70 replies to this topic

[James24]

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?

[coolgamer012345]

Personally, I would use google translate, as the effort needed would be quite minimal and would allow people to, for the most part, understand what my text means. If anybody complains about the bad translation, I will ask them to volunteer to provide translations themselves, or to handle financing someone else to do it. If players want to spend their valuable time doing the bidding, then that is on them.

[Twilight Knight]

Option 6, implement a bitcoin miner in your quest so that you can mine while people are playing muahahaha 

[Haylee]

Option 1, but not because of your silly little quote. ZC's a hobby and unless you're like THAT passionate about proper translation, then you're probably someone who wants to learn translating yourself?
Quests like this already exist, so this "problem" has already had a solution for years. For a guy who thinks talk is cheap, you sure made a post this long for a question with an obvious solution.
As an aside, translating a quest doesn't make you a hero. Unless the solution to all the puzzles or something is in the text, you wouldn't need a translation (which still doesn't make you a hero.). Quests are generally well put together that way.

Edited by Einsiety, 11 August 2021 - 08:31 AM.

[Moosh]

I'd feel really bad for a hypothetical Chinese questmaker. I know Armageddon Quest had a Japanese version, I believe by hacking ZC's .dat files to replace the built in fonts. Could probably do something similar for languages with accent marks by sacrificing symbols. ZC's font size and space are not so kind on Chinese. 

 

In the few cases in the past where quests or fangames have been released exclusively in other languages, Google Translate has done fine.

[Aslion]

pretty sure if you tried putting a chinese character into zc your computer would catch fire

[Deedee]

We are sorely in your debt James for helping keep this forum alive and kicking. Maybe we should be paying you to keep giving the forum activity!

[Mani Kanina]

[Mitchfork]

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?

 

Eh, I think we got it okay actually

 

[Rambly]

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?

Pessimism, pure pessimism and defeatism. I refer you back to your own quote

James why aren't you financing and participating in our type B quest contest. James we could really use a type B rich master to help us. James we'll do anything you want. James

[Evan20000]

What if I were to release a quest that uses the word "Taiwan" and am planning on making translations for every language in the world (especially ancient babylonian). Would I be gaining potential revenue/playerbase with a chinese translation or would I be flushing my money down the tubes if the government there takes a look and Xis what I'm doing and bans it?

Cost/benefit analysis with totalitarian overlords is way less predictable and linear than these threads tend to be.

[P-Tux7]

Shouldn't translating ZQuest be a priority?

[Evan20000]

Shouldn't translating ZQuest be a priority?

That doesn't get Liberation gold stars tho.

[Valerie]

I'd do what I did to get the Seiken Densetsu 3 manual translated, I'd ask around and find someone who was willing to help for free. Some versions (possibly all) of the manuals that come with repo carts of this game use that translation, some even use the edited version of the scans I made.

[DarkFlameSheep]

Does he/she who can’t understand English want to make a ZC quest and show it on PureZC? Can’t he/she make any quest well with ZQuest? 

 

Well...I think it depends on creators and his/her quests. If his/her quest is a classical Zelda1 type quest, many or complex strings aren’t there, so the Google translated version isn’t bad.

 

If his/her quest has a big complex story and cool cutscenes...can he/she can’t make such a thing? Okay...if he/she really wants to show his/her big complex story,  $2,000 is fair or even cheap for a high quality translation. For instance, The Hero of Dreams has 2,000 strings, is $2,000 cheap for a high quality English to Chinese (or Chinese to English) translation to 2,000 strings?

Edited by DarkFlameSheep, 25 March 2022 - 09:16 PM.