Non-English players, which language do you prefer?

[TheChosen]

If your own language is available will you play the game with that or do you stick to original English subs and voice actors? How does playing video games in your own language feel compared to playing in English? And if you're from one of the countries other than say, France, Italy or Spain, how often do you get games in your own language?

For Finnish, its pretty much non-existant. The only games I recall that had Finnish dubbing or text were aimed towards children. This might have changed with modern games though, as I noticed Assassins Creed 3 and Last of Us having option for Finnish subs. Playing with that felt too weird though, so I switched back to English.

At least the manuals were in Finnish most of the time, although the NES era manuals were apparently riddled with typo's and other oddities (cant confirm personally since most of mine where thrown away). One thing I remember was Castlevania being written as Castelvania.

[alphex]

If the game was not originally in English, it depends on the quality of the translation which version I'll play. Although, with the internet and all, being aware of the English names is usually useful for discussions.

If the game was originally in English, I usually set it to English as well. For example, the German translation of Duke Nukem Forever actually has Bruce Willis German voice actor, which shows that they put some cash and thought into getting a good translation, but still, Duke Nukem has got to be voiced by John St John for me.

[shelverton]

I prefer to play in english 100% of the time. Swedish translations are usually poorly done and makes everything in the game sound ridiculous and extremely childish. I dunno why that is. Sony is especially obsessed with translating everything, especially big titles like LittleBigPlanet (which also has voice overs by swedish actors), Uncharted and The Last of Us. I guess they wanna cater to the kids. EA translates their sports title all the time too, which is fine since I don't care about those.

Back in the early 90's, despite being a tiny market, we got Shadowgate, Deja Vu, Maniac Mansion, Sword of Hope and even the SNES Shadowrun with swedish screen text. Most of it was rubbish but I was less critical about those things when I was a kid. (Sword of Hope is especially HILARIOUS and borderline unplayable with all its typos, errors and flat out lies. The word "chest", as in "treasure chest" was frequently typed as the swedish word for "boobs", just to mention one). Our additional three letters (å, ä, ö) were used in all the wrong places, which makes me question if some of those games were even translated by swedish people?

But anyways, I always pick english whenever I can.

Btw, am I the only one who find it pretty awkward to discuss gameplay mechanics and such in my native tongue? There are no good translations for common terms like "level up", "power up", "battle system", "gameplay" and so on. Discussing video games in swedish often turns into every other word being in english anyway, cause there simply are no decent words for anything.

[caoslayer]

The original language for dialogue if available then english then trash bin if they only kept my natal language.

Text also always on english since I like read stuff in internet and they like to swap words that makes no sense.

This rule is general for all kind the medias, including movies movies and music.

Although I have to agree that some songs sometime are better in spanish than english

(earworm warning)
Bacon pancakes:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eO5U_uN7DQ
Fried bacon:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3meM85Dbo2g

[kaoru]

If English is the original language, it's usually that one. For japanese games it depends. A good portion of the more niche stuff doesn't get tranlated into the euro-5 anyways, but if they do German is one of them, but I still tend to go for English often. Not so much for ones proven to be good translations (anything localised by Nintendo for example) but XSEED or Atlus stuff - if translated at all - usually are better written in their English versions. German dubbing is a no show most times anyways, if it's not AAA.

[caoslayer]

Oh yes, the exception to the rule is if the japanese track feature too much of squeakly little girls.

That shriek.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

Feb 28, 2015 2:20:01 GMT -5 shelverton said:

Btw, am I the only one who find it pretty awkward to discuss gameplay mechanics and such in my native tongue? There are no good translations for common terms like "level up", "power up", "battle system", "gameplay" and so on. Discussing video games in swedish often turns into every other word being in english anyway, cause there simply are no decent words for anything.

I can say that for Dutch at least, this is 100% true. Even simple words such as 'Item' or 'Damage' I use in English.

As for the thread's question, there's simply no way you'll ever catch me playing a Dutch translation. Everything sounds silly and wrong. Everything sounds stupid in Dutch. Music sounds lame, movies don't sound epic.

Now, to be fair, most games don't get translated to Dutch anyway, it's mostly PC games, although Nintendo started doing them around the time of Mario Kart 7/3D Land. They're starting to translate more on the console front actually, and I think that's a bad thing. When I was younger, kids shows that weren't cartoons wouldn't get translated, but simply get subtitled. Hell, sometimes cartoons would be subtitled. Nowadays they just dub everything, and considering TV and video games is the best way for a non-English kid to learn English, that's not a good thing.

[Elvin Atombender]

I am from Italy,a country in which voice acting is considered a form of art on its own,to the point that some voice actors are as popular as the people they dubbed. This phenomenon makes many people assume that the Italian dub is always better than the original language and that every videogame should feature full Italian acting. I even remember having a very heated online discussion with a guy who thought that people all over the world couldn't experience the "real" Max Payne unless they learned Italian! Admittely, Max's voice actor did a very good job but the same couldn't be said about the rest of the cast.

Personally, I disagree with this point of view since we had our share of spectacular trainwrecks of translations coupled with subpar voice acting, some of which reached memetic status such as the intro of King's Field IV. Not to mention translation errors and typos, which aren't uncommon today and were pretty much a constant presence in the past.

But enough with the negativity...fortunately there are also exceptions. An example of a dub done well is Assassin's Creed II: while the original english voice acting is full of offensive cliches, in the Italian version they had the common sense to make NPC characters speak with proper Tuscanian accents,which improves the experience as opposed as having random italian words thrown in randomly and stereotyped "foreign" accents. And a more realistic and respectful voice acting helps making the whole experience more immersive.

Long story short, whenever I have the chance I always pick english.

[Colonel Kurtz]

I stick with English; better voice actors, Patrick Stewart here and there. But every movie I Watch in English is non-dubbed, all the sites I visit are in English. At this point, I'm totally acultured...

[ReyVGM]

I always play in English. There are many variations of Spanish, and I cringe every time it doesn't "sound" like the one from my country, or the commonly accepted "normal" Spanish.

Also, I'm just really used to certain terms in English, for example the word Dungeon. In Spanish it's called Calabozo, and doesn't evoke the same feeling of the English word.

[caoslayer]

Feb 28, 2015 10:28:25 GMT -5 ReyVGM said:

I always play in English. There are many variations of Spanish, and I cringe every time it doesn't "sound" like the one from my country, or the commonly accepted "normal" Spanish.

Also, I'm just really used to certain terms in English, for example the word Dungeon. In Spanish it's called Calabozo, and doesn't evoke the same feeling of the English word.

Actually dungeon is better translated as mazmorra. Calabozo is more like a cell block. Of course, "Amo del calabozo" have a nice ring on it but it translates back to jail warder.

[ReyVGM]

Either way, it doesn't sound as cool as Dungeon

[kaoru]

Feb 28, 2015 5:22:32 GMT -5 caoslayer said:

Oh yes, the exception to the rule is if the japanese track feature too much of squeakly little girls.

That shriek.

It's all the worse if the English voice actresses try to replicate the fake-cute voice. I will never be able to listen to the English track in a NISA localisation.

[Dee Liteyears]

It depends... in general I love to have the option to choose the language for text and voices separetely, something that's less and less possible.
We have some very great VAs in germany, but sadly seldom in games. There are some exeptions like FarCry 3, Die Hard Trylogy (on PSX, Vendetta sounds like ass in comparison), Bioshock, Buffy: Chaos Bleeds (every original VA from the show as opposed to the eng dub) or the Dracula X Remake's intro.
Then we have Arkham Asylum. The german dub isn't bad, but they could have chosen the Animated VAs, instead we got David Nathan as Batman, who is non the less a great VA and voiced him already in the Nolan films. But even there his voice didn't really fit to Batman, and it's even more jarring with the more buff-looking Batman from the game. At least he didn't to that asthma-voice in the game. It comes more off as silly when does it in the movie^^ For me Batman's voice will always be Eberhard Haar.
Another bad example: Oblivion and Skyrim. I don't even ask for 70+ VAs in the german verion but when, during the intro sequence, the guy who leads you in to a village has the same voice as the one who awaits him there already have the same voice with no differentiation between them, then you know something went terribly, terribly wrong. The lacking varity already annoyed me in Oblivion, but this totally killed Skyrim for me. (epecially as the only other language on the disc was french) I can understand if things are how they are because of budget reasons, but this excuses in no way such a lack of effort.
As you see, it greatly depends on the dub's quality but also partly on the setting. For example, I prefer watching Gundam series in english, just because it seems more natural for the setting.
Also I think there is hardly anything worse than Sony's german dubs during the 90s(maybe Pioneer OVA dubs, but that's another story)... Granstream Saga, Resident Evil (iirc) Ghost in the Shell or Metal Gear Solid. They all sound like low budget pornos and make you want to stab a pair of daggers into your ears. Though in the case of MGS it's unmeasurable cheese factor partly redeems it a bit.
What annoys me much more, is when we could get a great dub, but the publishers just don't gives a fuck. Though this mostly applies to licensed games, but I would just love it to have the One Piece or a few DBZ games with the original german dub.

Anyway, I think I'm ranting to much (had a few cocktails earlier^^), so short answer: I just choose the language which seems to be best or most fitting

[Ace Whatever]

Feb 28, 2015 2:20:01 GMT -5 shelverton said:

Btw, am I the only one who find it pretty awkward to discuss gameplay mechanics and such in my native tongue? There are no good translations for common terms like "level up", "power up", "battle system", "gameplay" and so on. Discussing video games in swedish often turns into every other word being in english anyway, cause there simply are no decent words for anything.

Same here. It's pretty much why I avoid Arabic gaming and anime forums like the plague.

As for the choice, there aren't that many games dubbed in Arabic to my knowledge. I know the 2013 Tomb Raider has one and at some point some of the recent FIFA/PES games started having Arabic commentary. But otherwise I generally stick to plain ol' English.

I am however that guy who messes with the custom language option in all the recent Capcom fighters.