Let me preface this by saying that I’m a big fan of Rockstar’s games generally, and I really love Red Dead Redemption overall, much more so than GTA IV (which I liked, but not as much as Vice City or San Andreas), but one thing that always annoys me about Rockstar games is the surprising lack of attention to detail with regard to utterances/written stuff in foreign languages, notably Spanish. If you’re not a Spanish speaker you probably don’t even notice it, but for me (who grew up bilingual and make my living as a translator) it’s like nails on a chalkboard to hear the following:
The real last name “Allende” actually mispronounced by some of the supposed natives of RDR’s fictional
northern Mexican state of Nuevo Paraíso (notably by “De Santa”–as far as I know a completely bogus last
name). I don’t care if the Anglos butcher it, that would be expected, just as in WW2 most Americans didn’t
know how to pronounce the word “Nazi,” but the Mexicans?
Really obvious article-noun and noun-adjective gender agreement errors like the neighborhood name “El
Corona” in San Andreas, or in RDR’s Mexico when the lawmen chasing you say “Esta es mi parte favorito”
(should be favorita) or “Las tentaciones del mundo son transitorios” (should be transitorias). Seriously, a
good first-year American high school Spanish student could catch that stuff. WTF?
How freaking hard would it be to hire someone to check this stuff out before finishing the game? It’s
immersion-breaking and a stupid oversight that these things happen in games where they get so many other
details right. The weird part is that those two lines just above are delivered with perfect pronunciation, so
it’s almost as if they’re having the voice actors do it on purpose as some kind of meta-joke. Or the people
at Rockstar have some anti-hispanic prejudice going and are just doing it to f_k with people (no Latino radio
station in San Andreas’ fake LA? Really? Have these people been to LA?). Either way, it’s not appreciated.
Seriously, though, there’s a lot of lazy stuff like that in Red Dead Redemption. As I find myself losing interest in what the characters are talking about, I instead listen to what they’re saying. At one point, Landon Ricketts teases Marsten about his desire to catch up with the members of his former gang.
“What is it, some kind of high school reunion?” Ricketts asks.
At that point, I should not be wondering if they had high school, much less reunions, back in 18whatever-whatever. But that’s what I’m wondering.
Oh, Rockstar. The stuff you guys screw up should be so easy NOT to screw up…
Well usually the Nazis / Wehrmacht soldiers in WWII FPS say stuff that is wrong / makes little or no sense.
However I laugh about that and think “so close yet so far…” instead of being pissed. :)
Any native speaking German could sort out that shit in a week max.
No idea why the developers don’t get some help in.
Fact is, they could get it right by simply paying a native speaker who is proficient in English to interface with their creative team but instead they seem to prefer some half-arsed translations that I really think they just passed through Babelfish.
And it’s not a matter of money either, I have no idea how much they pay to their “translators” but personally I’ve made technical translations for 10€ a page which is cutting my own throat. (ah!, Dibbler reference!)
When I play some euro games (like King’s Bounty, Majesty 2 or Space Rangers 2) I am usually amused by the strange abuse games like these inflict on the English language. To me it adds a certain charm to the game.
