Wasting money on smaller languages

[PacemaŜinobo]

Well, we got our answer. The smaller languages won. It's in the FAQ already. They're even thinking about adding Portuguese and Chinese.

Shenmue 3 will be available in English and Japanese, and since the Stretch Goals have been reached, German, French, Italian and Spanish languages will be added as well. We have received many requests to add Portuguese and Chinese among other languages as well. We are hopeful that funding levels will allow for further languages. Should additional languages be added, there will be an announcement made on the Update page.

Guess the translations can't be regarded as wasted money since the subtitles have been requested by some of the Kickers themselves. They have paid for it, in a way. I understand each individual's take on this might be different based on what country they live in or their own fluency in English, but I agree that many countries can't be regarded as proficient enough. Sure, in about every country you can always get someone to give you directions or sell you stuff in English (in big cities at least) but it doesn't necessarily mean these people can understand deeper conversations. Balancing that against the fact that Yu is intent to make Shenmue 3 rapport-oriented and focused on the story, I think it's quite clear just how important understanding the dialogues actually will be.

I believe it has been estimated that around 10,000 hours of study (active or passive -- watching movies count) are needed to achieve actual fluency in English. It follows that even if you keep a steady, intense pace in your training, you still won't be able to fully understand English-language adventure games before reaching a certain age. Back in high-school, I remember understanding Shenmue was challenging about 20% of the time, and I was far from the worst English student in my class, quite the contrary. And then there are all the bits I thought I understood well only to realise later with my more proficient skills that I had missed some of the nuances. So not translating also means excluding part of a younger audience even in countries where English is relatively well spoken.

tl;dr I think they know what they are doing. If translations are so high in their stretch goal list it's probably because they realise that the incomplete localisations of the previous games was a huge hindrance to their success and don't want to repeat the same mistakes.

[Hyo Razuki]

Well, we got our answer. The smaller languages won. It's in the FAQ already. They're even thinking about adding Portuguese and Chinese.

Shenmue 3 will be available in English and Japanese, and since the Stretch Goals have been reached, German, French, Italian and Spanish languages will be added as well. We have received many requests to add Portuguese and Chinese among other languages as well. We are hopeful that funding levels will allow for further languages. Should additional languages be added, there will be an announcement made on the Update page.

Guess the translations can't be regarded as wasted money since the subtitles have been requested by some of the Kickers themselves.

Yeah, fine by me. I guess there is a big enough demand for other languages after all. And I'm also Ok with having to pay for it (in a way) with my Kickstarter money. If there's a big enough demand for it and Ys think the game having those subtitles will sell enough extra copies to make extra money, I'd be the last one to oppose.

Curious to see their decision about Portuguese and Chinese.

[PacemaŜinobo]

Curious to see their decision about Portuguese and Chinese.

Me too. In a way I would love to see Chinese subtitles included since the game will be set in China and the story is heavily influenced by Chinese legends. On the other hand I'm confident they will include this language--and Portuguese--only if they know they can afford it and if it makes business sense.

[eding1]

I don't think the first two games lost a lot of buyers because they were English only.

Growing up in France I can tell you this is completely false. A lot of gamers there just straight up passed up on it because well they wouldn't be able to understand anything in it.

In countries like Spain (and by extension latin america) and France literally everything is dubbed let alone subbed. Most young people do not speak English well enough there to play through a game like shenmue and besides releasing an English only game in those countries is assuring it's failure in said markets just like Yakuza games, Persona games and the original shenmue 1&2. To think that translations wouldn't be needed in most European countries is insane.

That's the point. I'm from Spain, and the first games were greatly criticized for not being translated into Spanish, and considering our general poor knowledge of english across Spain (which has to be corrected someday, and dubbing movies is the main problem), the games weren't much popular in Spain..., which hurts me deeply.

And for Hyo Razuki, the first Shenmue could have been that sort of Japanese-only game that never reaches occident. Why not leaving the entire game in Japanese, its original language? No budget at all for translations. I understand Japanese, but I would feel very selfish with this...

Even though latin america has a greater knowledge of the english language, and we are only 47 million people in Spain, 440 million people speak Spanish as their native language and 100 million people have Spanish as their second language. Considering a big part of these people cannot understand a game like Shenmue in english (or japanese), don't you think this would be very risky for the project?

And by the way, with 540 million people speaking Spanish, do you think it is a "smaller language"???

[chris1986]

It's the bloody price they're saying it will cost for the subs. I mean, does it really cost 40 fucking grand to get subs for the four different languages? 10,000 should've covered all 4 as 1 stretch goal, oh well I still won't complain overall since the fact that the game itself is being made is enough for me, and the game will appeal to more people as a result, I suppose everyone doesn't speak good English so we must bear this in mind.

[south carmain]

It's the bloody price they're saying it will cost for the subs. I mean, does it really cost 40 fucking grand to get subs for the four different languages? 10,000 should've covered all 4 as 1 stretch goal, oh well I still won't complain overall since the fact that the game itself is being made is enough for me, and the game will appeal to more people as a result, I suppose everyone doesn't speak good English so we must bear this in mind.

Translation costs for such a text heavy game plus the costs to code them in to the game I can imagine it coming to that hight.

[Hyo Razuki]

And by the way, with 540 million people speaking Spanish, do you think it is a "smaller language"???

Compared to billions of people around the world who understand English (native or foreign language), I consider it a smallER language, which is not my opinion but a fact. Don't get offended. No one said Spanish was a small language but if you compare the overall number of speakers, native and foreign combined, all over the world, Spanish has less speakers and is thus smallER than English. In fact, every language in the world, including Chinese, is smaller than English which is the reason why we are writing in English on this forum.

Anyways, I (and others on this thread) just expressed my doubts that those four languages would get the game enough extra buyers (who would not have bought the game without those subtitles) to justify the costs and I suggested that it might be an option to put the money into other stretch goals.

The game's developers think otherwise and the subtitles will be made. Period. I hope it will make the game more profitable.

Don't worry, I'm not withdrawing my pledge now. Even raised it.

[south carmain]

And by the way, with 540 million people speaking Spanish, do you think it is a "smaller language"???

Compared to billions of people around the world who understand English (native or foreign language)

Well it's actually 841 million not billions but anyway shall we just agree to replace the English language by Mandarin in that case since it has over a billion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... f_speakers

[Hyo Razuki]

If you scroll down on the wikipedia article you put there you'll see that Chinese is limited almost exclusively to native speakers, which does not help if you want to sell the game world wide. Do we really have to discuss the status of English as the world's lingua franca on here?

Come on, you can answer that question by yourself. If Chinese was the lingua franca the game would have come out with Chinese dub instead of English and we would be writing Chinese on here.

[south carmain]

If you scroll down on the wikipedia article you put there you'll see that Chinese is limited almost exclusively to native speakers, which does not help if you want to sell the game world wide. Do we really have to discuss the status of English as the world's lingua franca on here?

Come on, you can answer that question by yourself. If Chinese was the lingua franca the game would have come out with Chinese dub instead of English and we would be writing Chinese on here.

English is the world's lingua franca but truth remains that Mandarin has more total speakers. And btw since English only has 841 million worldwide speakers of which 40% are native it's still not going to be that relevant on a global release. If we're using total number of speakers as a reason to release the game in whatever language beside Japanese then they might as well just release it in China in chinese since that's where they'll get the maximum amount of speakers for one language.

[Hyo Razuki]

Go suggest that to Ys. Sounds like a good business decision.

[south carmain]

They're considering releasing Chinese subs so there probably won't be no need. I'll definitely keep it in mind though, it would be selfish for English speakers to understand the game when the Chinese are more in number and could experience a more developed game for sacrificing English.

[fumega]

Wasting money on smaller languages? It's the other way around.

Adding subtitles is by far the least of their expenses.

A translation can be done by a external company for VERY little (compared with everything else in the project), in a short time, and the possible gain in sales is monstrous.

For example, does anyone really think they would not add Spanish subtitles, EVEN if they didn't met the goal for it in the Kickstarter campaign? Do you really think they would forfeit the HUGE Spanish speaker market just for those bucks? Hell, there are several websites in the US which have a Spanish version, and that speaks for itself.

[sand4fish]

They just confirmed putting Portuguese as a stretch goal! My language of all things... I guess they are trying to reel gamers from Portugal and Brazil.

[ys]

It likely will be good for the overall sales. The only thing that I wish is that they don't make it another $100000 gap. I once wrote a post about localization costs for Yakuza. The estimates that I found from a professional localization company (who had worked for EA, Sega, Microsoft,...) was around 4000 euro for a text-heavy game.

Do we really have to discuss the status of English as the world's lingua franca on here? Come on, you can answer that question by yourself. If Chinese was the lingua franca the game would have come out with Chinese dub instead of English and we would be writing Chinese on here.

I agree. Just like scientific works were written in Latin during medieval times and even up until the 1700's etc.

If we're using total number of speakers as a reason to release the game in whatever language beside Japanese then they might as well just release it in China in chinese since that's where they'll get the maximum amount of speakers for one language.

Though not necessarily a lot more sales when you look at reports about the rampant piracy in China.

As for English, you could probably look a bit beyond native speakers. Where I grew up we have to study 4-5 different languages during our school time. Knowing three of them is often expected when you look for jobs, with English being one of the major ones. So you could include a few extra markets where people, especially gamers, at least have a "near-native" understanding of English.