French translation quirks and issues

[Cynoid]

Hello everyone. Since it's the release of the localization, I decided to give a try to the French one. And I have a few remarks, mostly on hero powers.

- Tombs of the damned :

Quand les Tombes des damnés entrent sur le champ de bataille, quittez-le et, au début de votre tour, invoquez un légionnaire Zombie sur le champ de bataille.

The "quittez-le" have absolutely no sense in this context whatsoever, and the text should be replaced by :

Quand les Tombes des damnés entrent sur le champ de bataille, le quittent, et au début de votre tour, invoquez un légionnaire Zombie sur le champ de bataille.

- Basic Nee'va hero power :

Toutes les créatures que vous jouez dans ce tour sont Rapides jusqu'à la fin du tour.

The actual text is unclear about the fact that your creatures gain Haste if they were already played this turn. I think a better translation would have been :

Toutes les créatures jouées [par vous] ce tour-ci sont Rapides jusqu'à la fin du tour.

- Coronis hero power :

Payez 2 points de vie. Invoquez un Corbeau Spirituel sur le champ de bataille. À la fin du tour, si vous avez infligé des dégâts au héros adverse, ajoutez un Emblème de force sur chacun de vos Corbeau des âmes.

The "Payez 2 points de vie." of Coronis hero power is not coherent with the "Payez 2 PV." from advanced Nefaros hero power. Also, the translation of Soul Raven is not coherent in the text. It should be replaced by :

Payez 2 PV. Invoquez un Corbeau Spirituel sur le champ de bataille. À la fin du tour, si vous avez infligé des dégâts au héros adverse, ajoutez un Emblème de force sur chacun de vos Corbeaux Spirituels.

- "Vague de pouvoir" (ie. Power Surge) does not have its rule text translated, even though its flavor text is. Probably because of the balance patch. The translation would be :

Gagnez un cristal de mana vide. Si vous avez 7 cristaux de mana ou plus, iochez une carte.

Oh, and it would make more sense if it was translated as "Vague de puissance" (as "puissance" is a scientific term related to energy, and with the mana/energy analogy...).


- Advanced Despina hero power : "(...)dont l'addition de son niveau et de son coût (...)" would be much better translated as "(...)dont la somme de son niveau et de son coût (...)".

Otherwise, while some expressions are a bit clunky, this is a rather fine job.

[Tooms]

Pretty much agree on every points...

- Tombs of the Damned: This one is a translation from the studio. No idea how they came up with such a translation, guessing it has to do with them not playing the game. And yes, your translation is the correct one, obviously.

- basic neeva hero power : "Les créatures que vous jouez ou avez déjà jouées pendant ce tour sont Rapides."
That was our original translation. Why they decided to change it , no clue, but again it has to do with them not knowing what they're translating.

- Coronis hero power: There I guess that's our bad. We were hesitating on the Ravens translation, so I guess we forgot to correct one of those and both our suggestions ( corbeau spirituel/des âmes) ended up in the description. They didn't see that I suppose.

- Power surge: We decided to use "pouvoir" for every power-related card in Dominion. Puissance might be better? I'm undecided. Can still be changed I suppose.

- Tempting Lure: Agreed. "Somme" works better than "Addition".


I'll be adding in this thread stuff of my own later this week-end after reviewing all the cards and comparing them to our original translated suggestions, barring the patched/new cards.

I must say I am annoyed the ones they changed have been made worse and the ones that could have been improved upon were untouched, considering they had 99% of the work done for them.

[ivko]

Basic Neeva hero power - that's because we changed the English version, so it's not their fault.

[Tooms]

Basic Neeva hero power - that's because we changed the English version, so it's not their fault.

I know, although in our first translation we took the liberty of already modifying the description in french so that the power was clearer for everyone. I can understand why they changed since they can't know what could bring confusion to the players.

I'll compile what I think needs changing and submit it to the other french readers here.

Should I submit the font issues as well? I'm guessing you didn't have time to adapt all the ingame boxes for the lenght of some translated texts. Just need to know if it's worth reporting of if it's gonna fix itself eventually.

[ivko]

If by font issues, you mean text spilling out of boxes, then don't bother reporting. Enough people will report these, and we're already looking for more such problems ourselves.

If you mean some characters look wrong, do let me know.

Thanks for the help! I always strive to make Spellweaver perfect, if I'd known they would do such a sloppy job, I wouldn't have used this studio.

[Tooms]

Yeah I meant text spilling out of boxes sorry. Alright, will do as you suggest.

You don't have to apologize but yeah, reading from the other communities it seems they have even more issues than us. I'm willing to bet it is because the french translation was "fully" done when they recieved it so the mistakes should be less numerous. I am aware we're also biaised toward our initial work and we usually know what we're translating as players ourselves. But they didn't seem to understand why we strayed from the litteral translations sometimes wether it was to make the card clearer or to make the flavour text stick to the spirit of the card. Those changes are a bit annoying when you're the ones that initially picked your brains to find a good alternative.

I hope I'm wrong though, but if I'm not, I think you expressing concerns about the work they've done to them isn't unwarranted. And that's the polite way to put it.

Gonna cross check with our old google doc now. And possibly submit suggestions for the new cards names (some of the incarnates translation are a bit too clunky).


P.S: Unrelated question. When did the tooltip explanations find their ways into the card texts themselves? I only jsut realized that. Things such as shock or freeze explained twice: once on the card and once on the tooltip? I find it a bit heavy on the cards, especially when your language's translation usually results in longer sentences. Was it to make it easier on the new players?

[ivko]

As far as I remember, shock and freeze texts were always duplicated like that. The reason being as you suggested, to make the card more immediately clear without needing to look at the hint boxes.

[Tooms]

As far as I remember, shock and freeze texts were always duplicated like that. The reason being as you suggested, to make the card more immediately clear without needing to look at the hint boxes.

Must be me getting old. But yeah, I suppose I see it more in the french version, with the longer texts.

[Tooms]

Here is a link to the french community translations for anyone interested. There was some errors left in it, although most of it was left unchanged.

Missing translations:

-Shrines: Level OR mana is untranslated.

-Incarnates texts: obvious reasons as to why. We'll get to them with everyone's suggestions

-Fame board: "Your current level/ level/ Unlock title" are missing translations. Respectively "Votre niveau actuel/ Niveau/ Débloquer le titre: "

-Quick search bar: "Quick search..." needs to be translated into "Recherche rapide..."

-the End turn hourglass: which should translate into "Fin du tour" or "Finir votre tour"

-the attack all/cancel all attack buttons:

- The Deploy/Combat/Reinforce/End phases:

Unnecessary modifications:

-Ancient Treant: Was changed from "Ancien Tréant" to "Tréant ancien". I still prefer our suggestion.
Its flavour text got changed from " 'Salut vieille branche' les met 'tréant' colère..." - Gibo, à Roni to a litteral translation of the english pun that doesn't mean much.

-Flesh Sculptor: Flavour text was changed from our take on a pun to the litteral translation of the famous saying. We suggested "La beauté naît dans l'oeil de celui qui la dépouille." Up for debate, but it had the benefit of being a play on words.

-Call to Heavens: Was translated into "Appel angélique". We suggested "Appel aux Cieux" to avoid the "angélique" redundancy on the card. I still like our suggestion better.

-Angelic song: our "Au début de votre prochain tour, sacrifiez la Berceuse Angélique." got changed into "Au début de votre tour, détruisez la Berceuse angélique" which is needlessly more confusing (as to when the song sacrifices itself). Not to mention they decided to change most of the " sacrifice itself" into "destroy it" on all the cards for no real reasons, not a big deal though.

-Angelic might and cards with +X/+X or -X/-X buffs/debuffs: A lot of those cards descriptions were needlessly simplified. "Blessed creature has X" was translated into "Cette créature a" as opposed to our suggestion "La créature bénie gagne" (or "Une créature perd" in the case of Noxious fumes). I believe the use of gagne/perd (gains/loses) is a lot better and keeps it cohesive with other cards such as Ambush strike (in which they didn't turn the "gain" into a "has" ).

-Implants: Same issue. "La créature implantée gagne" or "Cette créature gagne" works better than "Cette créature a".

-Ancestor's guide: Ditto. "Il gagne" instead of "Il a".

Translation errors (or clunky ones):

-Assassinate: "Détruisez une créature avec 2 ATQ au moins." is wrong and should be "Détruisez une créature avec une ATQ de 2 ou moins."

-Dark Portal: Their translation of the card's power is a bit clunky and confusing. This was our suggestion: " Au début de votre tour, le Portail Ténébreux gagne +<Energy:{0}> et vous perdez autant de PV que son énergie. Cherchez ensuite une carte Démon dans votre deck d'un niveau inférieur ou égal à cette énergie et placez-la dans votre main. Mélangez votre deck.", which is, to me at least, less confusing.

-Implants (again): Their "Au début du tour de celui qui le contrôle placez un Emblème de faiblesse dessus." is confusing and suggests you put a weakness emblem on the implant not the card its attached to. "Au début du tour de son contrôleur, placez un Emblème de faiblesse sur la créature implantée." was our suggestion and is a lot clearer.

-Nightbringer: "Lorsque le Porte-nuit fait se déclare assaillant". Obviously someone forgot to erase the "Fait" here, which comes from our suggested "Lorsque le Porte-nuit fait partie de votre attaque". On a side note, they decided to turn all the "fait partie de votre attaque" into "se déclare assaillant" (ie Ramg, Treant, Fae..) which isn't a particularly better translation, up for debate I suppose.

-Rahki Tribe Mystic: "Lorsque le Mystique Rahki etc...", the mystic is missing its full title in the description (Mystique de la tribu Rahki). That's an error in our original translation though. Slipped through their net.

-Succubus: "le succube" in the description. "la succube", obviously.

-Totem of celerity: "... pour qu'il soit Rapide sur ce tour." Remove the extra "sur" here and yeah, that's french.

-Word of Pain: Part of the description is missing: "You gain that much life." => "Vous gagnez autant de PV"

-Achievements: some of them are clunky or need to be coherent with the use of an article or not. I suggest not using any article for those.

Roi de l'évasion
Homme de fer
Transcendé
Bringer of Decay: I would pick Défausseur over Décomposeur.
Sorcier Spectral
Maître de guerre : Additionnally the "^" ended up on the "T" rather than the "i"
Grand maître: Obtenez au moins 1250 points de classement.


Vétéran des Épreuves
Champion des Épreuves
Imbattable: Remportez 7 parties amicales ou de classement à la suite.
Explorateur
Tisse-sorts: Débloquez le titre de Gloire Tisse-sorts en atteignant le niveau 35.
Main de la Justice: Collectionnez/Obtenez une copie de chaque carte Ordre du set de L'Aube vaillante
Prodige du Savoir
Enfant de la Forêt
Porteur de la flamme
Seigneur du Dominion (rather than the feminine title they used referring to Despina)
Prince de la nécromancie

-Tutorial: The text of the menu is already badly translated. It should rather translate into something like "Apprenez à utiliser vos ressources et vos cartes en combat. etc.."

During the basic tutorial, they kept the guide's name as "Spark", which should be "Étincelle" from the translated spark of initiative.

They translated "raiders" (the opponent) as "Braqueurs" which is ridiculous, and they already were referred as "Envahisseurs" in the tutorial's menu which is the correct translation.

The text help from Spark after playing Knight-escort is also badly translated and should be something like "Ce pouvoir permet au Chevalier-escorte de bloquer pendant le tour de l'ennemi même après avoir attaqué pendant votre tour."

The text help from Spark after the gigantodon enters play and Namir's pop-up says "Ne la laissez pas vous berner ..."
It should be "Ne le laissez pas..." , as its referring to Namir and not the creature.

-In the friend menu: The trial average stats read "XX gagne" and should be "XX victoires"

-On the monthly leaderboard: "Gagnées" and "Perdues" should be "Victoires" and "Défaites"

-Quick Unbind: Should read "Extraction rapide" instead of "Rapide extraire".

-In the deck editor/collection menu: the Select all key should read "Tout sélectionner" instead of "Sélectionner tout".

-In the market place:
All the boxes translated into "boîte" got their "^" on the "t" instead of the "i".
They translated the "Bundles/packages" into "Paquets" which is both wrong and silly since it is the same word we used to translate "packs". I suggest using the word "Forfait(s)" for this instance.

New cards names suggestions:

-Dwarf spellbreaker: I'd rather have "Brise-sorts nain" than "Nain briseur de sort". It is more coherent with our previous translations.

-Runelit Incarnate: "Incarnation runique" would be my suggestion.

-Valorsworn Incarnate: " Incarnation du courage/de la foi" ?

-Lifeforce Incarnate: "Incarnation de la force vitale?"

-Deathbound Incarnate: "Incarnation d'outre-tombe?"

-Powerlust Incarnate: "Incarnation du pouvoir"?

-Flameborn Incarnate: "Incarnation du feu/des flammes"?

Here's what I gathered so far, including what Cynoid already mentioned earlier. The rest was either satisfying to me, or unchanged from our version. I'm sure I missed some, waiting on more people to take a look at this.

[Cynoid]

My 2 cents (not in order) :

- Flesh Sculptor : Very subtle pun, I like it, even if it would be a bit difficult to get.

- Ancient Treant : Oh god, that pun is SO bad. Please, do not include it. No, really.

- Incarnate translation : I actually like better the actual ones (beside "Lueur de Rune incarnée", because, I mean, what?), but it's up for debate I suppose.

- Dwarf Spellbreaker : Agreed, "Brise-sorts nain" would be more coherent.

- Word of Pain : wait, they manage to FORGET half the card? Wow, just... wow.

- Angelic Song : Technically speaking, they are right about the "Au début de votre tour". If you manage to avoid having the Angelic Song sacrifice itself the turn after it is played (which could be possible with others extension), their text becomes more accurate. And accuracy should be valued other clarity in rules text.