Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-15 15:29:56

After thinking about this more, I've decided that I won't be doing any translation for "official" versions of the game.

Part of what I'm doing here is making very personal work that is hand-crafted 100% by me. When people buy my game, part of what they are buying is a direct relationship with me as a creator.

The game is very popular in Japan because of the unofficial mobile port of the game. However, you can see how that version of the game is way less personal. The original fonts of in the game were drawn by me on paper (they are my own handwriting). But of course, I don't write in Japanese characters or provide the entire Unicode set, so they had to replace my personal fonts with something else (generic handwriting fonts).

Furthermore, I don't speak Japanese, so I have no idea if the translation matches my words or my intent. And I have no relationship at all with those customers, because of the language barrier.

Yes, I could make a lot more money if I had the game translated into a bunch of languages, and every game developer does this.

But that's just not what I'm doing here. Those developers don't really care about the relationship that they have with their customers, and they are usually not making very personal work.

If I am hand-making a game 100% by myself, and that is what people are buying, then the only way that I could translate it would be if I did the translation myself. But sadly, I don't speak any other languages fluently besides English.

Thus, the English language---my personal language---is a key part of this very personal game.

And there is nothing more personal than the words that I chose to put in my own game.

VioletLily · 2018-10-15 18:56:20

I think this is fine. There are many untranslated games out there, and I can understand your reasoning for not wanting to use official translations.

You do have the benefit of using one of the most used languages on Earth, behind Mandarin and (I think) Spanish. This ensures you have a large potential player base even without translations.

Redram · 2018-10-15 19:02:31

VioletLily wrote:

You do have the benefit of using one of the most used languages on Earth, behind Mandarin and (I think) Spanish.

THE most spoken, according to many sources. Though far from it if you only count native speakers. But native or not doesn't really matter when it comes to selling games.

jasonrohrer · 2018-10-15 21:09:55

Yes, I never take that fact for granted.

What a lucky break to be born as a native English speaker at this moment in human history.

Some people might cite US dominance, or British imperialism, as the reason for the rise of English as the modern lingua franca (the irony of using an Italian term which describes French, and using that term to describe English, isn't lost on me).

However, English has some nice properties.

--Phonetic alphabet instead of ideographic.

--Uses only the base Roman alphabet, with no additional special accents or characters.

The second point is probably its biggest advantage. Everyone in Europe and North/South America can at least look at the letters and recognize them.

It also has some horrible properties, like the complete lack of consistent spelling.

That issue can really wind me up sometimes, but I don't want to waste too much hot wind on it.

I'm a fan of the idea of Esperanto, but sadly, it never caught on.

Booklat1 · 2018-10-15 23:01:57

problem with esperanto is that eventually it would develop into something else. languages are not estatic constructs.

Glassius · 2018-10-18 21:45:06

jasonrohrer wrote:

Yes, I never take that fact for granted.
--Uses only the base Roman alphabet, with no additional special accents or characters.
The second point is probably its biggest advantage. Everyone in Europe and North/South America can at least look at the letters and recognize them.

This is advantage is the other side of inconsistent spelling. You have only 26 letters, all present on keyboard, but also 44 different sounds. It is impossible to have consistent spelling with such features. I would say, the biggest advantage of English is also it's biggest flaw.

Talking about Esperanto: it has Ĉ, Ŝ and such, but you can clearly use CX and SX instead, so it has the biggest advantage of English without its biggest flaw

Booklat1 wrote:

problem with esperanto is that eventually it would develop into something else. languages are not estatic constructs.

No. Esperanto has its Fundamento. It can alter in some aspects, but the base will be always the same. There was an attempt to improve it, Ido, but it failed very much. This is the problem of all the other languages.

The real problem with Esperanto is, there is no business behind it, nor state education. But even without it, the numbers are slowly increasing.

Last edited by Glassius (2018-10-18 21:52:10)

Roblor · 2018-10-19 14:25:16

Attend language courses Jason! They are great fun!

TrustyWay · 2018-10-19 19:36:46

Beside the thing that it is your very own personal game. Hadn't you a translation team jason ? I remembered that I almost joined this team but I had work so I couldn't do anything.

If you could bring it up back I think you could have it translated quite easily and for free, only because players want to share this experience over the world.

You could even add an option that give the translation in english so people could interact more easily and learn english.

Take a chance we love you

Edit: We used to translate on an excel sheet with every very words that appear ig would be perfect and it went fast.

Last edited by TrustyWay (2018-10-19 19:44:32)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-10-15 15:29:56

Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

#2 2018-10-15 18:56:20

Re: Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

#3 2018-10-15 19:02:31

Re: Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

#4 2018-10-15 21:09:55

Re: Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

#5 2018-10-15 23:01:57

Re: Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

#6 2018-10-18 21:45:06

Re: Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

#7 2018-10-19 14:25:16

Re: Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

#8 2018-10-19 19:36:46

Re: Why I will never have official translations of OHOL made

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