EVE General Discussion

Hi everyone, CCP o/

My first topic on the forums so don't blame me too much.. because I'm here to blame You!.

I wonder what kind of language 'specialists' you have dealt with, that you let Them translate this into Russian?
I'm asking because what I'm reading again and again in my native language is just ridiculous and makes me feel terrible butthurt about localization quality.
The translation of the article dedicated to the sign event, the 9th anniversary of our beloved game, whoever or whatever was behind the task, grammatically correct but looks more like produced with automatic translator and absolutely soul- and mind-absent!

A little word 'tin' become cause of the creation of the topic. Presented in Russian like 'жесть" (thin sheet steel) and connected to the 10th anniversary. But anyone gonna tell you that the associating metal with the 10th anniversary is "олово" (lat. Stannum, Sn in Element System).
So 'tin' got two translations? Exactly and there was chosen the wrong one.

Little by little these mistakes occurs again and again making lot of people very unhappy. I'd say the quality of the translation is insulting if continues any longer.

Now I don't want to hurt any nationalities but I know many foreigners agree with that Russian language is the second best or even first beautiful language in the World.
Then ask some experienced pilots of Russian-speaking EVE community: What client language are they using? The answer will be: English. Neither russian pilots don't like their mother tongue, nor because It's hard to relocate your knowledge or habits. Mostly because the translation is TERRIBLE. Complete but terrible.

So please, stop translating at all or hire well educated and erudite people to do tasks. Please.

The German translation is just as bad. Wrong metal, nonsensical grammar, and all.

I hear in the russian client a raven is called a babushka, a vagabond is called a cossack and all freighters are referred to as beluga. do svidaniya

First of all Stannum is the latin name of Tin

I am pretty sure that different countries have different customs, and that difference is something that will be evident to translated text.

Hey guys, learn English. After all, you lost the Cold War so you can't demand people speak Russian

remove russian translation from Eve completely.
problem solved.

After all using russian only leads to misunderstanding between pilots.

You will never find a proper translation between any two languages. This is usually because of the never-ending evolution of lingoes as time goes by.

For example:

• As someone pointed out earlier, Stannum is Latin for Tin. In fact, half the world's language is derived from Latin including German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
• Even English has different dialects that can potentially effect communications. In the US, a *** is someone who is gay. Although that term now seems to be used to describe stupid drivers who don't pay attention to the light at the intersection. In the UK, a *** is a cigarette. And that is just one example.
• Spanish countries have the same problem, but worse. Let me post this little link for you: Qué difícil es hablar el español Now try doing a localized Eve client for that. The Lulz will be epic.
• In Canada, there happens to be several dialects of French and if you have three people with three different dialects of the same language trying to talk to each other, they will be frustrated. The US is no different. Try having a redneck talk to a New York city slicker.

No matter how hard you try, any translation you do will no doubt result in some errors. I'm willing to wager that even the translators at the UN have moments where they got lost in translation. This is the point I'm trying to convey.

Thank you for your feedback on this - I would like to address the specific translations of "tin" because it is a good example of the difficulties involved when translating text containing puns and cultural references or slang.

German:
Indeed, "Tin" translates literally to "Zinn" or "Blech", but the sentence this is used in reads "Did you know that “tin” is the traditional tenth anniversary gift material?" - the traditional tenth anniversary material for German is in fact "Aluminium" so a translator can either choose to go for a literal translation and call it "Zinn" or do a cultural adaptation and call it "Aluminium". In this case the cultural adaptation makes more sense, so this is where the translation "Aluminium" comes from.

Russian:
(This comes from the translator of the dev blog in regards to translating "tin" as "жесть"): This is, indeed, a pun on the quality of Minmatar ships mentioned alongside it — the word I used is a popular colloquialism, as versatile as "fail", yet with added hints of shock, disbelief, and resignation.

The reason why I am elaborating on that is because usually there are two types of "bad translations": The types that are a matter of taste (like how to deal with puns, or also some style and tone questions) and then the ones everyone can agree on, like spelling problems, mistranslations etc. For matters of taste it will be very hard to make everyone happy, and often the translators themselves will be changing their version a few times before they can agree on a version they like the most.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there are no issues in our translations that everyone could agree on need to be fixed. We are constantly working on improving the localization quality (in fact, please check our hiring slots and send potential candidates our way!) and we always welcome bug reports or any other hints if you find problems with our localization.