Shawn Hargreaves Blog
The latest post from James Silva discusses the drudgeful process of localizing Dishwasher.
This triggered a range of incoherent and rambling thoughts, which for some reason I am inspired to post here.
"Dang, this is a nasty bug!" "Easy to fix though." "But if we fix it, we'll have to change some text strings, and we have no time to get new translations back." "Anyone know anyone who speaks German?" "Nope." "Hmm, I wonder..." I'm embarrassed to admit, we actually shipped the game with a couple of error messages that were translated using Babelfish :-)
"Dang, this is a nasty bug!"
"Easy to fix though."
"But if we fix it, we'll have to change some text strings, and we have no time to get new translations back."
"Anyone know anyone who speaks German?"
"Nope."
"Hmm, I wonder..."
I'm embarrassed to admit, we actually shipped the game with a couple of error messages that were translated using Babelfish :-)
"I'm embarrassed to admit, we actually shipped the game with a couple of error messages that were translated using Babelfish :-)"
You should be. ;)
I think it'd have been better to just use the untranslated english error messages. That way, at least the meaning isn't lost, and even if the user doesn't speak English, he just has to find someone who does.
Once it's been mangled by Babelfish, it's a 50/50 chance that the resulting text makes *any* kind of sense, and even if it does, it still looks amateurish as hell.
As a user, I know of few things worse than bad localization. (And of course, as a developer I know few things worse than having to deal with localization ;))
Does: "All your base are belong to us!" ring any bells there!
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai Story Mode is well, its the one with the plot (dunno - something about washing dishes and cutting people into small chunks), 14 levels worth of bad guy killing and guitar solos over 3 difficulty modes.Arcade mode looks like the best for a quick fix of ultra violence - short one-roomed areas with themed sub-modes like 'Everyone takes 4x damage' and 'Monsters are only damaged while airborne'.
=================================
napster
<a href="http://www.talkingdating.com">Online Dating</a>
[url="http://www.talkingdating.com"]Online Dating[/url]
[url=http://www.talkingdating.com]Online Dating[/url]
The game quits a multiplayer game with the message ‘you have signed out’ but should show the message ‘you have been disconnected from LIVE,’”
That is the worst bug for a Online player, happened to me quiet a few times when online.