The problems with translations

We germans localize and translate almost everything. Above all movies, of course. But also games. Both things have a drawback for me: I prefer the original language versions, well, if those are in english that is. But also Animes and Japanese games I prefer watching in the original version, with either german or english subtitles then.

I am by far not an enemy of my german native language, but I keep noticing that alot of translations these days must've been done by ppl who are not really into the background of the shows/movies/games/etc that they are translating. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to translate "Dungeons and Dragons" literally word by word? Such things are inexcusable!

Another example: The recent Batman movie. Joker holds Rachael outside the window with one hand and Batman says "Let her go!", with Joker replying "bad choice of words". Well, I've honestly never seen the original language version yet, but when I saw the dubbed version of that scene I immediately knew that that was the wordplay they originally did. And what did the german Batman say? "Lass sie frei!". "Let her free?" WTF is that? "Lass sie los!" Would've fit perfectly, even lipsync, and all that with preserving the word-play...

Ohwell, the good thing is that nowadays, you get DVDs and Blurays that have the english language track on them and thus give you a choice. And you get two languages instead of one. Very nice indeed!

With games however, you don't always have that choice. And what's even worse: It's really hard to find out what kinds of choices you will have prior to when the game is released. But that is usually one of my biggest questions before I decide on buying a game: "Will it be localized? How is the german translation? The voiceacting? Will I be able to switch to the original-language? Is it included on the german/european disc?". Or for JRPGs: "Will the original japanese language still be available?" - I don't really care if german or english subtitles then.

Those facts normally influence where I'll order a game. Here or in the UK. I prefer ordering stuff in Germany, but sometimes I simply can't. Worst example: Burnout Revenge / Paradise. The demos supported multiple languages, chosen by the one you set on your console. But the full game released in Germany didn't feature the english language anymore, but instead french and another one that I forgot. So when I inserted the game and my console was set to english, the game thought "ohwell, I don't have english available, so I guess I'll start up with the next best language close to that one: french". Yep, so I had to play the game in german - which sucked for Burnout - and for that I even had to change the language of my console! Well, I learned from that incident and when Burnout Paradise was coming out, I checked messageboards online first and ended up buying the UK version... perfect!

Mass Effect was another example. One of my most highgly expected games ever and it got pretty clear that they will make a german-only release for Germany of course, since the amount of voice-acting simply wouldn't allow putting more than one language on that disc. That was fine too. I knew about it beforehand, and even though the german version was actually quite good, I still ended up getting it from the UK again. And I was happy.

But not that the Force will be unleashed very soon, I am still trying to figure out if the german version will be featuring the english voiceacting or not. The german voices suck compared to the original english ones (Darth Vader!). Quite a long time ago already, I preordered the UK version. But of course I'd prefer buying the game here in Germany - also since I'll probably have it a day or two earlier than having it ship to here from the UK. But I can't cancel my order unless I'm absolutely sure I'll get english voiceacting when I buy the game here.

So , to sum up my rant: I love german, and I think it's quite nice that we get localized version of games and movies. I'm not that egoistic to demand that we should stop translating everything. I know many many ppl here are really glad we get almost everything localized. But all I am asking for is a simple way to find out which language / subtitle tracks a game will feature when it comes out. And that - preferrable - before it comes out! But I find it quite hard to get that information. If at all, you don't usually get it from the official distributor, but from other user in messageboards or from websites specialized in games.