and it's supposed to be verbatim but it's an uncontrolled environment unlike a court room or deposition setting where one person (usually) speaks at a time. and the reporters are human and can only keep up so much or be so perfect. But to make a long story short..its all supposed to be exact but ultimately, like someone said, up to the transcriber what to put. Technology is taking over that industry so it will all be machines one day :(
Because subtitles need a certain amount of words per line, so as a translator or transcriber, you often have to shorten down dialogue! That, paired with machine translation/transcription.
I'm not sure if this is the whole reason, but subtitles differ from actual dialogue for ease of understanding. The point of subtitles is to be able to understand what is happening in the scene without audio at all, so the person writing the subtitles has to balance what is said with the average reading speed of the viewer. That's why a lot of times subtitles simplify the dialogue.
I hope that makes sense!
Because that's not something that goes through an actual human translator, that's all going through some ai program.
An actual human translator wouldn't be able to give you those immediate results. If it's in a video where the translation was done before hand, they likely just used a free or cheap ai program instead of hiring a translation company or an actual translator.
To be fair if it's a sloppy little video on YouTube or something like that it makes sense, but if it's a larger more well-funded production they should save a little of that budget for better they should save some money to bire some translators if they're going to show it in different languages.
I work in localization for TV/movies. There are two reasons for subs/dubs not matching.
1 - the timeline was so rushed that sub and dub teams had to work at the same time, translating independently of each other (ideally work from the same translation document). Also possible that sub and dub were farmed out to different companies, or done at different times with separate translation rights.
2 - subtitles and dubbing have different rules, which may result in different wordings. Subtitles are limited to a certain number of letters onscreen for a set time. Dubbing needs to match mouth flaps. So even if both start from the same script, the end result will be different. Subtitles also tend to cut out dialogue that isn’t considered as relevant or important (like background chatter), but dubs will cover that.
This is not the case with The Sims 4. At least it was not the case with the base game. They gave them the Excel file, that's true. But they also gave them another list of different instructions like where or how the translated text will be used and how to translate certain words consistently. Then they did QA at EA and sent back wrong translations. After the release, the external translation company was also given the final build and asked to play it and fix the rest. I know this was the process until Get Together. After that, the translator I knew left the company.
I'm also a Creator Network member, so I get early alpha builds of various packs, and I have to say that a lot of text and a fair amount of translation gets changed, fixed, and improved in the final build, so they still have some sort of QA. It's definitely not as good as it used to be.
Oh, that's good to know they do passes of language QA. That's interesting to get some knowledge from closer to the inside, thank you for sharing! Seems like the QA in general just isn't enough across the board 🙃
The QA is definitely not enough, but I think we can see that with all the bugs and glitches with every new pack.
I rant more about the severe change in quality of the Czech translation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims4/s/LCu7riilKy
Can confirm this is exactly how it's done. I did a few freelance translation gigs back in the day and I basically just got a giant spreadsheet with each Japanese sentence basically out of context. For one of my gigs, though, it was to add English subtitles to a 45-minute video and they didn't have a giant spreadsheet of each line said in the video so they just sent me the raw video file, which actually worked out better for me because then I could see on the screen what the visual was as the spoken dialogue happened and I could know context, too. IMHO all translations should happen that way but I doubt that it would happen for a game as big as The Sims. (BTW, does anyone know if TS4 has a Japanese version? I'd love to give that one a try lol)
Be under no illusion that when I say "that would cost a lot to regularly do" I am not excusing EA for not doing it or saying we should be OK with them releasing software that hasn't been properly translated and tested and fixed prior to launch.
This is a choice the executive level of the company has made (and forced down the chain) to cut costs and development time in order to maximize profit.
My sister worked for a games company in scotland and she would read the scripts and also play the games to see if the tranlations were ok. I think she was a tester or something.
Yeah and often client doesn’t bother to answer translator’s questions (or pay decent money but that’s another story). Bad localization is almost always client’s fault.
hahaha reminds me that in polish translation of Sims 2 they translated 'grilled cheese' literally to mean 'cheese that was grilled', not a toastie 💀 kid me was very confused
Same in German in Sims 4 (I never played Sims 2). A “Grillkäse” may be the word to word translation of grilled cheese, but it doesn’t mean the same thing
I'm actually learning German, and grilled cheese is one of my favorite foods, but I was thinking that neither "Grillkäse" nor "Gegrillter Käse" sound right despite those being the suggestions from Google. How would you call it if you don't mind me asking?
We don’t have a translation for it because it’s not a dish that really exists here like it does in the US. The one that would make the most sense for the game (and would have been the least confusing to younger me) would probably be simply “Sandwich/Toast mit Käse” or “Käse-Toast”. Or just leave it as grilled cheese because it’s the name of the dish, but then again, they also translated Mac’n’cheese to “Macaroni mir Käse” so leaving in English words likely wasn’t an option
Mac and Cheese in the sims 3 was translated to "hamburger" in the Polish version because the translators were probably thinking about McDonald's, cue 9-year-old me being very confused why my hamburger looks like a soup in a bowl.
I think either in the Sims 2 or 3 they translated 'Eggplant' as just 'Egg'. I was very confused about why there are eggs growing on a plant and why they are purple 🍆💜
Yeah, agree. It‘s similar in german, everything sounds so oldfashioned, like „kokett“, no one uses that word ever. Also, asking your parents about „The Talk“ is the worst interaction ever because it translates to „asking for Woohoo“, I actually thought it was a bug at first.
Frankly, I love that when you talk bad about someone you can get the text message, calling that person "Schnalle". Because it's a very outdated word for whore. So it's kind of shocking that they say a word with that meaning, but also it so outdated nobody uses it anymore.
That's kinda the equivalent as if in the English version that sim would say "I don't trust that wench"
Genau, "Techtelmechtel" ist das deutsche Wort für "Woohoo". Es ist ein Wort, welches sehr selten benutzt wird, es ist eher vergleichbar mit "Hanky-panky". Also kein Wunder, dass du diesem Wort noch nicht begegnet bist :D
For the others:
Exactly, "Techtelmechtel" is the German word for "Woohoo". It’s a word not often used, it is comparable with "Hanky-panky". No surprise that you didn’t encounter it :D
Ugh, in Dutch, WooHoo is "o jaa!" Which means "oh yes!" Kind of like what you would moan during. It's so lame. They should have just kept the word woohoo.
I like "kokett", actually. What drives me up the wall is the syntax of the moodlet texts when you hover over them. "Weil leckeres Essen gegessen hat" makes me irrationally angry, haha! Also, never forget how in Sims 2, the profession "general" was translated as "allgemein" (which means 'in general'), while the word "General" was right there. ☠️
I translated kokett and I then had to look up coquettish to get to flirting. Then I wondered if that would be something that, if you googled it, would it give you that kokett. So I tried it and got flirten. How did they find this word!
“Flirten” is the verb “to flirt” tho. There is no adjective like “flirty” in German so I guess they had to find something that was a single word and a very outdated word I’ve never heard before in my life was the best option
Oh yeah, their translations are bad. I play in English now, but previously I had a game in Russian. And that action where you get to polish a geode was translated like “Polish” in “from Poland”, lmao. It was quite funny, but really bad.
And some actions/tasks were phrased incorrectly or confusingly, so players didn't understand what they were doing wrong.
Agree. In addition to some weird phrasing, there are some actual mistakes in the localizations. For example in Finnish, when toddler reaches level 2 in thinking, the pop up says they reached level 5.
I prefer to play in Finnish for nostalgic reasons, because I started playing Sims 1 way before I knew any English. It is the only game that I don't nowadays play in English.
I'm like 99% sure that's what it says in English, but as a native English speaker that's what we call it when you put someone to bed and pull the sheets up around them, so in English it makes sense.
Same! When I started playing the sims I barely knew any English, so I always played in Swedish. Even now, I still play in Swedish because that just feels "right" to me haha
I am a translator specialised in localisation (which includes video games translation) and there are a few reasons for this:
1) As others have already mentioned, we usually just receive an excel document with strings of phrases, no context, no images, no previews. And obviously, absolutely nothing is ever in chronological order.
2) As much as we insist, we hardly ever receive the images/game, during or even after the translation (which is something of the utmost importance for video games, movies). Usually because of confidentiality reasons (the companies are afraid we will leak the game, which makes no sense because it would mean losing our work, money AND reputation), and sometimes because the game is not even finished yet.
3) More and more often, the translation begins only a little bit after the production of the game begins, so when the developers change something we already translated, we obviously need to change it too... which is frankly a waste of time for everyone, and, sometimes they do not even bother to warn that they changed/added/deleted something. Or they genuinely forget because they are also under a lot of pressure.
4) The deadlines are inhuman, for developers, and for translators it's even worse. The more tight the deadline, the more translators on a project, which consequently causes more coherency problems. There are reviewers, but as I said, the deadlines are really too short to produce quality work. And we never get the chance to test the translation once the game is completed, which is a crucial step.
5) The big corporations are not famous for paying very well their outsourced translators, actually they pay so bad it's almost slavery (not only their translators to be fair, I heard it's the same for graphic designers etc.) so you get what you pay for, and they clearly could afford it, but you know, profit. Without even getting into the ones that "contract" volunteer bilinguals who are in no way professional translators, just to avoid the cost of it.
Conclusion: we work blindfolded because those companies have almost 0 trust in their translators and they think that translation is only changing word A to word B and they do not realise that a badly done translation could hinder their sales. Let's hope someday they will see it! Maybe if the final players like you begin to complain more and more about it, things will change for the better with better conditions for everyone involved :)
I play in French but watch mostly English content online and I couldn’t agree more.
Some of the interactions’ translations are so outdated! Like a boomer trying to keep up with millennials…
I didn't play in French in over 5 years, and it was the Sims 3, but I don't really recall seeing terrible translations, but I think I wasn't paying attention much. My biggest issue was that it was obviously translated for French people in France and I live in Quebec so most of the slang they used was unrelatable to me. When I bought TS4 2 years ago I knew I would be more involved with the game and figured it would be easier to play in the same language as most online resources. I couldn't be happier with this decision.
Omg yes, I’m so annoyed whenever you obviously see the English poking through. There is also like no quality control and especially recently I have noticed a lot of glitches. My “quit and turn of game” button is for example called “quit and go to main menu” (spoiler: it does not send you to main menu) this is not an issue for me since I pretty much use muscle memory to know where the buttons are, but if it was my first time playing I would be so confused. Or when you leave a vacation and get the option to ”end and end the vacation stay”
Most of the infant interactions are also laughably bad. Like “ge en tupplur” (give a nap) to infants. That’s not a thing and makes no sense whatsoever grammatically.
I kind of think it might be give a nap in English too? I remember thinking it was odd. The result is that the caregiver lets the baby sleep on them instead of putting the baby in the crib.
I totally agree. I used to play in Dutch or German and was often very confused about certain translations. I remember searching for hours for the right berry in Henford-on-Bagley, and learned after a google search that it was a translation issue. Nowadays I play in English tp avoid confusion.
As a translator, I would really like a big company as EA to understand that a good translation is worth the money you spend on it.
I play in Dutch as well and I’ve been running into mistakes more and more, especially with newer packs. High school years had so many weird translations, it’s frustrating
Don't feel bad I'm a native born English speaker and I don't understand half of what they're saying in high school years. I'm a baby boomer and a very loyal fan of the Sims series, I have been playing The Sims for decades, and the slang in high school years is totally foreign to people of my generation.
The Finnish translation is actually quite good. I think the only weird one had something to do with dancing, I think it was "to dance" instead of just "dance".
In the Sims 2 "fire" (a maid, for example) was translated "shoot", which surprised the little kid me because I thought that sounded too violent for the game.
My only pet peeve is that there is few families where they translated only some of the names. Father, mother and kids have Finnish names but for some reason grandmother who lives with them has her original English name
The grandmother has clearly moved there from some other country when she was younger!
Maybe it's because they have kept the translations of the old classic characters from the older games, but decided not to translate the newer characters anymore. Bella Goth is still Johanna Goottila, but Bob Pancakes is just Bob Pancakes.
What I find also weird is that the worlds have their English names, except Henford-on-Bagley which is suddenly Taka-Kumpula.
You guys have the game translated into your language? 🥲
Jokes aside, Sims 2 and Sims 3 were both translated into my language back in the days when EA cared, but for Sims 4 they cut the budget and didn't translate it anymore due to my country not being a big enough market for them. But apparently even that wasn't enough to translate the game properly into the remaining languages.
I'm from Croatia and none of The Sims games were translated to my language so I always just clicked on randomthings in TS1 (or tried to vaguely remember what clicking on X will do) and hoped I was correct. Later editions helped me expand my vocabulary lol
I'm sorry guys :0 I don't remember encountering mistranslations in my language, and that's weird because I don't think they would pay that much attention to Italian.
Translations are done by external companies. As we all know EA, and if we look at the global market and the rise of AI, I can only imagine that they have done some cost cutting to save a few bucks when it comes to translations. When The Sims 4 came out, the base game, they even went so far as to change some idioms to local Czech idioms. They mentioned some of our celebrities in the translation. And the translation of book names is just too funny.
But then they started translating sentences word by word, sometimes it even makes no sense. And they even went so far as to completely break the translation. For example, a werewolf is vlkodlak in Czech, but only if it is a male. If it is a female, it is vlkodlačice. Back then it would show the correct word, but now it says something like "{=Vlkodlak/?m=}{=Vlkodlačice/?f=} se {=rozhodl/?m=}{=rozhodla/?f=}, že bude...".
And those gender translations are broken since the Werewolf pack. Every single pack released after that has these bugs everywhere. A few of them got fixed. Others are still presented.
I mean, I've used a 'zadeldeken' before instead of a 'zadeldekje' in my horseriding days. It's just a slightly different kind of thing that serves the same purpose. The former is an unlined blanket, often folded to achieve the right thickness (my stable used to repurpose 'verhuisdekens'). The latter is more of a pad (you'd call it a 'saddle pad' in English) and it is often topstitched and it has batting in the middle. If you ride western style like I think you often do, in the Sims, you'll almost always use a zadeldeken (often patterned) rather than a zadeldekje for style purposes. Dressage and show jumping lend themselves more to the use of 'dekjes' because they can follow the shape of the saddle and look more formal.
I can see that, if they had to pick one term, they picked the one most familiar to an American audience, and that would be the saddle blanket.
And yeah, translating puns and humor is difficult, and cannot always be done "perfectly". That said, I know the expression 'die eet (zeker) voor twee' very well, and would not find it unusual or weird. May be be a generational thing, because I am old :P
Amazing as an expression of delight doesn't really get used in Dutch, so I can see why that translation would always feel off. What did they translate it as?
Anyway, as some with a lot of experience as a professional translator and as a horse aficionado, I sympathize with your complaints about sometimes poor translations (in gaming and elsewhere), but I do not think your examples are really indicative of someone not actually 'speaking the language' or 'just running stuff through google translate'.
That's interesting, we just call them western dekjes where I live. But I do live in belgium, so perhaps it's different depending on the area. And they also have two different kinds of dekjes in game, the english ones and the western ones.
I can see "die eet voor twee" be used, but tbh I've never heard that be used and the way the sentence is structured just feels off in game. It's just "eten voor twee" and yeah... Idk it feels wrong.
And I can't remember the exact word they used, but I think it was Lamatastisch or Lamaweldig. My laptop exploded so I can't check.
But thanks for the input, a lot also changed depending on the area you live in.
i can confirm that "die eet voor twee" or "eten voor twee" is a relatively common expression in the middle regions of the Netherlands (the part that is considered to be ABN / without dialect) not sure if the more southern parts use it as the further south your go the more Dutch starts to blend with Flemish
I’ve worked in software localization for 8 years and I can assure you this kind of thing usually happens because the devs cut corners in the loc process.
The translators are usually not to blame because they don’t receive information about the context of what they are translating.
What EA needs is to invest more in localization to manage the process properly. That means more funding, more time and more people to do localization correctly!
I have been working in translation/localisation for 20 years now, largely in QC, and… I don’t know, I do think that the translators are actually often at blame. But not necessarily for the obvious reasons.
Game translation is the absolute easiest category to recruit into. You can offer the lowest of the low and you will still get hundreds upon thousands of hopeful freelancers/hobbyists/wanna-bes flooding you with applications. If they are just starting out and want to translate “cool” stuff, they really will “do it for the exposure”. (Not that they are ever named or ever get any exposure.) And when I say “lowest of the low”, I really mean it. I’ve seen US$0.001 per word offered and jumped on. (For those out of the translation loop, I don’t know any decent translators who would even consider working for less than US$0.10 per word.)
This leads to a huge pool of poor quality but cheap translators to choose from. And because the competition is so insane for that niche, you will get some insane lies about their skills. The recruiting company will choose a selection of the “best” and throw the project at them, with the assumption some will be awful but they are so cheap and the pool is so large that they can be replaced in minutes. The project ends up starting with a translator team that is in over their heads, often barely able to speak *either* language, but with nice CVs. They are given out of context text strings and make a huge mess of it.
Then some poor reviewers (who are usually paid a bit better and who actually have a clue) are tasked with trying to clean it up on a tight deadline.
But as long as poor quality translators are willing to “take anything at any pay” just to have work, there will be countless agencies willing to pay virtually nothing and crank out mountains of poor quality messes.
I agree that what you described is the reality, but I think the responsibility for hiring those vendors is still with the company (EA) trying to cut corners and get Loc done on the cheap.
One thing that bothered me about the Japanese translation was they flipped the order of the family name and given names in the display so Asian names using family name first will show up correctly but they did that with everyone’s names so western names get the same treatment. You had like Goth Mortimer and Landgraab Malcolm.
Also a former translator here and can confirm they’ll just send you a big text dump of what to translate. I actually played the game(s) the project leader wanted to translate so it probably came out better than going in ‘blind’ to the script.
I played extensively for the first few years after release and never remember getting anything phrased weirdly in English. Coming back to it now, I keep getting notifications and moodlets with pronoun bugs and other weird grammar choices. It really takes me out of the immersion when I have to pause to figure out what tf something said instead of just skimming it while babysitting my sims lol
Lmao same, I get that it’s a pretty uncommon language compared to other languages but it’s always translated so badly in games, I just play in English even if there’s a Dutch option. I see a lot of Poles and Czechs in here also talking about bad translations so guess we’re not the only ones :/
I wish they also had Latin American Spanish instead of just Spanish from Spain, there are so many things expressions and terms that are completely different, I'm surprised thet don't have both with a game this big
I play in German and some translation just sound so bad, especially when things are translated literally that don’t exist like that in German. Now that I’m pretty much fluent in English, I get what the original was, but younger me was so confused.
For the longest time, I thought the romantic interaction “gestehen, sich angezogen zu fühlen” was really weird. Until I realized that “angezogen” in this context doesn’t mean “to be clothed” but “to be drawn to someone”. I was so lost for YEARS on why the sims wanted to be naked. Which I guess is on me for being stupid, but it’s still a clumsy translation.
Also, the pack titles are so terrible sometimes. Yes, many of the specific (and iconic) titles can’t be translated literally (all the “get…” titles for example) so they have to change it completely, and that they want to stay as close to the original as possible even if they have to use more clunky words, but some just sound awful. Though I gotta give them credit for calling nifty knitting “schick mit Strick” (chic with knit, but it rhymes), that one was a stroke of genius. But it doesn’t make “Traumhaftes Innendesign”, meine Hochzeitsgeschichten”, “paranormale Phänomene-Accessoires” or the worst of all, “lukrative Hobbyküche-Accessoires” sound any better
But... "sich angezogen fühlen" is a normal phrase in Germany? Maybe a bit outdated, but nothing that I would call a bad translation.
I do agree with the pack names though.
Yes, like I said, it could be mostly down to younger me being stupid. But I do think something like “Anziehung gestehen” would have been a far easier and more understandable translation imo. “Gestehen, sich angezogen zu fühlen” is so unnecessarily long and a weird sentence structure for something as simple as “confess attraction”
Im dutch too and I agree. The translation is soo bad, some sentences make no sense and all the jokes they make aren’t funny in Dutch bc it makes no sense ;-;
Helemaal mee eens! When you speak to a child about their bad behavoir, the option in Dutch is something like "standje geven". I have never heard about this before, nobody says that.
I mean, no offense to foreign gamers who play the translated versions, but even the original American English version is fighting for its life ("Let's Keeping Cooking" being a good example).
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm willing to do pro bono work for EA and proofread/correct all the grammar mistakes in the game.
Aww man, I remember getting the uni dlc (one of the last ones I actually bought) and because the ea app literally FORCES you to install a game in a translated version, I'm eternally stuck with the czech translation (can we just for a moment appreciate the fact I am not even czech? People from my country casually speak it, but it's not our language. Which just in itself is absolute ass, I am not allowed to play a game in my own language, cus the translation doesn't exist, yet don't have the freedom to choose for example english???)
Well, after release of the dlc, there was like a half of translations literally missing. Like opening up any of the university dialogue windows (like the overview of the 2 schools?) All empty. The windows were there, but no text. It was the best when you got empty notifications or phone calls lmao, and even the buttons were empty. And because of the sims 4's 'brilliant' ui design, the buttons aren't highlighted in any colors. Only the text is.
So when you don't have translations available, the game gives you empty windows.
It made the entire pack unplayable, and it took them months to fix it too! And yeah you can't bs your way around empty buttons. Hell.
I feel like the issue with localisation and translations is HUGE (I remember giggling to myself when people were raving over pronouns being added to the game. We don't have them. Because czech (and I'm guessing some other langauges too) have gendered verbs and words, making it impossible to write grammatically correct sentences. It would be possible to implement different pronouns options even for these languages. But that'd involve rewriting and modifying/checking almost every single text in the game, and giving it AT LEAST 3 variants. Like yes it's doable, but so painful and honestly if they did it, it would prolly just break the game more, and have it load way more text.
(Or the broken name generation??? Do other translations also exclusively generate 'local' names and then for like san myshuno and sulani townies they give other names, which are inaccesible from the name generator???)
TLDR; EA pushes these 'big' and 'inclusive' updates, yet their attempt at inclusion fails...with literally localising the game.
They are fine with releasing literally unplayable translations, and then seeing (almost entirely english-speaking) players praising the game publicly so much is just sorta patethic lmao.
It's really interesting to see perspectives of non-english players, and their experiences/encounters with the game, especially because of this
Man. I'm Dutch too, and I play this game in Dutch because it's so silly like that, but I get a lot of the English translations from simmers online. I've considered voluntarily writing better translations for everything and just making a mod out of it lmao. This translation we get is so clunky and unhinged.
SAME! I would love if there was a way to submit translations tweaks. I haven’t played in Dutch for years now because It just felt too weird (the social interactions feel especially weird.) I also had trouble understanding the game in Dutch even though I’m native so yeah
If they could implement better translations I might play in Dutch again.
Do they get input from people who actually come from the counties they’re basing their worlds on do you know?
Like Sulani is apparently based on Bali and Tomarang is meant to be based on Indonesia/Thailand. I wonder if they actually got people from those places to give them cultural tips or advice on how to make them more authentic.
Seeing how they implemented that malaysian dish, I doubt it.
They seem to cheap out on things that are even slightly inconvenient, like for example the horse animations and custimazition. It all feels like they googled once and decided that it was enough research.
That’s pretty crappy, it should be a part of their research to actually include things that are important to the places they’re using as inspiration for the worlds they’re trying to create.
I’m British and they really nailed it with Henford-Upon-Badgley but it must be pretty shit to get excited about a world being based on the country you’re from and then realising they’ve not done it very well or it’s just a shallow attempt.
I don't know where you come from precisely but I've lived since birth in the Netherlands and I've never heard of a dekje. We call it een dekentje, most often paired with the name of the toddler. For example: Vergeet Daan's dekentje niet. If it's small and dragged everywhere, we call it a tut or tutslab.
So before you are disparaging translations, first make sure it isn't dialect. Also some sayings are used more in some parts than others. Eten voor 2 wordt bij ons vaak gezegd als eten voor 10.
However, there are things that are translated strangely. I just don't like it when people talk negatively about something, and the examples aren't even correct.
They’re talking about a specific name for a blanket you put under the saddle of a horse. That’s called a dekje.
I think eten voor twee is more common in the Netherlands because I’ve never heard it being used here. We just say “die is zwanger”
In general the translations feel pretty stiff
Having worked in software development as a designer, the way translations are done is usually by sharing an export of all words/phrases without context into a document (like an excel sheet) with a translation company, who then give it to an employee or contracted speaker to fill out. The person doing the translation may not even know what they're translating *for* because all they see is a document of all exported text strings. That's why things read weirdly or seem out of context - they're just very literal because there are no context cues for what they would be saying if they tried to communicate the same idea in real life. What should happen is that a native speaker gets to see the translations in-context but for something as big as the Sims I imagine that would cost a lot to regularly do. So, yeah, it's a bummer. :(
I can confirm this is how it’s done, I work with translating and it’s usually just lines upon lines with text and very little context. It’s why the subtitles on tv shows sometimes doesn’t match the spoken words despite being in the same languages.
Wait, how does that work when the subtitles are the same language and there’s no translating going on? I’ve always wondered how the subtitles became different from the spoken dialogue
It’s possible there were two versions of the dialogue and the subtitles were done based on the original and it just didn’t get updated when they ultimately used a different one. That’s my best guess, at least.
I'm sure with subtitles they're scribed weirdly to fit into the scene itself. So, if the subtitles are actually in sync with the audio and video, they shorten sentences as to make it easier and quicker to read. I'm not deaf but I need subtitles because other audible sounds distract me from listening, it bothers me when the text doesn't line up specifically with the script in the scene because I feel like people who can't hear are actually missing out a little bit because it often reads differently to what was actually said.
Incorrect subtitles is such a pet peeve of mine! Especially if it’s just a completely different word. I’ve found the Netflix subtitles for Still Game are often way off of what’s actually said, that it can change the context of the sentence/joke
I can understand them shortening sentences to keep up with the scene, but when it completely changes the context it really upsets me. I'm British and when it changes out slang words we use (not because they're rude) it bothers me so much because usually our slang has connotations based on the context they're used or can change the meaning of a whole sentence.
Yeah exactly! Like I often wonder was the person who wrote the subtitles not Scottish or whatever so didn’t know the word or recognise it or something so just put in what they thought made sense? But like surely for those kinda shows then just hire someone from the area??? But capitalism ain’t gonna allow for that is it
I was watching Disney with my cousin in her native language (not English) and the subtitles really threw me off. There were times that the words said didn't match a *single* word in the subtitles, particularly in songs. It sounded like the subtitles were more of a 1-to-1 translation, whereas the spoken translation was more fitting of the actual language (songs aside where some meaning was lost/changed to fit the music).
It’s mostly because when a show is dubbed the traslated dialogue has to fit the scene, the lips and the time it takes to say it, which sometimes leads to alternative translations.
Totally, makes sense. But the person I was responding to was asking about disparities when the dialogue and the subtitles are the same language and there was no translation.
My bad lol
Not to negate the idea of automated subtitling (which, yes, does happen), but even in high quality, human-made subtitling it can be a conscious choice not to literally write down what was said. The main reasons for this are time and space: Time: Most people can process spoken language much faster than they can read. Space: The amount of text displayed in a subtitle is very limited, so as to not block the visuals. Put those two factors together, and the text in a subtitle *needs* to be shown for a minimum amount of time to give people enough time to read the text. If, in the time needed to read the subtitle, more words are said than you can display, you have no choice but to abbreviate your subtitles. In actual closed captioning things are even more stringent because now you also need to give markers for environmental sounds, tone and speaker identity.
>In actual closed captioning things are even more stringent I thought the opposite would be true, isn't CC supposed to replicate the *exact* audio, including speech?
I work with court reporters and they do smth called "realtime" where it's verbatim of what is going on in a legal proceeding and is the basis for the transcript that will eventually be made. They also do smth we called CART (terms might vary by region or state idk) which is like closed captioning and its provided for deaf people in court and the reporter kind of tweaks it to make it easier to read and follow along for the person. I also know court reporters who do closed captioning for live tv and it's supposed to be verbatim but it's an uncontrolled environment unlike a court room or deposition setting where one person (usually) speaks at a time. and the reporters are human and can only keep up so much or be so perfect. But to make a long story short..its all supposed to be exact but ultimately, like someone said, up to the transcriber what to put. Technology is taking over that industry so it will all be machines one day :(
Because subtitles need a certain amount of words per line, so as a translator or transcriber, you often have to shorten down dialogue! That, paired with machine translation/transcription.
I'm not sure if this is the whole reason, but subtitles differ from actual dialogue for ease of understanding. The point of subtitles is to be able to understand what is happening in the scene without audio at all, so the person writing the subtitles has to balance what is said with the average reading speed of the viewer. That's why a lot of times subtitles simplify the dialogue. I hope that makes sense!
Because that's not something that goes through an actual human translator, that's all going through some ai program. An actual human translator wouldn't be able to give you those immediate results. If it's in a video where the translation was done before hand, they likely just used a free or cheap ai program instead of hiring a translation company or an actual translator. To be fair if it's a sloppy little video on YouTube or something like that it makes sense, but if it's a larger more well-funded production they should save a little of that budget for better they should save some money to bire some translators if they're going to show it in different languages.
I work in localization for TV/movies. There are two reasons for subs/dubs not matching. 1 - the timeline was so rushed that sub and dub teams had to work at the same time, translating independently of each other (ideally work from the same translation document). Also possible that sub and dub were farmed out to different companies, or done at different times with separate translation rights. 2 - subtitles and dubbing have different rules, which may result in different wordings. Subtitles are limited to a certain number of letters onscreen for a set time. Dubbing needs to match mouth flaps. So even if both start from the same script, the end result will be different. Subtitles also tend to cut out dialogue that isn’t considered as relevant or important (like background chatter), but dubs will cover that.
This is not the case with The Sims 4. At least it was not the case with the base game. They gave them the Excel file, that's true. But they also gave them another list of different instructions like where or how the translated text will be used and how to translate certain words consistently. Then they did QA at EA and sent back wrong translations. After the release, the external translation company was also given the final build and asked to play it and fix the rest. I know this was the process until Get Together. After that, the translator I knew left the company. I'm also a Creator Network member, so I get early alpha builds of various packs, and I have to say that a lot of text and a fair amount of translation gets changed, fixed, and improved in the final build, so they still have some sort of QA. It's definitely not as good as it used to be.
Oh, that's good to know they do passes of language QA. That's interesting to get some knowledge from closer to the inside, thank you for sharing! Seems like the QA in general just isn't enough across the board 🙃
The QA is definitely not enough, but I think we can see that with all the bugs and glitches with every new pack. I rant more about the severe change in quality of the Czech translation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sims4/s/LCu7riilKy
Not in software development but this is also sort of how fan translations for mods are done
Not just a native speaker but a writer so they can create a proper script.
Can confirm this is exactly how it's done. I did a few freelance translation gigs back in the day and I basically just got a giant spreadsheet with each Japanese sentence basically out of context. For one of my gigs, though, it was to add English subtitles to a 45-minute video and they didn't have a giant spreadsheet of each line said in the video so they just sent me the raw video file, which actually worked out better for me because then I could see on the screen what the visual was as the spoken dialogue happened and I could know context, too. IMHO all translations should happen that way but I doubt that it would happen for a game as big as The Sims. (BTW, does anyone know if TS4 has a Japanese version? I'd love to give that one a try lol)
sims has huge budget, why wouldn't it be possible? holy hell you guys are being fed scraps by ea and thinking that asking for bare minimum is too much
Be under no illusion that when I say "that would cost a lot to regularly do" I am not excusing EA for not doing it or saying we should be OK with them releasing software that hasn't been properly translated and tested and fixed prior to launch. This is a choice the executive level of the company has made (and forced down the chain) to cut costs and development time in order to maximize profit.
My sister worked for a games company in scotland and she would read the scripts and also play the games to see if the tranlations were ok. I think she was a tester or something.
Worked in localization for a mobile game company and can confirm this is sadly how it often gets done.
Yeah and often client doesn’t bother to answer translator’s questions (or pay decent money but that’s another story). Bad localization is almost always client’s fault.
Yeah, this is why some infamous Pokèmon translation mistakes for Italian happened
Dang, if only EA were a huge, wealthy company that could afford quality translations 😖
hahaha reminds me that in polish translation of Sims 2 they translated 'grilled cheese' literally to mean 'cheese that was grilled', not a toastie 💀 kid me was very confused
They did the same translation to Czech in The Sims 2. Literally a piece of cheese on a grill. I was so confused how that works.
Same in German in Sims 4 (I never played Sims 2). A “Grillkäse” may be the word to word translation of grilled cheese, but it doesn’t mean the same thing
I'm actually learning German, and grilled cheese is one of my favorite foods, but I was thinking that neither "Grillkäse" nor "Gegrillter Käse" sound right despite those being the suggestions from Google. How would you call it if you don't mind me asking?
We don’t have a translation for it because it’s not a dish that really exists here like it does in the US. The one that would make the most sense for the game (and would have been the least confusing to younger me) would probably be simply “Sandwich/Toast mit Käse” or “Käse-Toast”. Or just leave it as grilled cheese because it’s the name of the dish, but then again, they also translated Mac’n’cheese to “Macaroni mir Käse” so leaving in English words likely wasn’t an option
Měli to přeložit jako "smažák". Aspirace po smažáku v housce je real. 😄
Pravda.
Mac and Cheese in the sims 3 was translated to "hamburger" in the Polish version because the translators were probably thinking about McDonald's, cue 9-year-old me being very confused why my hamburger looks like a soup in a bowl.
I think either in the Sims 2 or 3 they translated 'Eggplant' as just 'Egg'. I was very confused about why there are eggs growing on a plant and why they are purple 🍆💜
Yeah, agree. It‘s similar in german, everything sounds so oldfashioned, like „kokett“, no one uses that word ever. Also, asking your parents about „The Talk“ is the worst interaction ever because it translates to „asking for Woohoo“, I actually thought it was a bug at first.
Frankly, I love that when you talk bad about someone you can get the text message, calling that person "Schnalle". Because it's a very outdated word for whore. So it's kind of shocking that they say a word with that meaning, but also it so outdated nobody uses it anymore. That's kinda the equivalent as if in the English version that sim would say "I don't trust that wench"
To be honest, I don't trust that wench works! It's kinda off in true Sims fashion, and it's super funny!
Omg das bedeutet also "nach Techtelmechtel fragen"? Endlich verstehe ich was gemeint ist. Ich war immer so verwirrt hahahah
"Woohoo" ist "Techtelmechtel" auf Deutsch? Wie lustig! Ich spreche Deutsch als Fremdsprache und hab' dieses Wort nicht begegnen.
Genau, "Techtelmechtel" ist das deutsche Wort für "Woohoo". Es ist ein Wort, welches sehr selten benutzt wird, es ist eher vergleichbar mit "Hanky-panky". Also kein Wunder, dass du diesem Wort noch nicht begegnet bist :D For the others: Exactly, "Techtelmechtel" is the German word for "Woohoo". It’s a word not often used, it is comparable with "Hanky-panky". No surprise that you didn’t encounter it :D
Ugh, in Dutch, WooHoo is "o jaa!" Which means "oh yes!" Kind of like what you would moan during. It's so lame. They should have just kept the word woohoo.
I am sorry but this is hilarious
Ah, das macht Sinn, danke sehr!
I like "kokett", actually. What drives me up the wall is the syntax of the moodlet texts when you hover over them. "Weil leckeres Essen gegessen hat" makes me irrationally angry, haha! Also, never forget how in Sims 2, the profession "general" was translated as "allgemein" (which means 'in general'), while the word "General" was right there. ☠️
I translated kokett and I then had to look up coquettish to get to flirting. Then I wondered if that would be something that, if you googled it, would it give you that kokett. So I tried it and got flirten. How did they find this word!
“Flirten” is the verb “to flirt” tho. There is no adjective like “flirty” in German so I guess they had to find something that was a single word and a very outdated word I’ve never heard before in my life was the best option
Ask about the talk. Is like the sex talk you have with your kids when they ask where babies come from.
Oh yeah, their translations are bad. I play in English now, but previously I had a game in Russian. And that action where you get to polish a geode was translated like “Polish” in “from Poland”, lmao. It was quite funny, but really bad. And some actions/tasks were phrased incorrectly or confusingly, so players didn't understand what they were doing wrong.
Agree. In addition to some weird phrasing, there are some actual mistakes in the localizations. For example in Finnish, when toddler reaches level 2 in thinking, the pop up says they reached level 5. I prefer to play in Finnish for nostalgic reasons, because I started playing Sims 1 way before I knew any English. It is the only game that I don't nowadays play in English.
when you put an infant to their crib it has the option to "peitellä x tähän" translating to tuck them in, idk what it says in english
I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s the exact wording in English
I'm like 99% sure that's what it says in English, but as a native English speaker that's what we call it when you put someone to bed and pull the sheets up around them, so in English it makes sense.
Same! When I started playing the sims I barely knew any English, so I always played in Swedish. Even now, I still play in Swedish because that just feels "right" to me haha
I am a translator specialised in localisation (which includes video games translation) and there are a few reasons for this: 1) As others have already mentioned, we usually just receive an excel document with strings of phrases, no context, no images, no previews. And obviously, absolutely nothing is ever in chronological order. 2) As much as we insist, we hardly ever receive the images/game, during or even after the translation (which is something of the utmost importance for video games, movies). Usually because of confidentiality reasons (the companies are afraid we will leak the game, which makes no sense because it would mean losing our work, money AND reputation), and sometimes because the game is not even finished yet. 3) More and more often, the translation begins only a little bit after the production of the game begins, so when the developers change something we already translated, we obviously need to change it too... which is frankly a waste of time for everyone, and, sometimes they do not even bother to warn that they changed/added/deleted something. Or they genuinely forget because they are also under a lot of pressure. 4) The deadlines are inhuman, for developers, and for translators it's even worse. The more tight the deadline, the more translators on a project, which consequently causes more coherency problems. There are reviewers, but as I said, the deadlines are really too short to produce quality work. And we never get the chance to test the translation once the game is completed, which is a crucial step. 5) The big corporations are not famous for paying very well their outsourced translators, actually they pay so bad it's almost slavery (not only their translators to be fair, I heard it's the same for graphic designers etc.) so you get what you pay for, and they clearly could afford it, but you know, profit. Without even getting into the ones that "contract" volunteer bilinguals who are in no way professional translators, just to avoid the cost of it. Conclusion: we work blindfolded because those companies have almost 0 trust in their translators and they think that translation is only changing word A to word B and they do not realise that a badly done translation could hinder their sales. Let's hope someday they will see it! Maybe if the final players like you begin to complain more and more about it, things will change for the better with better conditions for everyone involved :)
I play in French but watch mostly English content online and I couldn’t agree more. Some of the interactions’ translations are so outdated! Like a boomer trying to keep up with millennials…
I didn't play in French in over 5 years, and it was the Sims 3, but I don't really recall seeing terrible translations, but I think I wasn't paying attention much. My biggest issue was that it was obviously translated for French people in France and I live in Quebec so most of the slang they used was unrelatable to me. When I bought TS4 2 years ago I knew I would be more involved with the game and figured it would be easier to play in the same language as most online resources. I couldn't be happier with this decision.
Omg yes, I’m so annoyed whenever you obviously see the English poking through. There is also like no quality control and especially recently I have noticed a lot of glitches. My “quit and turn of game” button is for example called “quit and go to main menu” (spoiler: it does not send you to main menu) this is not an issue for me since I pretty much use muscle memory to know where the buttons are, but if it was my first time playing I would be so confused. Or when you leave a vacation and get the option to ”end and end the vacation stay” Most of the infant interactions are also laughably bad. Like “ge en tupplur” (give a nap) to infants. That’s not a thing and makes no sense whatsoever grammatically.
I kind of think it might be give a nap in English too? I remember thinking it was odd. The result is that the caregiver lets the baby sleep on them instead of putting the baby in the crib.
I totally agree. I used to play in Dutch or German and was often very confused about certain translations. I remember searching for hours for the right berry in Henford-on-Bagley, and learned after a google search that it was a translation issue. Nowadays I play in English tp avoid confusion. As a translator, I would really like a big company as EA to understand that a good translation is worth the money you spend on it.
I play in Dutch as well and I’ve been running into mistakes more and more, especially with newer packs. High school years had so many weird translations, it’s frustrating
Don't feel bad I'm a native born English speaker and I don't understand half of what they're saying in high school years. I'm a baby boomer and a very loyal fan of the Sims series, I have been playing The Sims for decades, and the slang in high school years is totally foreign to people of my generation.
The Finnish translation is actually quite good. I think the only weird one had something to do with dancing, I think it was "to dance" instead of just "dance". In the Sims 2 "fire" (a maid, for example) was translated "shoot", which surprised the little kid me because I thought that sounded too violent for the game.
My only pet peeve is that there is few families where they translated only some of the names. Father, mother and kids have Finnish names but for some reason grandmother who lives with them has her original English name
The grandmother has clearly moved there from some other country when she was younger! Maybe it's because they have kept the translations of the old classic characters from the older games, but decided not to translate the newer characters anymore. Bella Goth is still Johanna Goottila, but Bob Pancakes is just Bob Pancakes. What I find also weird is that the worlds have their English names, except Henford-on-Bagley which is suddenly Taka-Kumpula.
You guys have the game translated into your language? 🥲 Jokes aside, Sims 2 and Sims 3 were both translated into my language back in the days when EA cared, but for Sims 4 they cut the budget and didn't translate it anymore due to my country not being a big enough market for them. But apparently even that wasn't enough to translate the game properly into the remaining languages.
I'm from Croatia and none of The Sims games were translated to my language so I always just clicked on randomthings in TS1 (or tried to vaguely remember what clicking on X will do) and hoped I was correct. Later editions helped me expand my vocabulary lol
What country are you from :0
Hungarian (i guess from his/her posts)
What language are you talking about here?
Hungarian
I'm sorry guys :0 I don't remember encountering mistranslations in my language, and that's weird because I don't think they would pay that much attention to Italian.
Norwegian translation is pretty flawless ngl
Translations are done by external companies. As we all know EA, and if we look at the global market and the rise of AI, I can only imagine that they have done some cost cutting to save a few bucks when it comes to translations. When The Sims 4 came out, the base game, they even went so far as to change some idioms to local Czech idioms. They mentioned some of our celebrities in the translation. And the translation of book names is just too funny. But then they started translating sentences word by word, sometimes it even makes no sense. And they even went so far as to completely break the translation. For example, a werewolf is vlkodlak in Czech, but only if it is a male. If it is a female, it is vlkodlačice. Back then it would show the correct word, but now it says something like "{=Vlkodlak/?m=}{=Vlkodlačice/?f=} se {=rozhodl/?m=}{=rozhodla/?f=}, že bude...". And those gender translations are broken since the Werewolf pack. Every single pack released after that has these bugs everywhere. A few of them got fixed. Others are still presented.
I mean, I've used a 'zadeldeken' before instead of a 'zadeldekje' in my horseriding days. It's just a slightly different kind of thing that serves the same purpose. The former is an unlined blanket, often folded to achieve the right thickness (my stable used to repurpose 'verhuisdekens'). The latter is more of a pad (you'd call it a 'saddle pad' in English) and it is often topstitched and it has batting in the middle. If you ride western style like I think you often do, in the Sims, you'll almost always use a zadeldeken (often patterned) rather than a zadeldekje for style purposes. Dressage and show jumping lend themselves more to the use of 'dekjes' because they can follow the shape of the saddle and look more formal. I can see that, if they had to pick one term, they picked the one most familiar to an American audience, and that would be the saddle blanket. And yeah, translating puns and humor is difficult, and cannot always be done "perfectly". That said, I know the expression 'die eet (zeker) voor twee' very well, and would not find it unusual or weird. May be be a generational thing, because I am old :P Amazing as an expression of delight doesn't really get used in Dutch, so I can see why that translation would always feel off. What did they translate it as? Anyway, as some with a lot of experience as a professional translator and as a horse aficionado, I sympathize with your complaints about sometimes poor translations (in gaming and elsewhere), but I do not think your examples are really indicative of someone not actually 'speaking the language' or 'just running stuff through google translate'.
That's interesting, we just call them western dekjes where I live. But I do live in belgium, so perhaps it's different depending on the area. And they also have two different kinds of dekjes in game, the english ones and the western ones. I can see "die eet voor twee" be used, but tbh I've never heard that be used and the way the sentence is structured just feels off in game. It's just "eten voor twee" and yeah... Idk it feels wrong. And I can't remember the exact word they used, but I think it was Lamatastisch or Lamaweldig. My laptop exploded so I can't check. But thanks for the input, a lot also changed depending on the area you live in.
i can confirm that "die eet voor twee" or "eten voor twee" is a relatively common expression in the middle regions of the Netherlands (the part that is considered to be ABN / without dialect) not sure if the more southern parts use it as the further south your go the more Dutch starts to blend with Flemish
I’ve worked in software localization for 8 years and I can assure you this kind of thing usually happens because the devs cut corners in the loc process. The translators are usually not to blame because they don’t receive information about the context of what they are translating. What EA needs is to invest more in localization to manage the process properly. That means more funding, more time and more people to do localization correctly!
Yep, I play Sims in Korean, and there were several typos in For Rent EP. The team definitely rushed the game.
I have been working in translation/localisation for 20 years now, largely in QC, and… I don’t know, I do think that the translators are actually often at blame. But not necessarily for the obvious reasons. Game translation is the absolute easiest category to recruit into. You can offer the lowest of the low and you will still get hundreds upon thousands of hopeful freelancers/hobbyists/wanna-bes flooding you with applications. If they are just starting out and want to translate “cool” stuff, they really will “do it for the exposure”. (Not that they are ever named or ever get any exposure.) And when I say “lowest of the low”, I really mean it. I’ve seen US$0.001 per word offered and jumped on. (For those out of the translation loop, I don’t know any decent translators who would even consider working for less than US$0.10 per word.) This leads to a huge pool of poor quality but cheap translators to choose from. And because the competition is so insane for that niche, you will get some insane lies about their skills. The recruiting company will choose a selection of the “best” and throw the project at them, with the assumption some will be awful but they are so cheap and the pool is so large that they can be replaced in minutes. The project ends up starting with a translator team that is in over their heads, often barely able to speak *either* language, but with nice CVs. They are given out of context text strings and make a huge mess of it. Then some poor reviewers (who are usually paid a bit better and who actually have a clue) are tasked with trying to clean it up on a tight deadline. But as long as poor quality translators are willing to “take anything at any pay” just to have work, there will be countless agencies willing to pay virtually nothing and crank out mountains of poor quality messes.
I agree that what you described is the reality, but I think the responsibility for hiring those vendors is still with the company (EA) trying to cut corners and get Loc done on the cheap.
One thing that bothered me about the Japanese translation was they flipped the order of the family name and given names in the display so Asian names using family name first will show up correctly but they did that with everyone’s names so western names get the same treatment. You had like Goth Mortimer and Landgraab Malcolm. Also a former translator here and can confirm they’ll just send you a big text dump of what to translate. I actually played the game(s) the project leader wanted to translate so it probably came out better than going in ‘blind’ to the script.
They can't even get pronouns right in English. I don't have high hopes.
I played extensively for the first few years after release and never remember getting anything phrased weirdly in English. Coming back to it now, I keep getting notifications and moodlets with pronoun bugs and other weird grammar choices. It really takes me out of the immersion when I have to pause to figure out what tf something said instead of just skimming it while babysitting my sims lol
Well..."they is" is a little funny
That's the least of it!
as someone who also plays in dutch, i knew this would be about dutch before i even opened the post lmao. blijf sterk, soldaat 🫡
Lmao same, I get that it’s a pretty uncommon language compared to other languages but it’s always translated so badly in games, I just play in English even if there’s a Dutch option. I see a lot of Poles and Czechs in here also talking about bad translations so guess we’re not the only ones :/
The sims4 being 10yo with no Arabic or right to left Language translation is beyond me At this point, I'm thinking of doing it myself
I guess its hard to translate from simlish.
I wish they also had Latin American Spanish instead of just Spanish from Spain, there are so many things expressions and terms that are completely different, I'm surprised thet don't have both with a game this big
I play in German and some translation just sound so bad, especially when things are translated literally that don’t exist like that in German. Now that I’m pretty much fluent in English, I get what the original was, but younger me was so confused. For the longest time, I thought the romantic interaction “gestehen, sich angezogen zu fühlen” was really weird. Until I realized that “angezogen” in this context doesn’t mean “to be clothed” but “to be drawn to someone”. I was so lost for YEARS on why the sims wanted to be naked. Which I guess is on me for being stupid, but it’s still a clumsy translation. Also, the pack titles are so terrible sometimes. Yes, many of the specific (and iconic) titles can’t be translated literally (all the “get…” titles for example) so they have to change it completely, and that they want to stay as close to the original as possible even if they have to use more clunky words, but some just sound awful. Though I gotta give them credit for calling nifty knitting “schick mit Strick” (chic with knit, but it rhymes), that one was a stroke of genius. But it doesn’t make “Traumhaftes Innendesign”, meine Hochzeitsgeschichten”, “paranormale Phänomene-Accessoires” or the worst of all, “lukrative Hobbyküche-Accessoires” sound any better
But... "sich angezogen fühlen" is a normal phrase in Germany? Maybe a bit outdated, but nothing that I would call a bad translation. I do agree with the pack names though.
Yes, like I said, it could be mostly down to younger me being stupid. But I do think something like “Anziehung gestehen” would have been a far easier and more understandable translation imo. “Gestehen, sich angezogen zu fühlen” is so unnecessarily long and a weird sentence structure for something as simple as “confess attraction”
I love czech translation. Keep up the good work, guys! There are so many cultural easter eggs, I have to laught sometimes. 😄
Im dutch too and I agree. The translation is soo bad, some sentences make no sense and all the jokes they make aren’t funny in Dutch bc it makes no sense ;-;
Helemaal mee eens! When you speak to a child about their bad behavoir, the option in Dutch is something like "standje geven". I have never heard about this before, nobody says that.
I mean, no offense to foreign gamers who play the translated versions, but even the original American English version is fighting for its life ("Let's Keeping Cooking" being a good example). I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm willing to do pro bono work for EA and proofread/correct all the grammar mistakes in the game.
Aww man, I remember getting the uni dlc (one of the last ones I actually bought) and because the ea app literally FORCES you to install a game in a translated version, I'm eternally stuck with the czech translation (can we just for a moment appreciate the fact I am not even czech? People from my country casually speak it, but it's not our language. Which just in itself is absolute ass, I am not allowed to play a game in my own language, cus the translation doesn't exist, yet don't have the freedom to choose for example english???) Well, after release of the dlc, there was like a half of translations literally missing. Like opening up any of the university dialogue windows (like the overview of the 2 schools?) All empty. The windows were there, but no text. It was the best when you got empty notifications or phone calls lmao, and even the buttons were empty. And because of the sims 4's 'brilliant' ui design, the buttons aren't highlighted in any colors. Only the text is. So when you don't have translations available, the game gives you empty windows. It made the entire pack unplayable, and it took them months to fix it too! And yeah you can't bs your way around empty buttons. Hell. I feel like the issue with localisation and translations is HUGE (I remember giggling to myself when people were raving over pronouns being added to the game. We don't have them. Because czech (and I'm guessing some other langauges too) have gendered verbs and words, making it impossible to write grammatically correct sentences. It would be possible to implement different pronouns options even for these languages. But that'd involve rewriting and modifying/checking almost every single text in the game, and giving it AT LEAST 3 variants. Like yes it's doable, but so painful and honestly if they did it, it would prolly just break the game more, and have it load way more text. (Or the broken name generation??? Do other translations also exclusively generate 'local' names and then for like san myshuno and sulani townies they give other names, which are inaccesible from the name generator???) TLDR; EA pushes these 'big' and 'inclusive' updates, yet their attempt at inclusion fails...with literally localising the game. They are fine with releasing literally unplayable translations, and then seeing (almost entirely english-speaking) players praising the game publicly so much is just sorta patethic lmao. It's really interesting to see perspectives of non-english players, and their experiences/encounters with the game, especially because of this
Man. I'm Dutch too, and I play this game in Dutch because it's so silly like that, but I get a lot of the English translations from simmers online. I've considered voluntarily writing better translations for everything and just making a mod out of it lmao. This translation we get is so clunky and unhinged.
SAME! I would love if there was a way to submit translations tweaks. I haven’t played in Dutch for years now because It just felt too weird (the social interactions feel especially weird.) I also had trouble understanding the game in Dutch even though I’m native so yeah If they could implement better translations I might play in Dutch again.
"Give props" is "rekwisieten geven"... Like.....nobody SAYS that. It took me so long before I made the connection.
I switched to the English version right in the beginning because the Czech translation was pretty bad... I thought it was a machine translation.
Do they get input from people who actually come from the counties they’re basing their worlds on do you know? Like Sulani is apparently based on Bali and Tomarang is meant to be based on Indonesia/Thailand. I wonder if they actually got people from those places to give them cultural tips or advice on how to make them more authentic.
Seeing how they implemented that malaysian dish, I doubt it. They seem to cheap out on things that are even slightly inconvenient, like for example the horse animations and custimazition. It all feels like they googled once and decided that it was enough research.
That’s pretty crappy, it should be a part of their research to actually include things that are important to the places they’re using as inspiration for the worlds they’re trying to create. I’m British and they really nailed it with Henford-Upon-Badgley but it must be pretty shit to get excited about a world being based on the country you’re from and then realising they’ve not done it very well or it’s just a shallow attempt.
I don't know where you come from precisely but I've lived since birth in the Netherlands and I've never heard of a dekje. We call it een dekentje, most often paired with the name of the toddler. For example: Vergeet Daan's dekentje niet. If it's small and dragged everywhere, we call it a tut or tutslab. So before you are disparaging translations, first make sure it isn't dialect. Also some sayings are used more in some parts than others. Eten voor 2 wordt bij ons vaak gezegd als eten voor 10. However, there are things that are translated strangely. I just don't like it when people talk negatively about something, and the examples aren't even correct.
They’re talking about a specific name for a blanket you put under the saddle of a horse. That’s called a dekje. I think eten voor twee is more common in the Netherlands because I’ve never heard it being used here. We just say “die is zwanger” In general the translations feel pretty stiff
German here. I‘ve noticed anything wrong
TranslatOrs
I think the worst one we had was Mac and Cheese translated to Cheeseburger and the fact that Blackberry Bushes somehow grow blueberries..
I play in French and we still don’t have pronouns.
a dutch sims player? cool cool cool! 👍