So here's a hypothetical problem that I would like people to help solve. Lets say that I'm making a quest and I can only speak Chinese. Everything in the quest is in Chinese(!). But I'm planning on releasing it here on purezc where most people speak English. So, I look up translation services and I find out it costs $2,000 to properly translate everything. I could've just chosen to google translate everything but that has a bad reputation when it comes to the finer nuances of language. What should I do now?
Option 1: Do nothing and pay nothing. Release the quest as is in Chinese or the google translated version. It'll be up to the audience to decipher what everything means. If they get angry then I'll just remind myself of what James24 said: "Talk is cheap, talk is worthless, talk is nothing". If, for whatever reason, the audience is unwilling or unable to pay then they don't deserve it. I can play the game just fine and I'm not affected by this translation problem and I'll have saved myself $2,000.
Option 2: Pay for the costs of translation out of pocket. I'll be a crowd hero and very popular but this will set me back $2,000. I'll be spending $2,000 to fix someone else's problem. That someone will never pay me back. But I think to myself - all their talk is worth it. All their praise and their 5 star ratings will be enough to compensate me for my $2,000 loss. I'm a god and I live off fresh air and water and I don't need any money.
Option 3: I ask my boss to pay for it. I'm making this quest as a personal game designer for a very rich person. He wants an English version and he pays $2,000 for the translation. Problem solved - but how many people out there have rich guardian angels who can pay?
Option 4: Pay for the costs of translation but release the game on steam and charge $10 per copy. Sounds like a very good idea. If there are only 200 people who pay then I'll have recovered my costs. Any more and I'll be making a small profit. But what if no one buys my game? Then I'll be stuck with a $2,000 loss. But I've just remembered - no steam on Zelda Classic. Oops.
Option 5: Pay for the costs of translation and kindly ask people to donate towards the cost of translation. I hope I'll get back my money but then I hear things like "I don't pay for quests that break copyright", "your work is ultimately trivial and intrinsically worthless" and "Do you really think your work is worth any money?". No one's going to pay and I've just lost $2,000.
What would you do?