We are investigating the possibility of editing/adding some tags in the future, but that obviously becomes a problem for localization.
I imagine many/most of you are not very active any more, for obvious reasons.
The community’s generously supported other languages for Grim Dawn for years, but we can’t reasonably expect you guys to all come back and keep doing this forever, even if it’s for a few new bits of text.
As you know, we are now working with a localization company for Farthest Frontier, so we can do the same for the new Grim Dawn text. However, that would mean we need to add to the community localizations. Now the simplest solution would be for us to freeze community localization packs as they are now.
Those of you that are supporting mods would still be able to do so. You’d just have to download the latest language pack through the game.
If this would be an issue for anyone for some reason, please let us know here. You guys have been an important part of GD’s history and we want to make sure your contributions are preserved.
I am still actively involved in the support of Russian localization, including some mods, and do not plan to abandon it in the foreseeable future. In particular using RU+ENG slot for Community League. But if it necessary, I’m ready to uploads the final revision with release v1198.
I have not problem with overtaking translation (our czech language), it is your right.
I am only afraid of re-translation of our texts, because for example we sometimes use colloquial language instead formal language (for some NPCs, that could be in problems or are not commonly decent people) etc.
Standard translations of most of the games use formal language for all situations, characters, story, all… it is okay for strategy game, but in RPG it is weird.
Community can breathe some fresh air into the game and make the translation more human than a studio that does a basic translation, because that’s their job, that’s what they get paid for.
That’s why I’m worried that the eventual GD2 will be translated by someone who only gets “a few” hours of time to do it, without any love to the game.
Your approach to translation of GD was quite unique in this and I personally liked it.
There is definitely an appeal to the personal touch the community can give. Though I obviously cannot vouch for the quality of the localizations we’ve had for Frontier as I do not speak all those languages, just based on the questions they ask throughout the process they do seem to care about context and tone. So there is that.
We would not retranslate anything that was already translated by the community, unless we have to change an old line of text significantly enough to warrant it.
For Grim Dawn, the community stepping up was the difference between the game’s text being available in other languages and it being exclusively in English. We were in a very different situation back then. There were more community volunteers translating the game than there were people in the entire company.
I’m not sure it’s fair to expect or even hope for such a commitment from the community in the future. V1.2.0.0 is going to need stuff translated, so hoping all the community volunteers pop back in might be a bit of a gamble, haha.
Maybe in honor of the landmark patch 1.2.0.0, You will update fonts for non-english font sets already. At least Vinque only. It has long supported many languages including all the language translations currently available for download in-game (except Japanese and Chinese). You only need to update the font you are already using.
Okay, I understand that you (Crate) want to have the translations complete, even though these are community versions.
So how difficult would be to split the community localizations into abandoned ones that could be locked for updates (maybe with post on its pages) and transfer to professionals, and those that would continue to be maintained by the current translators?
I think that there are many translators, that watching game updates, some of them update it with mods.
Yes, there are more of us than there are of you in the company, but that’s how it’s been practically since the first texts were released
And when you release the texts for version 1.2.x, you can decide which translations are abandoned and which languages are kept alive. That way, there could be some condition for the translators and possibly to give any chances to us who have spent several years together with you?
I still check for text changes every time Grim Dawn is updated, except for conversation files. The files inside the “Conversations.arc” file are not extracted as .txt files and it would take a lot of work to check them, but I don’t think there have been or will be any significant changes to those files anyway.
I’m ok with transferring future localization work to a localization company. It would be the best way to update translations from now on as you guys wouldn’t have to worry about the availability of community translators and there would be no delays after a new version of Grim Dawn is released, although I understand Lumeriol’s concerns about maintaining consistency between community translations and future professional localization work. I’m also ok with keeping the PT-BR translation updated myself as I know there won’t be much content to translate at this point, so I’ll be ok with whatever you guys decide.
Anyway, I’ve been reading “Grim Dawn is content complete” for a long time now and I’m wondering what you guys are going to add. New items? New features? Just curious. Can you tell us, Zantai?
Well, we know Crate plan to add some of the features from Grim Internals as that doesn’t seem to be getting updates any more. What else he has in store only he knows, but he had this to say in the Farthest Frontier dev stream last Thursday.
“I didn’t say no Grim Dawn 2, I just said no Grim Dawn 2 right now. However, if you’re here from our Grim Dawn community in the future later this year I’m going to have some wonderful goodies for you to explore. So stay tuned, we’ll probably do a live stream for Grim Dawn in a few weeks or months where I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s coming up. And I promise you, you guys will love it.”
Again, thank you to all of the community translators that made Grim Dawn’s other language options possible. Be sure to hang around…I am liable to keep handing out keys to your teams in the future.
