Gaming Square-Enix did it again...

[Leeg]

So... Kingdom Hearts 3D will not be translated into Multi-5. Spanish and Italian are left.


"Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] will be localised into English, French and German. The VO will be in English only, with English, French and German subtitles. In Spain and Italy the game will be available in Spanish and Italian boxes with accompanying documents, but the game itself will be playable in English only."

Source: http://eu.square-eni...ngdom-hearts-3d

The whole series are translated into Spanish and Italian, but this game will not be. Why? Probably money. They do not want to pay for translators. Does this mean that the game will be cheaper? hahaha- no. You will have to pay the SAME for LESS. Nice trick. I do not know you, but I feel scammed.


Some users have already started a petition to bring the game into multi-5:
http://www.gopetitio...nd-italian.html
(Although this sounds useless taking into account the game will be launched next month...)

Anyway... what do you think of this? As a student of English Philology, I do not really care about the language, the problem I see has to do with moral and ethics. When I finish my degree, I would like to have a job, but oh... look, they found a way to skip translators: selling the game in English for everyone. Unfortunately, this states that money rules, and if they can sell games in English in every country they will win. They will put less effort in localisation, but you will be paying the same for all the games as you did when they were translated.

One could tell... 'well, just learn some English and shut up'. Well... if that happens I will have to start a Philological argument here, and I do not want to.


EDIT:
I got news:

It seems that Nintendo Ibérica (Spain) thought until this week that the distribution was going to be done by Koch Media (as it was with the other KH). But then they were told that Nintendo Europe would do it, and that Square-Enix did not want Italian or Spanish translations. Therefore, Nintendo Ibérica is going to file a formal complaint to Nintendo Europe, as they only want to sell the game in Spanish.

So, let's see what happens in the following days... not selling the game in Spanish or Italian will probably lower the sellings in these two countries, and more or less it can have some effect over the sellings of the 3DS....so probably Nintendo will have to argue with Square-Enix and force them to give a nice excuse for not translating the game into these two languages.

Nintendo Europe has not said anything yet, some think that this means that they will do something... I don't know...


EDIT2:

Square-Enix removed Spanish and Italian from its own webpage:

http://eu.square-eni...en/change/langs


Although the Spanish and Italian links (which redirect to the English Page) can be found here:
http://www.square-en.../eu/global.html

WTF? What are they doing, seriously...

 

[beta4attack]

Never mind. I was mistaken.

 

[Leeg]

Well... I have already stated my point on the fact of knowing English or not but you did not read. Thanks for your NO time.

 

[beta4attack]

Well... I have already stated my point on the fact of knowing English or not but you did not read. Thanks for your NO time.

I was not referring to you, I actually read the whole thing, I was simply referring to whoever speaks those languages. And I didn't want to offend any of those who is by what I said.

 

[Leeg]

The language is not the problem, as I have said before, the thing is their attitude. By the way, the cipher is really far from being "everybody" the rate of people knowing English. Specially in Spain, where I live, I do not know anything from Italy.

 

[beta4attack]

The language is not the problem, as I have said before, the thing is their attitude. By the way, the cipher is really far from being "everybody" the rate of people knowing English. Specially in Spain, where I live, I do not know anything from Italy.

Ah I see. Well, it is unfair in that case, I agree with you, but nobody can do anything about it, sadly. As you stated, it is only a month away so they can't implement it, the only way is that they postpone the release in those parts to be able to put two more languages. Anyway, I apologize about anything I said that was foolish, I didn't know he fact that you just said about Spain.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

No offense, but meh. I mean, who doesn't know English these days, even if they have bad English?

half of world population perhaps? Or even more?

 

[beta4attack]

No offense, but meh. I mean, who doesn't know English these days, even if they have bad English?

half of world population perhaps? Or even more?

I see, I guess I was mistaken, sorry about that.

 

[Leeg]

Thanks for understanding my point. I apologise too for being rude.

I will give you something to think of: (check the ranking)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers#More_than_100_million_native_speakers


I decided to post this not to find a solution, since it is impossible and it has nothing to do with us, but to argue about this. And, since this is an English gaming community, I felt forced to do it, so that everybody knows how game localisations is hold abroad.

 

[Ace Overclocked]

i'm italian but i always play in english, no mudkip given.
i feel sorry for others though :/

 

[Janthran]

This game will almost definitely have more content than the others in the series.

 

[Eerpow]

This will not in any meaningful way impact Spanish translators at all just so you know, there are tons of dubs and translations in other media besides games, that is unless Spain changes their language policy.

Also less costs and time for localizing games results in more of SE's games getting localized at all, it would also keep EU releases from getting further delayed.

I feel sorry for those who are not going to be able to play this like they initially planned to, but hey, at least knowing English isn't required for completing the game.
And in the end providing people with English only media is a step in the right direction, knowing English is a huge advantage and truth is that having more things in said language encourages people to learn it.

On another note, the excessive use of dubs in media should be abandoned in countries where illiteracy isn't a problem. Subbing is fine but dubbing is extremely unnecessary unless it's for media aimed at pre-teens.
"Language conservative" countries like Spain, Germany, France etc. ends up doing more harm than good by not letting people get used to hearing the English language. A language that can substantially help with broadening the communicative possibilities and economical growth of a country.

Anyway Square Enix shouldn't be the ones making this decision even if the decision itself can in some cases be beneficial.

 

[Leeg]

"Language conservative" countries like Spain, Germany, France etc. ends up doing more harm than good by not letting people get used to hearing the English language.

You do not know what you have just said... Seriously, you should gather some information before making this sort of statements. Spanish students have to learn English as a mandatory subject since primary school until high school. There are official language schools paid by the government so that people can go there and learn for FREE, any language (English is the language with most students). And this year the government is going to implement bilingual subjects in public high schools (english-french).

Language conservative country? That concept does not even exist. I have studied some sociolinguistics, I can tell you.

Enough said... I will repeat my point: This is not about language or knowing English or not, is all about MONEY and scamming people. Paying the same for less content.

 

[DragorianSword]

Well I'm Belgian and there aren't a lot of games that get translated in Dutch.
I HAD to learn good english to be able to play games.
But I don't think they didn't translate it because of the money.
I think they just feel that there is no need for other translations because they think every gamer knows english these days (which I think is kind of true).
You're kinda right that they should, in theory, charge less but it's just fashion these days to price it at 49,99 $ (or in Europe 49,99 €, which is even more!)

 

[beta4attack]

"Language conservative" countries like Spain, Germany, France etc. ends up doing more harm than good by not letting people get used to hearing the English language.

You do not know what you have just said... Seriously, you should gather some information before making this sort of statements. Spanish students have to learn English as a mandatory subject since primary school until high school. There are official language schools paid by the government so that people can go there and learn for FREE, any language (English is the language with most students). And this year the government is going to implement bilingual subjects in public high schools (english-french).

Language conservative country? That concept does not even exist. I have studied some sociolinguistics, I can tell you.

Enough said... I will repeat my point: This is not about language or knowing English or not, is all about MONEY and scamming people. Paying the same for less content.

I must disagree with that point. I think SE used a lot of money on this one, so what was left may not have been sufficient. If you read the last few interviews of staff you would've seen that most of them said that the Flowmotion for example was a very hard thing to implement and needed a lot of programming, more programming=more need for money.

P.S. Thanks for the info above, I appreciate it.

 

[Leeg]

No, when I refer to money I mean what they charge to us. If the game has less languages, then it should be cheaper because less effort was made to localise it. I am not writing anything about programming.

 

[beta4attack]

No, when I refer to money I mean what they charge to us. If the game has less languages, then it should be cheaper because less effort was made to localise it. I am not writing anything about programming.

You misunderstood me, what I meant to say is that they used the money on programming instead of subbing. I meant also that if they implemented more languages they might've even charged more money for it. So, they might just actually be trying to make it cheaper for you. Square Enix isn't that kind of company that would rip you off like that.

 

[Eerpow]

"Language conservative" countries like Spain, Germany, France etc. ends up doing more harm than good by not letting people get used to hearing the English language.

You do not know what you have just said... Seriously, you should gather some information before making this sort of statements. Spanish students have to learn English as a mandatory subject since primary school until high school. There are official language schools paid by the government so that people can go there and learn for FREE, any language (English is the language with most students). And this year the government is going to implement bilingual subjects in public high schools (english-french).

Language conservative country? That concept does not even exist. I have studied some sociolinguistics, I can tell you.

Enough said... I will repeat my point: This is not about language or knowing English or not, is all about MONEY and scamming people. Paying the same for less content.

I'm saying language conservative in the sense that they have to dub the fuck out of everything, I'm fluent in Spanish and I receive Spanish TV where I live so I know how it's like.
I know that they have obligatory English education, the thing is that by providing very little English media is only something that limits people when learning the language. The government plan on bringing better English education, because Spain needs it, why is that?
Spain doesn't perform as well as other countries because of the way they limit English media, something that's sadly is starting to happen here too btw.

Square Enix is not scamming, it's shaving off costs for localization in order for it to draw in revenue. If it isn't profitable it's even less likely for them to localize these games at all.

All this said, it's still sad for some of the players out there and once again, SE shouldn't be the ones making this decision.

 

[Leeg]

Square-Enix...isn't that kind of company... what?

Let me tell you:

English Only Games I can recall from last years:

- 3rd Birthday
- The World Ends With You
- Final Fantasy Dissidia: 012
- Chrono Trigger DS

(I will add more when I find them...)

Did these games take also a lot of economical effort to produce them as you say with KH3D? For sure... specially Dissidia, which was a copy&paste. By the way, the price was a copy&paste too.

 

[dickfour]

I'm learning Japanese so I can play all the games.