You're not meant to download it for free though that's the point!

Here's a clue. If you didn't pay for it, and can't play it for whatever reason, it's probably due to some form of copy protection.

Please pay for the game.

Well, at least the copy protection seems to be working...

lol true

Good one! :)

Since I said it first... thank you. :P

BTW, do you speak German? I ask because apparently you are editing the English translation of Whispered World.

But the Daedalic guys put the copy protection in the game. :)

No, I just made it all up. :)

Actually, the game was already translated and I was just giving it some polish and tweaks.

You've lost me. Either I missed something or there's a big hole in my sense of humour. But if you don't feel like answering a simple question, then I'll have to conclude that you are editing the translation of a source text you are unable to read.

Fien-at the end of his post, he said it's already been translated, he's just tweaking it.

Yes. He's editing the translation of a source text he is unable to read. In book publishing that's bad practice, virtually unheard of. (I have a job in the publishing world.) But I guess game publishing is different. Time will tell if the original has been done justice. (Above all by the translator, of course.)

PS: I'm talking about adjusting content for localisation purposes, not about changing "theirs" into "there's" or "it's" into "its". Steve Ince would be overqualified for that kind of job.

Ah, now I know what you mean. I can see your point now, although I thought of it more as a "spell checker-make sure it sounds right in English" sort of thing.

Sorry, my flippant sense of humour was misplaced.

If the translation has been done well, then it's not a problem to understand the context of what's being said by the characters. Where the problem lies is the translated dialogue itself and how it sounds. Unless the translator is very good at writing dialogue in the language they are translating into, the translated dialogue can end up being a little dry. And sometimes the translation is a little too literal. What is good conversational dialogue in German, when translated too literally, will not be right in English. My task was to make it sound as natural in English as possible.

There were a number of instances where the context needed clarification or the translation was a little confusing, but in such instances I relied on the Daedalic guys (who were great to work with) to help me out.

I hope I've done it justice, particularly as the German version gained such consistently good reviews.

Thank you.

Wow so this mean the English script is finished now?

A good translator specialized in for instance subtitles (and of course a native English speaker) should be able to do all that, that's their job. But I can see your point, although I haven't changed my mind. The Daedalic developers should count themselves lucky to have you to perfect the translation.

Yes, that's what you'd expect, but it's clearly not the case or there wouldn't be so many script editing/polishing jobs of this nature. I don't want to undermine the great work that so many translators do, but you have to think about the time involved with the work. The original language dialogue may have taken months to write and a translator will be lucky if they get weeks to do the translation. Often they are working "blind" without seeing the lines in the context of the game because the game is probably not at a finished state when the translation is being worked upon. Then you have the weirdness of in-game text and dialogue and how it's presented to the translator. Sometimes it can be very easy to lose track of the order of lines when multiple answers are available or context-related sub-scenes are interjected. Someone translating subtitles for a film will have a much easier time of it, probably get more time to work on it and will likely have the finished film to work with.

Oh no, I assure you it's not true that subtitlers have it much easier, at least not in my own country.

Anyone now how well it did?

Since it's release we've heard the least amount of news lol.

You're saying that where you're from, subtitlers work from unfinished script pages that may be out of order without actually watching the movie/TV show they're subtitling? Somehow I doubt that.

I'm sure the job has its own challenges (need to keep it brief and readable, need to keep fairly close to the original since people will be listening to the audio as well, need to figure out what people are mumbling about if scripts/transcripts aren't available), but at least they can see what they're doing.

Calling in a good writer to polish and punch up a basic translation seems like a good idea to me. Like when Neil Gaiman did a rewrite of the English version of Princess Mononoke.

Which he did a perfect job of, the dialogue in that film was spot on.

Really? That's very interesting. Do tell me how things are organized in your country, I'm always willing to learn.