In the spring, readers " Gambling " And " Canobus »Name the best games for Ludi Awards, Having determined the laureate in the nomination " Localization of the year ". And they became an excellent role -playing game Disco Elysium.

On this occasion, we interviewed Alexandra "Alfins" Golubeva , which was originally part of the fan team, and then began to engage in the official localization of the game into Russian. We discussed fan translations, difficulties of localization, the advantages of creating games in English, the secrets of Disco Elysium, and much more, more, other than the players.

More than six months have passed since the recording of the interview, but it has not become less interesting from this. Pleasant reading!

Tell us how the fan direction of translations works, what difficulties are found?

First of all, I was not the organizer of the Disco Elysium fan team, I was invited closer to the end of this story. I must note that the fan team was organized well. And it happens quite rarely.

As for the difficulties … In a fan group, people do not pay money for work, and they work on one enthusiasm. But when life circumstances interfere with someone, people are forced to make a choice in favor of the work for which they pay money. So big stories with a fan translation do not always develop happily.

If a large number of people participated in the translation, some were replaced in the process, then, in theory, a large editorial work should be carried out. This does not always work out in a fan translation. Especially in thinner types of stylistics.

In the case of Disco Elysium, the guys transferred about 10 percent of the text, after which the translation was transferred to a professional team. And I became the only person who moved from a fan team to a professional. They apologized to the other guys, but, unfortunately, due to difficulties with the rights to use their achievements did not work out. We relied on some of their findings like transfers of individual terms, but no more. But the guys were grateful in the credits, and, very importantly, the studio paid for their work.

How much time people spent on a fan translation?

I will not say for sure, but for somewhere a few months.

It feels like ZA/UM did not turn to Testronic and did not give money for an official transfer, an amateur team would have reached the transfer to the end?

This largely depends on the editors. One of the [editors] and the key editor was supposed to be me, but I had a parallel with this full-time work. And managerial linings could arise. That is, all people, in principle, know what to do and how to work, but you need to gather these people at the same time and in some reasonable terms to subtract all this, for example. Difficulties could arise with this.

The guys there were different levels: both fans-enthusiasts who loved this game very much, but were not professional translators, and translators. The level was different, and how high -quality the result would be depended on managerial moments.

On the other hand, the Testronic team, with which we worked, was less, it was a fairly small team for such a project-only 5-6 people, while in the fan team there were 12 or 13. But all these people worked, if not Fultaym, it is comparable to this. And due to the fact that there were few people, it turned out less stylistic disagreement.

Generally perfect when one person translates one person. But if this character, for example, Kim Kitsuragi, that is, his texts are a lot in the game, it will not work for all Kim to translate one person. But the fewer people, the fewer votes, the easier it is to reduce this to the editor in a certain stylistic unity.

And when you went into an official translation?

When he appeared. Even before the start of fan localization, I wrote in ZA/UM, offered the services of the localizer. Then a fan initiative arose – without me. After that, the representative of the studio wrote to me and said: “You have a cool resume. It seems to us that you can help with localization. Could you join the fan team as a supervisor?". I said: “Of course!".

But then representatives of the studio – again themselves – came to the fan team and said: "We apologize, we decided to turn to professionals". Then they came to me in a personal and said that they would personally want to see me in the official team. That is, initially they sent me “from above” to the fan team, and ZA/UM also offered me to Testronic also. But I, like any new employee, carried out test tasks, everything was as officially as possible.

Initially, I was invited to the fan team as a supervisor – roughly speaking, a literary editor. And the team of Testronic was already a literary editor Anna, she is a huge well done. And they took me just one of the ordinary translators. True, from my point of view, I showed quite a lot of initiative and at the end was Anna's right hand. She, unlike me, worked Fultim on the project. Nevertheless, she consulted with me, was very attentive to my feedback, for which many thanks to her.

And I myself took some texts for the editing, for which they did not pay me. Just to once again subtract the most important texts in the game, because two eyes are good at the clearing, and four are better. That was my role. I was a translator with an advisory voice.

The organizers of the fan translation communicated with ZA/UM directly?

Yes. Actually, Volga Kapitonova, who organized a fan translation, then settled in ZA/UM and worked there as a community manager in Russian. She helped us with the coordination of processes. We reacted very meticulously to the project. The localization of a large game with very large volumes of text is also complicated technically. Sometimes technical failures occur, sometimes – malfunctions in the game code. In my opinion, the game still has places where the translated lines are not displayed. It's some kind of bug in the code.

Anna and I initially agreed with ZA/UM that after the release of localization we will take feedback, collect bugs and errors and make editing. In principle, for localization, which is done by a third -party agency, this is an atypical story. And we were engaged in fixes of shortcomings several months after the release.

And what was all this long story to: the will helped us from ZA/UM, because they reacted to our initiative respectfully, but any loading of localization of localization is the working time of programmers and the ZA/UM studio itself. They have other languages, tasks, projects and so on. They cannot forever make our edits.

Therefore, it is very good that we had contact with several employees of the studio, to which we came with a request to load amendments. Thank you very much for the fact that there are a lot of iterations, they accepted the amendments.

And how does the translation of the game look technically? How do you see dialogs? It's just tons of text or are it some kind of tied pieces?

Different projects have different. Disco Elysium texts are divided into a large number, relatively speaking, Excel files. They are logically combined by locations. That is, all dialogues from “dancing in rags”, dialogs from the square, dialogs from the fishing village and so on. Separately made dialogs with its own head in each location.

Inside each such file, dialogs, for example, separately with a mart, separately with Lena go in order. That is, at first all the dialogs with a gart from "dancing", then all the dialogs with Lena. In principle, it is difficult to get confused between dialogues. But there is a nuance: in the game, these dialogs are very nonlinear trees, and inside the files they are linear, that is, they are unloaded by line.

In view of this, specifically in the case of Disco Elysium, the devil will break the leg in them – it is absolutely impossible to figure out what is the answer to what. There are a lot of contextual humor. A couple of times I tried to pick up even small dialogs, just looking at Excel, and to understand what's what, this is unrealistic.

We were given access to the studio program in which they wrote dialogs and in which trees are displayed. There we could look at the dialogue in the format of a branchy tree and even read the names of variables that suggest what conditions they make an accessible one or another replica. Without this, it would be completely impossible to engage in this localization.

The work was rather painstaking and in some way double. Because you open a file in the translation program (we worked in MemSource ), you read a line in it, then you copy it, drive it into Tulas to write a script, press the search, and it still freezes, because there are billions of thousands of millions of words, you find this place, jump to it, read the whole dialogue around, return and translate this line. This translation was made much slower than other localizations with which I worked.

What terms and dialogs were most difficult to translate?

The most difficult task, which, from my point of view, we did not solve, because it is unsolvable, is the translation of runaway quotes from songs. Imagine that someone wrote a game in Russian, and some character says: "Beautiful was distant to me cruel.". This is a runaway quote from a Russian -speaking song. It sounds completely normal in Russian. We can simultaneously understand a certain figurative meaning of the phrase and the reference. What to do when the same thing happens in English?

If, for example, in the name of the character or some name a reference, you can get out. For example, the name of the hotel hotel-kabak "Dancing in rags"-this is actually a quote from a song. But with the approval of the studio, we simply transferred it in meaning. And what to do when the character directly in speech quotes you a phrase? There is this in Disco Elysium, and sometimes only intuition helps you understand that this is generally a quote from a song. I was spinning in these situations: I left the English phrase, and – the next – translation

But here the following question arises: to translate such a cursory quote in verses or not, if the original phrase from the song is poetic and rhymes? Or it is necessary to convey the meaning? I can translate with poetry, this is not such a difficult task. But does it look strange and cringzhovo?

At the same time, the game also has more advanced translation challenges. For example, the name of the status of the protagonist, which are also talking in his head. And everyone is called poetic, peculiarly – this is not “power”, “dexterity” or “memories of mother and children's injuries”, but “electrochemistry”, “thrill”, “police wave” and all that way. Their translations are a very responsible thing, because each name should perform three functions.

On the one hand, this is like a character’s name, a voice in your head and in some way one of the heroes of the story. On the other hand, the name should explain the parameter how it correlates with bonuses, the above capabilities and checks that helps you go through. And on the third party, together the names of these 24 skills should create a certain poetic canvas of the hero of the consciousness of the hero. Therefore, they all need to be translated together so that they create the same mood as in the original language.

For me personally, a phrase from the beginning, which I ended up translated as "I want to renew you", was a difficult challenge. In English, it sounded "I Want to have fuck with you". This is the maximum degeneratic tackle. He should sound cringo, but the difficulty is that in English it is not just some nonsense, this is a contamination of two phrases. That is, the hero at the same time thought two phrases and said them, confusing with each other. There is a neutral “I Want to have Sex with You”, and there is a rough “I Want to Fuck You”. And he said that and then. And they mixed with him, and it turned out very funny.

But any attempts to achieve the same level of the cring, having confused some two phrases in Russian, do not work, because in Russian there is no neutral term for a sentence of sex. Living people do not say: "I want to have sex with you". A living person, probably trying to sound moderately and neutrally, will say: "I want to have sex with you". This is probably the most neutral that we have, although this is a rude expression. But the topic of sex is taboo in the Russian language, so we have difficulty with the same neutral terms for sex as in English.

Therefore, in the end, I decided to go in the direction of the maximum cring in order to hold the comic effect, scoring that in the original it is also a contamination of two normal expressions. And this phrase from the very beginning of the game is one of the first impressions that the game makes on the player. The shocking-clerium effect of this phrase is very important for the perception of Disco Elysium. Therefore, this is very responsible.

"Blood, sweat and pixels"

There are many books about gaming, not so many translate, and recalculate qualitative translations in general on the fingers. What is the reason? What is happening in this business of translations? Just do not hire good translators or so low sales that it is all the same?

I would like to ask a oncoming question: what do you think, what a successful book is the circulation?

Two thousand.

This is for artistic. For non-fiction, there is still more successful. But if we compare the sales of an average successful game and the sale of an average successful book, we will see a capitalist answer to this question. For the translation of books, they pay much less than for the translation of games, because books are much worse for sold and, on the whole, this is a less interesting form of media for the audience than games or serialists.

In games, it is more difficult for me to justify people, because in general they pay normally there. I can’t say that the work of the translator is super work, but you can make money for a good piece of bread there. Therefore, when the game localizers are hacking, it is difficult for me to justify them, and with books, they pay pennies there. It is clear that it is more difficult to find people who will perform high -quality work for these pennies.

I have the feeling that the publishing house " Bombor "It is after that story with" Blood, then pixels »The question was more seriously. At least they are trying very hard to hire collectives of translators, hire experts from the industry, hire professional literary editors ..

From each non-fiction of the book, which is original written in just a magazine language, you do not need to try to make a literary masterpiece. Should be written in the same easily readable language. It seems to me that they make efforts to ensure that the quality of the translation is higher – this is about the bombing separation, which is engaged in game literature. There are burning people, enthusiasts who do not care about their reputation.

It can often be that for some publisher game literature is just one of the lines in the long list of literature. Here how to grow violets, here how to make a video game, here how to call Ktulhu. And this is just one of the items in a very long list that is made on the conveyor by people who receive quite little money. Is it surprising that the quality of their work is not always impressive?

"Blood, sweat and pixels", which means that it was very lucky.

I must say thank you to the Gamers community, who made a scandal, cursed and bastards, and thanks to the publisher, which actually could just pull the shoulder and say that the circulation has already been sold out, and it is not so important what they curse on the Internet about there. They reacted seriously, paid money for re -transfer.

How much on average does the game translator earn?

In game localization, they pay for the word. There is an amount that is paid for the word word of the original. In Western and Russian companies, prices are different. In Russian companies, it seems, you can wait for a half ruble for a word. Maybe more. In the Western offices you can expect 5 euro centers for the word. Then it depends on your development. In my opinion, a comfortable mode of operation is 2 thousand words a day. You can count.

What is the most unpleasant and pleasant in the profession of a game translator?

The most high for me is about the same as in narrative design. When you write some kind of thing, black letters on a white background, and then you send them and some kind of magic occurs. You start the game, and your words are written next to the character. This gives a completely incredible wave of dopamine!

In addition, I am a linguist by education, I love translation. This is interesting! This is both a creative and technical specialty, which requires to have imagination and come up with all sorts of things, get out of difficult situations and know many things about language contexts, some nuances of meanings and so on. On the other hand, he makes you restrictions, and sometimes a very strange and complex form.

For example, if you translate a game in which the player can drive the name of his character, in the text of the game his name is replaced by a variable, but it also means that when translating into Russian, this variable in contexts, where it would stand in indirect cases. Because the player drove this name in the nominative case – and if you put the variable in the place of the vinative, it will turn out crookedly and ugly.

And you must stand in a wide variety of and funny poses to avoid such situations, for example,. To avoid gender mention, if the character's floor can be different. And so on, and so on. Or you need to drive a very long phrase of 15 characters, and get out as you want.

I don't complain all, but boast. Because, in my opinion, this is interesting. In my opinion, this is Kaifovo. And, if you exaggerate, any fool can translate a complex fiction text. And to translate a complex fiction text, only in another 15 symbols, without using gender, time and indirect cases – this is both creative and engineering challenge. And I like this combination of creative and engineering in this process.

Given how much you worked with the text in Disco Elysium, there were any points or details that you noticed, but which the average gamer is unlikely to notice?

Firstly, it was strange for me to play the game after I made localization, because I saw the whole dialogue trees, and I know what level of nonlinearity in the game actually. They are really crazy! And now I speak as a narrative designer, and not as a localizer.

When I first played Disco Elysium, I noticed that the game really takes into account your elections and solutions, it is really very non -linear. I wondered how they managed to do that all this works so cool. And now I know – because they crap like a damned. And indeed, gigantic versions of dialogues wrote for every scenario, which 90% of the players will not see. But that's not all!

I heard the report of one of their scriptwriters on GDC , And he used the term that I am now turning, but in terms of meaning it was "radically asymmetric reactivity". The thought is as follows: if you have pumped one stat, somewhere in the game there is a superior event that you will see only you and three are the same crazy as you. And 98% of the players will not see him and will not even guess about its existence. But you are the only one who stumbles upon him, you just get fucked up with delight, because the game reacted to your individual build.

The game has much more than I thought, situations when your skills can intercept management. And if you have a very strong stat, he can happen to the “hysteria” in some plot situation, when he intercepts control and, having deprived the player of the choice, will make something to do something. As a rule, this is inadequate and comic behavior. And I translated it!

In general, how the game works? In addition to active, there are also passive skill checks. Some events of events become affordable only if a passive check has been damaged. That is, you participate in some event, in dialogue. And in the midst of this dialogue, roughly speaking, “logic” can say: “Actually, I see a inconsistency here”. She will say this, and if you have https://rich-prize-casino.co.uk/ a fairly high level of “logic” and the cubes thrown are higher than the “protection” of this test, you have a new dialogue option, where (I am inventing now) you can say that you see the inconsistency, and then from this There will be some plot consequences.

When you play the game, because you cannot pump all the stats, you will happen in a large dialogue 1-2 times, and you will still feel cool. You just took “logic” at the start of the game, and now she helped you in this situation. And I, as a translator, know that in fact there are 10 such branches in this dialogue, just every specific player will see 1-2. And it makes a big impression.

Accordingly, I saw and read some “infrequent” options for the development of events, the outcomes of some plot lines, and I must note that I noticed and appreciated some loro-surgeted moments when I did localization. And this deepened my understanding of the game. Because only when I edited the final dialogue with the spoiler character, I read it, and only there, in my opinion, a full justification of what gray is, and it is very interesting. Tell?

Back to localization nuances and details. Your partner Kim kitsuragi Turns to you differently. He does not turn to you by name, but he can call you “detective” or “officer”. And the game specifies that he calls you an “officer” when he is unhappy with you.

There is some difficulty with this, because the appeal of "Officer" is not characteristic of the Russian language. And in other places, for example, we avoided using the word “officer”: when “Officer” or “SIR” addresses you, we translated this simply emphasized by a polite register of speech. Because in the Russian language, when you politely turn to a policeman, you will not tell him either a “sir” or an “officer”, you will simply say super -warningly – if without treatment.

But Kim had to translate it and leave it. Because this is his way to label the mood. How strictly he is talking to you now, he is so seriously pronouncing you something. Or so simple, slightly curses for another strange trick.

How your observations of how ZA/UM works, have influenced your work with a narrative designer? Whether they carried something out of there, took a note?

The main conclusion that I made as a narrative designer, insidiously, making my way under the guise of a localizer under the hood of their game: if you want a dohren of non -linearity, to invest a dohren work. And there is no simple answer here.

If you want the player to feel the game of his (that she reacts to his actions and his solution, that he has done three days ago has consequences), you need to hire a team of scriptwriters who will prescribe these options. And sometimes write five alternative versions of one phrase. Probably, there lived a strange hope in me that there are life hacks that allow you to achieve this effect otherwise. No, they are not.Take and prescribe with your hands all complex systems.

There is also wisdom, for which I did not need to climb under the hood, but which I try to take it out of this game and carry further. The pomegrace of the text is very well made there. I mean, there are a lot of letters, but they are relatively easy to read. Because they are served in small pieces, because the interface of the text, as I said Robert Kurvitz (Game designer and screenwriter Disco Elysium – approx. Ed. ), copied with Twitter. These are not horizontal lines at the bottom of the screen, as in many RPG, as we are used to, but a vertical strip of text on the side of the screen. Where it is convenient for you to read. And short lines are really easier to read than long.

Plus, in one of his performances, Kurvitz said that the idea of ​​voices in his head arose from the idea that in order for a person to remember the information, you need to repeat it 5 or 8 times. And then he came up with a game in which this would be part of the basic mechanics. The same facts are hollowed and repeated to you, but this should not be done as a bug, but like a feature and a cool part of the game. And they succeeded.At a higher level, this shows that the analytical approach as a whole works.

That is, I immensely admire the talents of Za/UM and Kurvitsa personally. But I also really like to see that this is not an intuitive talent, when a person simply writes remarkably, and behind this is still a certain analytical work on how to present the plot, how to structure the text, what size there should be a piece of text and how it should be placed On the screen. It is very cool when intuitive talent is combined with an analytical look.

Loop Hero.

When you write texts for games, you write them first in English or in Russian? For example, for Loop Hero?

I'm writing in English now. And for Loop Hero. By the way, it was funny. Because they write in Russian and translate into English. I wrote them texts in English, and they are: it's fun, but translate into Russian to understand some nuances, meanings, and so on.

In fact, in the domestic Gamdev, they surprisingly loyally look at the idea of ​​writing the text first in Russian, and then localize, but I myself look at it less loyal. Because if you make a game for an international audience, English will be the main thing in your game. And it is better to write in English so that all sorts of jokes-kombur-game words are originally written in English, and then I myself localize them on Russian, for example. But still the English language will be primary. And I'm trying to write in English now.

But on " Sea»We wrote in Russian, if that. Because Nikolai Dybovsky He writes in Russian. The whole team is very Russian-speaking, but it is justified there, because the game is still strongly rooted in Russian culture. Allations, reminiscences from Russian culture are used there, and it is appropriate to write in Russian there. There are not so many such projects as “More” that are still very rooted in Russian culture.

I don't know how the texts write for Atomic Heart, but, if they are written there in Russian, it is appropriate. Because there is Soviet aesthetics that they culturally exported. And if the project is just science fiction, fantasy or something else, divorced from the real world, I see no reason to write in Russian.

But I do not really like the moments when in the project of the Russian -speaking team it is clear that the Russian language is translated from English.

Any audience wants her language to be primary, main and the most vibrant. But the bitter truth of life is that if you work on a commercial project, in an indie studio, for example, the release in English to a greater extent ensures the survival of your studio than the release in Russian.

I see no reason why it is impossible to make good localization in Russian, which would not be inferior to the English text. We tried very hard to do the localization of Disco Elysium, which would not be inferior to the original text. If the project is not as complicated as Disco Elysium, it would be easier to do it, it would be a desire to make a really decent text of the game in Russian, regardless of what kind of team it has.

“Mor. Utopia ” / Pathologic

What the most remembered feedback regarding localization was from testers, audience? Maybe some kind of joke? Or what because of which I had to change large pieces of work?

When I talked about my track record, I forgot an important project – I led the re -localization of the first “Mora” into English. For those who do not know, the story was as follows: the game was released in 2005, in the era, when the publisher did localization, and the studio did not even see this localization. And the translation was frankly Promovsky.

There are three scenarios in the "Sea": Bachelor, Guruspik, impostor. And if the bachelor was still at least somehow read in English, then the other two were just incoherent. And in the "sea" very complex dialogs. There is a very high level of literary stylization, rare vocabulary is used and not even every Russian -speaking player offhand everything is understood there. And this was my first big project with translation into English ..

We managed to make a decent localization, but the feedback was unexpected. Because it turned out that there is a category of people who loved the crooked translation. There are gamers who love some funny games. People are not so much playing the game, how much become part of the community that creates legends around this game. And for this audience, not so much the game itself is important as the myth of it.

So, it was in Russia the “Mor” was a cult game that was appreciated for what it is. And in the West it was a game that no one played in. And she was appreciated for the myth of what she is. And for some people this broken translation became a component of this myth. And then a competent localization comes out, which allows you to read what all these people were talking about there.

And at least people wrote that with normal localization, the mystical-nuclear quality of the game was lost for them, the opportunity to speculate themselves what was happening-the incoherence of phrases was actually part of the atmosphere for them. And this is probably the most unexpected feedback that the localizer can get.

What did you play the most last year?

These are not fresh games, but released some time ago. The main charm – Death Stranding. I will not call her good, but in fact we rarely see high-budget AAA games … I would be glad if there were more games that use gameplay not only to create a fan (although this is a worthy task), but also for so that in the metaphors of gameplay about something to talk with the player.

There are such games. For example, The Witness. She speaks with the player about the significance of the prospect and viewing angle through the metaphors of puzzles associated with the perspective and angle of view. I didn't play, but it seems, It takes ** two ** quite a lot about how relations are arranged, through gameplay metaphors.

It Takes Two.

My main disappointment was Outer Wilds, which everyone was very advised and said that I would like it very much. A sort of Exploration game, where there is a certain closed system that is spinning in yourself, and inside this system you collect information to understand what is happening. Sounds very cool in words.

But in practice it turned out that when there are puzzles in the game, including spatial ones, and you need to jump over, climb somewhere and so on, but the game is in real time, and you can get to the center of the puzzle ten seconds before the end of the cycle and do not see anything,. This is very much frustrated. I do not receive my reward.

I like it more like in Hollow Knight… I have crooked hands, and for me many Chellengi in Hollow Knight were very difficult. But when I went through my challeng, no one bother me. I can sit at least for two hours and look at the item that lies at the end of the challenge. Three lines of Laura are written there, but what value they are filled to me because it was difficult to get them!

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