Disclaimer: translation can be a highly subjetive matter and as such, the opinions expressed in this topic are solely my own and by no mean are to be taken as the correct and definitive answer. Still, I do earn my living as a translator; I know how things can go with such matters (not enough time to do and check the translations, poor motivation to do so due to low wages, etc) and it irks me to no end to see such errors, especially within a product that’s going to be distributed to so many people.
I also understand the expansion is right now in a pre-release state and things are subject to change.
I’d also like to clarify I’m judging this game on its own, but I’m well aware some words/terms (like the term “weaves”) might be set in stone by Games Workshop and Fatshark might be forced to use the terminology they use.
With all this out of the way, onwards with what I found.
I generally play my games in english, as it is generally the language games are developed. With the announcement of the expansion my friends and I bought the DLC and started playing the game, and one of my friends, playing the game in spanish, just started to ask what such and such thing meant. We went back and forth on the meaning of such words and their counterpart in english and then I decided to play the game in spanish, to see with my own eyes what was really happening.
I must say I’ve never played the game in spanish, but what met my eyes was a rather messy translation, with some blatant translation errors. Some examples of messy translations (the list is not exhaustive).
Ranger veteran :
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Level 15 stagger talents are not translated, still, this seems to happen with the rest of the classes,
so I hope the talents will be translated by the release of the expansion -
Level 20 talent “Share and share alike” translation is incorrect, it states that allies receive 10% ammo while taking an ammo pouch, while in fact it’s Bardin that receives that bonus.
Other translation errors/appreciations:
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Some questionable choices for some key elements of the game, such as “stamina”, translated as “aguante”, which is a rather bland translation, could have gone for the english equivalent of “vigor”, or “resistance”, albeit that last one could clash with the term “curse resistance”. Or the “You have unlocked new cosmetics” line, translated quite awkwardly
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The term “weave”, translated as “tejido”, the english equivalent of “cloth, fabric”. Again a bland translation, you could have used “entramado” (web, maze, lattice). Also, the term “tormentálica”, used for the metallic wind, I understand what the translator was aiming for, as it is a pun with the word “storm” and “metallic”, but quite frankly the word doesn’t work at all… it makes you chuckle, yes, but the way you may chuckle at a bad “dad joke”.
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Pronoun usage errors/misusage, which makes some sentences awkward to read. I understand this could be due to a space constraint, after all, sentence forming in english can be much more compact than in spanish. If space is not an issue, talents should be revised, even if the revised text is longer, clarity of description should trump the possibility of a “wall-of-text”.
As I said this list is not exhaustive, but Fatshark should reconsider the translation agency-individual they used to translate their game, or at least send the final translation to someone else to double check it. Even if the non-english community might be a minority, that is not an excuse to make half-baked translations.
Edit: bullet formatting