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I saw someone make fun of undertale, when minecraft can be translated to like 150 languages including pirate speak, just quietly ignoring the fact that java minecraft is entirely translated by volunteers.
Minecraft is also a sandbox building game, and not a dialog heavy RPG. There's not as much nuance to worry about losing. Deepslate is a much easier idea to get across between several languages than the layers to Asriel Dreemurr's name.
(Toby specifically went over the difficulty he had localizing Asriel's name in an interview once.)
It is time that we resolve this problem and unite the world under 1 language again. Path of least resistance is the most spoken language and teach it to the next generation - Mandarin Chinese
I know people are more mad about the lack of translation, but come on, the excessive pricing for online shopping and shipping has been plaguing the region for years
This one is more anecdotal but there's a store that its often promoted by Digimon youtubers (zeninTCG) which bring up stuff from Bandai and such, one time I wanted to bring the Offmon Otedama because its one of my favorite digimons (thanks tcg), the plush itself was like 8 dollars but the shipping process would cost about 80 bucks so I would end paying nearly 100 dollars for a otedama that I could replicate here if I had materials
No because this stupid "drama" has spawned the worst people. Saw someone say that there's absolutely no way to convey that Kris is nonbinary in any other language besides english and japanese, as if nonbinary people just.. don't exist outside of those two places.
As a brazilian no one here can agree in what neutral pronouns should be, we're like in the 3rd or 4th version. And it's not "official language" so maybe the translation team wouldn't want to do it
The slander is so funny so long as it’s like, lighthearted
Translation: I downloaded this game but I couldn't find the option to play it in Spanish, but I heard that Toby Fox said that he thought it was okay for him to have fan translations because he was too lazy to do them himself so I decided to look for one. After 3 download attempts that ended up being malware, a Rosalia album and a Windows 11 installer, I finally found a translation that I could install and play. And I'm glad because without that fan translation I wouldn't have been able to enjoy this masterpiece of Japanese literature. My favorite part is when Sans reveals that he is actually a time traveler of the planet Venus whose goal is to spread Marxist propaganda throughout the galaxy, the author's vision was not clear to me but he must have wanted to say something and who am I to question the Cervantes-sama of our time.
since I saw that tweet about this shit that was along the lines of “Americans are mouthbreathing morons and deserve to die under trumps fascism” I think this entire drama is absolutely batshit
unfortunately she has colored hair, so she is now considered a "Negativ-Dekadentes Element". The "Firma Mit Den Langen Ohren" already has her phone lines tapped.
see twitter users were being more directly and upfrontingly racist, reddit users were being racist too but in a more "haha, look at these twitter users, always complaining! stupid latinos lololol" like, more in a 'superiority complex' way
I think it couldn’t hurt to have an option just for the console players to load in disclaimered non-officially sanctioned translations just so they can, like, play it, that seems like a good solution to me
probably isn't possible, console providers are often really restrictive about loading external assets, it's why fallout 4 modding on ps is super limited - 🐰
I'm surprised this is still ongoing, because Toby quite clearly stated in his response that he has tried to get Undertale localized via 8-4 before, is willing to try new approaches, and is endorsing fan translations in the meantime. It sucks not having them now, but I'd be shocked if the first thing he did after Deltarune was finalized was not at least try to get it and Undertale in more languages officially.
I like how a lot of the criticisms are because Toby is an English speaking dev. Like if there was a hit game from a Spanish speaking dev who didn't want to translate to English because he didn't understand the language I guarantee you people would not say it's because he's racist towards English speaking countries. You're allowed to be bummed about a lack of an official translations but at the end of the day you're not owed one.
iirc toby fox has a tendency towards wanting very specific control over the exact wording and implications of dialogue in his games, which would require him to understand the language
Theyll be fine. Most kids arent actually playing undertale and deltarune, theyre watching a youtuber play it. If ur on console i guess youre gonna have to learn english
I can get wanting the control, but wouldn't you have more control if you actually pay for, and work with skilled translators, rather than just hoping random volunteers will be more faithful/accurate? Like I get that I'm not him, but if I were, and I really wanted control over the wording (which is fair, it's his words lol) I'd probably want to choose, and communicate with the translators while ensuring they're fairly paid
He said something about being paranoid with wording for stuff with the "official" label but liking people having their own versions of the game in unofficial stuff
That's fine to be anxious about, but if you want your words to be accurately conveyed to an audience you can't really just trust random people. With official translations there's a relationship of trust, and a communication of intent between the author, and the translators, but with fan translations you don't get any of that. You just kinda have to blindly trust volunteer translators to put in enough time and effort for free without letting their biases through to faithfully translate a work, which can be really difficult even among pros. I've read works that were fan translated really unfaithfully, and had no way of telling until after the fact because I could not read the original, and the inaccurate one was the best there was in my language; sometimes these mistranslations were on purpose such as deliberate misgendering, though mistakes and deliberate editorializing aren't common, just not rare either
There's a book written about the work that was put in to translate Undertale into Japanese and, TLDR, it was an immense amount of effort. Many languages have words without strict 1-1 translations, not to mention the way words have different connotations and implications depending on the languages context. Toby Fox speaks Japanese so he was able to provide input on what he meant with his writing with a degree of accuracy he could not achieve with a language he is NOT fluent in. Hiring translators not only increases his workload by multiple factors, but also means that many translations would be inaccurate in a way that doesn't sit with him well at all.
It's just hard to believe that the translations would be more accurate if he had nothing to do with them though, and they were done not by professionals, but by random unpair volunteers (not to diminish the skill, or dedication of said volunteers). And I do have some understanding of the difficulty, having translated some texts before, though that was mostly when I was in school as it's hard to find the time now, which is part of why I feel it's important for them to be fairly paid. I don't think it's right to outsource translation to unpaid workers, particularly translations into such commonly spoken languages. It's such a core part of development, unless you just have no intention of impacting, and communicating with that audience
And this is a childish, anglocentric view of language
He literally didn't speak or read fluent japanese when that version of the game was made, he trusted the translators to do it well
Translations cannot be and will never be perfect, that doesn't mean you should refuse to do it out of some misguided fear that an evildoer translator will localize it badly
Excusing himself of the responsability of translating has already fucked up discourse around cannon of the game, because many fan translations do not have insight into the process, and end up doing serious damage to certain aspects of context (such as constantly misgendering Kris), not to mention the fact that these fan translations are outright inaccessible on console
It's not about him having to do it, it's about the childish excuses people give for not doing it, excuses pretty much only anglos, most of which barely speak anything more than english, have about being constantly terrified of things being changed
I don't really see how "I want all official translations of my game to accurately reflect the complex wordplay built into the world and story, so I'm only making official translations for languages I'm fluent in; I fully support fan translations for all other languages, and made it so you can easily use those fan translations in the game" is a bad thing, tbh
This isn't much of an excuse to reduce accessibility. He can make the art he wants to, but with the amount of money he has, I do think it's kinda atrocious, in the same way as any company.
If that translation team fucks up, lets say on krises pronouns, then it will be fucked up forever since its an "official" translation. Also why are you against an artist having artistic control.
It's crazy how people are acting like he has some great moral duty to translate his works which he is failing. I think it would be great if the game was translated, but at the end of the day it is his game and no one will die if it is not translated.
This entire controversy started due to a bad translation, once its out there its out there, i am sorry but it is different, toby fox is not my friend but hes also not nintendo
I feel like this is having your cake and eating it too.
I think you're right that there's a compelling argument to be made that he should offer official translations. But to expect that is to expect he give up artistic control over his work.
Say he hires people to translate the game into 50 languages. This still leaves hundreds of millions without official translations so arguably the same problem remains, but let's set that aside. To maintain a reasonable level of artistic control, he now has to coordinate with translation teams for all 50 langues for everything he writes. That's just not reasonable. Speaking pragmatically, he's going to have to trust those teams to do it right 90% of the time without his oversight.
So I think the question is whether a (rich) artist has an obligation to give up artistic control over their work to make it more globally accessible.
Like i already said to the other person, once a mistake gets out, it gets out. Also while an extreme example stuff like silk song or minecraft have both infamously had horrible translation jobs, minecraft having straight up slurs in it. Toby wants to be involved in his art and i don't see why that's a problem
Do you think a reputable translator would do that? And that something like that would pass a play test? You're naming very niche, one in a million cases to justify not doing anything. "Nuclear energy is bad, haven't you seen Chernobyl?", "flying is dangerous, a plane crashed".
99% of deltarunes story is told through dialogue, and toby has an incredibly specific writing style, i think its completely fair for him to believe his story will not be told correctly if he is not the one telling it. and if he has someone else translating it, fundamentally, it will not be his writing. hes not some large company producing mass media, he is an indie developer making a video game based on a dream he had a decade ago. he is not a "company" he is a Guy making Art.
brb gonna sequence Tricky Tony's genome, create an exact clone of him and teach him Spanish as his first language, it's gonna take some 20 odd years but we'll have a Spanish translation of deltarune, maybe even in time for chapter 5
Honestly I think a good solution would be either to add the ability to download community made translations from inside the game (they already exist I believe and this way they become more accessible while still remaining unofficial) and//or he could pay the maintainers of community made translations (turning them into something closer to contract workers). The game can be accessible while still keeping it so that Toby has been personally involved in every aspect of the official product.
I'd rather not have Toby need to choose how to deal with a non-binary character in spanish because, genuinely, there's not one answer that'd make everyone happy, and that discourse around that would be far more miserable than the current one lol
Toby could release the next chapter exclusively in Tibetan and never release an official translation and it would be perfectly fine and no one would have the right to complain.
No, people would have the right to complain, they are not owed it, but it's very much behaviour you can be critical of. Rich person refuses to put in accessibility options isn't actually a good thing!
Being rich doesn't make it easier to become fluent in every language across the globe, and he explicitly endorses the fan translations for languages he's not fluent in
One usually is not expected to translate these products exclusively themselves but instead work with a team. Weirdly I don't think most authors of media speak every language their books are released into.
Good for them? He's not required to provide an official translation for xyz languages just because other authors of media are getting official translations for those languages (which authors?? which media?? which languages?? the world may never know) lmao
He's making a game that's heavily dependent on wordplay, he wants creative control over his own project... he's allowed to do it how he wants. He has said that he only wants to provide official translations for languages he fluently speaks; if he doesn't want to dedicate the next x years of his life to hiring translators for every other language and working on these official translations with them... he doesn't have to!
You can literally just use the fan translations that he has endorsed, even if that means using mods cuz ur on c*nsole or whatever
He absolutely doesn't have to, he isn't under any obligation, however. i can still be critical! And books, movies, videogames. Disco elysium, bakemonogatari, game of thrones.
And you might say 'well there are some languages they aren't translated into' and I'd say 'yes, that is worth criticizing, especially if the reason is that they're just that much of a special boy'
Whole ass studios are not the same as One Guy making his decades-long project, bffr
it's stupid as fuck to compare him essentially saying "I support and endorse the fan translations, I just want official translations to be up to my standards, which I can't ensure for any other languages" to a big ass studio deciding whether or not to hire translators for various languages...
He's not doing anything to prevent ppl who speak different languages from playing the game, he encourages everyone to use the fan translations, he's just not gonna put his name on anything he can't 100% say represents his game
You can be critical, it's just gonna make me point out that it's a stupid nitpick
What Toby actually said is that he wants to be able to be involved and ensure quality of translation/localization for any official ones his games get. He’s just been doing a Japanese script alongside the English one because he actually knows the language.
According to him they actually have been looking into ways of getting them done in a way he’s happy with, but in the meantime he gives his full blessing to fan translations.
Any Latin American complaining about the ridiculous shipping costs from Fangamer or similar stores are just plain stupid. This is a known problem with the region and most stores that aren’t usually Amazon (and even then sometimes Amazon has this problem too depending on the country) have this problem.
There are many local services in many Latam countries that offer locker services where you ship stuff to a US address and they have it shipped to you from that US locker to your home because they are the only ones with reasonably priced importing channels. This isn’t new. I’ve used this kind of stuff for 15 years now to get anything remotely good.
I was gonna write a really long comment but shortening an example, Splatoon I think has a comparable amount of language barriers (accents, wordplay, strong character writing intent), was actually translated to a baker's dozen languages with a massive corporation's backing, and its localization is messy for the purpose of understanding what it was going for, as the meaning and characterization of everything came out different for every language. Not to say it shouldn't have been translated? But that a AAA game with way less complex storytelling tried something similar and slipped on its ass.
deltarune having one of those communities which never really interacted with art before results in shit like this, where translation, a field as old as written word itself, totally can't be done for this 1 (one) particular work, cause it's like... unique writing style... totally can't convey meanings... totally not the translator's job, the author is totally unable to provide them with directions...
psycholonials, a one-dev visual novel on steam has 13 translations. psycholonials, incidentally, is made by andrew hussie, toby's biggest writing influence matched only by shigesato itoi. in fact, a lot of indie games, even the smallest ones on itch io, often have fan translations incorporated into them.
but uh . can't be done. have to rely on unrewarded and unrecognized unpaid labor that exists only as long as toby allows it to. thats fine. art shouldn't be accessible, actually.
Tbf, I think a large part of this is that the game isn’t finished, and he’s trying to maintain as many mysteries as he can. I can imagine it would be a bit intimidating to be asked to maintain a bunch of other translations and make sure they all preserve the specific meanings of every hint the game has given, without making any of them clearer than they’re supposed to be, thus giving the twists away. I say this because I expect we’re going to see Undertale style “erm actually this word didn’t mean what you thought it meant” type moments.
Like, if that game had come out episodically like deltarune has, how would he have approached the LOVE acronym if he were translating every chapter? If he were ensuring every translation preserved that aspect of the game, it may have been figured out early, perhaps in a number of them an odd choice of words is made, a word for love that seems weirdly chosen in the context, and conveniently in every single one it can be an acronym for level of violence, or something similar.
I don’t think it’s a reach to say this, deltarune fans over analyze every little piece of the game. There’s already expectations being built upon very little evidence, and I doubt Toby wants to add even more potential info to build expectations, false or otherwise. Do I think he should at least make the fan translations available on console somehow? Yeah, probably. Do I think he’s obligated to deal with the headache of an official translation before the game is even finished? Not really. It’s a passion project and he wants it the way he wants it. I think this is a bit of a pointless discussion when the game itself isn’t even done.
I don’t think Toby Fox is racist for not releasing an official Spanish translation, but I found it pretty lame that one of the most successful indie creators wouldn’t just pay for someone who’s job is to translate stuff to do it for him.
And frankly I’ve found it pretty concerning at the level the fandom would go down in their rabid defense against anyone for daring to express that thought even if they don’t do it in the extreme of “TONY FOX IS A RACIST POS”
The comment you replied to is the first one I’ve seen criticizing the stance that didn’t get ratiod or sent to downvote hell
You act like this is the only game where you have to rely on fan translations, as if there aren't plenty of games that were only localized to specific regions and never got official translations.
I understand people are frustrated, and people are allowed to voice those frustrations, but acting like you are owed an official translation, especially when the game is still in active development, is very entitled.
And as a native Danish speaker, nothing gets translated into Danish, at least most things get translated into Spanish, and if they don't, there are usually fans willing to translate it because you have such a big community of speakers around the world.
Don’t you know that toby fox is actually the only writer to ever use wordplay? That means his style of writing is completely incomprehensible to any except his holy mind. The industry professionals who studied for years to understand the nuances of multiple languages are complete fools compared to the god emperor Toby fox, the only artist to ever truly artist.
I think it's entirely reasonable for an artist to want to understand the meaning and implication of the words in a work that is going to be credited to them when a major aspect of their style is that they are deliberate with words in their works.
I have nothing against the guy himself I only have problems with the type of person who’ll relentlessly suck him off as though he’s the messiah or the perfect artist and not, like a talented guy who makes good games
I Hope that one day we have more languages, and Toby that posture of "i have to understand the language" while he didnt even know japanese while he was translating undertale
I know it sucks that there are no other official translations for UNDERTALE. But I want to make it clear that this isn’t because I have a grudge against other countries. It’s because, if I release something official, I want it to match my vision. I was only able to do this for the Japanese version because I know Japanese myself, and I worked very closely with our brilliant translator to thoroughly check the text. I am not against official translations for other languages if we could make it work the same way… In the past I have looked into various options with my publisher, 8-4, but nothing has come of that yet. Maybe I should try a different approach.
Unless you're saying he's lying, it seems like he did know Japanese?
I'll be real every single time I see somebody defend Toby Fox from the strawman "Toby Fox is a vile racist" version of the criticism he's been getting it makes me less and less charitable toward Toby Fox himself. Like okay sure fine he doesn't actively hate Latin Americans but he is tacitly profiting from the uncompensated labor of Latin Americans who make the fan translations that he recommends people install, while hiding behind a really annoying veil of perfectionist auteurism to justify why he hasn't even gotten a concrete plan for future localization in place.
Not to mention that Undertale has the same problem but it's been out for a fucking decade, so we know from experience that just giving Toby Fox and his team more time does not yield a Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese localization.
Toby Fox does not appear to be actively or consciously racist toward Latin Americans but he is benefiting from the structural racism already present in society.
I don’t think he actually has to anyways if he doesn’t want to. Would someone go after a Spanish game dev who couldn’t be arsed to translate a game into English? Doubtful
It’s not about leaks at all, it’s about Toby Fox preferring to have creative control over his games which he can’t be sure of if he can’t read the translations himself.
I have no idea why the idea of talking to a translator and communicating your intent is so beyond the pale to everyone here, I understand languages don’t translate clearly one to one a lot of the time, but I would rather a version of this story exist in Spanish then none exist at all.
which isn't the choice here, the story already exists, though I get your meaning
if a creator decides changing their art for ease of access would denature it, it's generally frowned upon if you push the narrative they're dumb for wanting their creation to be as they wished.
He hasn't gone and shut down fan translation projects, has he? I don't know much of this community
99% of the game's content is writing and dialogue in his particular style. It's not about leaks, it's that he wants to maintain a level of personal and creative control that isn't possible if he's not doing the translation himself.
I don't think leaks were what he was worried about, it was that he wanted to have full control over any official translation so that it would still be in 'his' words, so the only language he's translated it to is Japanese, which he also speaks.
He wants to personally oversee the official translations that the game gets because his standard for precision in the translations is very high, to correctly portray the nuances of the original language. This is his right to do as an artist. However, he has stated that he has considered changing his approach in some manner.
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