Language style: Old or modern?

Story & Setting
#62

You would hear the czech language and read the text (whatever language you chose to use) to understand what was said in czech. If you hear english would assume that everything was in english too.

Imagine we are playing a game in some exotic country, that everything we see are that identifies that country as unique are missing (one could imagine that medieval Europe would look the same everywhere you went), a character is called Dong, if we are hearing it in english you couldn’t care less for any references that one could make to east. But if you hear people “dong” a lot, even though the translation doesn’t have the name of the person you could assume that the name also means another thing. Unless extremely obvious when making the dialogs “Oh, so your name means east, eh?”. Which would never happen in a real scenario, thus breaking immersion.

Oh, and if translate the name, well that would be strange too. Thus, once again, breaking immersion.

#63

I completely agree with Tangae. I think the immersion and realism lies in the player understanding. But like he said while avoiding slang or too modern terms.

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#64

Well, for an exotic country, if the developper wants to make you feel as a stranger, they would use a language different than your own.
If in that game everyone starts speaking Czech to me, I will feel like a foreigner … Despite the fact that my character speaks their language.

#65

The player can read the subtitles and understand, it’s not too difficult. By doing so he/she will understand that they are in a different place, in a different time.

And by the way, maybe understanding is not as immersive as you may thing. Imagine if Brad Pitt was just using plain english in Snatch, you will understand him, but will not be as immersive.

#66

he/she will understand that they are in a different place, in a different time.

Exactly! And if you want to roleplay a blacksmith who was born there, that feeling of being in a diferent place is not a good immersive thing.

#67

Having an understandable accent or using other dialects of a language you still understand can certainly work. But I believe subtitles (at least for me) take me out of the experience. I love reading a book and getting involved there, but when there is a game going on I don’t want to focus on reading the words.

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#68

Your only reason(that you gave early) to chose english for audio it’s because French actors doesn’t know how to do a good work in dubbing, you should feel a foreigner already. It’s not because I understand english or I understand french or I understand chinese or whatever that it would make me feel less foreigner if I hear any of these languages instead of czech (or the language that was spoken at that time).

#69

Well, to me understanding the language makes me feel less of a foreigner. When you can’t understand what someone is saying, you can’t even imagine that you are of the same origin as he is. You can’t imagine a language’s meaning but you can imagie yourself in the skin of the character. And in that skin, you understand what people say to you.

#70

If a guy from england does not feel like a foreigner, then he feels like he is in england. And this will kill the immersion much more.

Edit:
Medieval bohemian villages are another world. I (as player in front of pc) will feel like a stranger to this world. We could also talk about the faith of the people in the game. I also wont understand it. But all npcs and my avatar have to be (more or less) catholic christians.

#71

That’s exactly the problem tho, your character is not supposed to feel like a foreigner. And to immerse yourself in that character, you should not feel like a foreigner.

#72

I agree with you @ulfberht , and I would also add that someone czech would hear and recognize (mostly) his/her language and feel proud, at least, of their history that they can share with others. Because, who will think “oh, this is a czech bavaria” when hearing people speaking english? At least, if they hear firstly in czech, that they are not in some strange (or worst, fictional) part of England.

#73

Your character will not feel like a foreigner, you will, thats why we play RPG, we act as we know the language and your character will know the language.

#74

I will be very disappointed if the spoken language is anything but English.

Unless there is an option available to enable it, that is.

I don’t understand Czech, not a single word. So, for me, this would be like trying to play a subtitled movie, something that doesn’t appeal to me whatsoever.

#75

Well technically, that’s not the discussion here, the discussion is how should knowledge of the character be presented to the player. You can either present it precisely as the character percieves it - trough auditory input - or how he … Well, doesn’t, trough subtitles, which also effectively obscures what’s happening in the conversation - while reading the subtitles, you are bound to miss subtle facial expressions of people speaking, or perhaps even what’s happening in the background in the more cinematic moment. I don’t have a problem with the language itself, what I do have a problem is that delivery of spoken word via the original language makes consuming everything else that your character sees far more difficult.

There’s just so many practical and technical arguments against using the original language that spending resources on it seems quite pointless. Not to mention limiting your audience for no good reason, cutting people who have problems with eyesight off etc

#76

Probably because you are not used to read subtitles. But many can enjoy the game while reading the subtitles, if there are dialogs that you have multiple answers to chose from you can simple read it before hear it (and maybe also read what the npc said). And if the problem are subtitles in the cinematics well… the cinematics itself makes you break of the RPG feeling, since you lost your control over the character.

#77

I would like to hear the most authentic and realistic selection of languages as possible I wouldn’t care if I had to read everything. About second person singular I think it is important that you find that balance in the context of the game and it’s story and should not be something for us to decide.

The game and menu language should of cause be in English, but the in game content could be in whatever language relevant to the environment. Because I enjoy realism and learning a bit too.

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#78

I’m from Czech Republic, I’m very much used to reading subtitles :stuck_out_tongue: But as a person who has progressively been learning english, I can also tell how much my enjoyment of games and TV shows has improved when I stopped having to read them altogether. So much detail is lost in subtitles, so much context delivered via tone, words with more than one meaning - and that’s just for the spoken language.

Arguably, you can put that into subtitles as well, but only when either not actually using the spoken launguage properly and catering it to work with english which sounds terrible, or to write subtitles in a way that’s not quite accurate enough, which too is terrible.

Furthermore, since you have to read subtitles, you need to divert your vision from the screen - that’s the problem I have explained in my previous post, I just want to properly explain the ‘cinematic moments’ - you can actually get cinematic feeling without taking control from the player, Half-Life games are a very solid example of that. However, there’s nothing worse than immersing yourself into said moment and having to divert your eyes from what’s going on on the screen to read a line of dialogue somebody uttered, on the offchance it can be important.

Long story short, voice acting which audience can understand - and to the topic of ‘old-school-ish’ english, understand properly, is the most efficient way of delivering your game’s content, and it allows the audience to use their sences to the fullest potential that a videogame can achieve, as opposed to the need of iterrupting the visual experience constantly.

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#79

So you can´t watch a movie in any other language other than czech and english? Like missing the beautiful “Infernal Affairs” because there were no english dub before “The Departed” (which, in my opinion, was inferior to the original)? How many other films you may be missing?

I would say that playing a Final Fantasy game in Japanese (with subtitles in another language) is totally different than playing in English, and the later lose by far the expressiveness that the characters portray in it´s original language.

#80

This threat is huge and I will get to through it eventually but I just wanted to show support for the use of modern english with the odd word of 15th century Czech thrown in. For example, everyone says ‘Hello’ in authentic Czech or swears in authentic Czech but the majority of conversation is modern English without the ‘YOLO’ etc slag words.

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#81

First of all: Do not jump between extremes. When it comes to TV shows, I will try and find the original language and watch it with subtitles, as that’s the original is how it was intended to be watched, and writers of subtitles usually don’t take as many liberties in the translation as writers who translate for voice acting, for numerous reasons. And at any rate, all I have said still applies - if I could speak Japanese, watching Japanese shows would most likely be far more enjoyable than reading subtitles. However, I can’t, and I don’t trust VA translators to do as good job of translating as writers of subtitles, not to mention VA injecting into how everything was intended to sound like.

Second, what you are saying is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The issue with translating an original work is that translator is almost never the same person who has wrote the work in the first place. What does that mean? Well, it means that a lot of intended meaning is going to be lost in the translation. However, the discussion at hand is not what language should be the game translated into, the discussion is how it should be written in the first place. If the entire game is written in English, English is going to be the intended experience, and playing it in English, nothing will be lost in translation. English is the most popular language, therefore, english is the most logical language choice for the biggest chunk of the audience to get the intended experience.

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