Perfect World INTL: Translation Updates

Per Daemonator:

Hi guys,

I really appreciate your understanding and we really apologize for the long wait but we're really working hard on getting the game up and in at least average to good English. As such, I'm posting information on the process that is undergone for the translations for the game.

Perfect World Translation Process

Phase 1:
The Chinese used for Perfect World is very complex even for avid Chinese language users. As such, translating the text into English takes a massive amount of time and careful consideration on the meaning and final words to be used. This is very much so for the names of Places, Monsters, NPCs and certain objects. A normal Chinese game with simple and commonly used words would take about half the time or even less to translate if compared to Perfect World. I have received many comments from local Chinese gamers that even they do not understand much of the text in the game. Translators will find it very difficult to translate if they are not very familiar with the game and the storyline.

Phase 1 consists of the first level of translation which means a group of translators goes through the entire Chinese text in Excel format and delegates the sections of text to be translated. Translation of place names, NPCs and monsters is done first so that all these can be standardised for all the other sections. This is one of the most excruciating parts of the process as the translators are required to first understand the text (many of the names are not commonly used), they may need to refer to online information, books, dictionaries and more to decide the closest match to the original.

It normally takes more than 1 person to actually decide the names. The decision to use Westernised names for the NPCs was so that they would be more easily identifiable for English oriented players from a wider base. Romanised Chinese names could still confuse certain players.

This phase decidedly took longer than expected so phase 2 went ahead while Phase 1 was being worked on still.

Phase 2:
This includes the translation for the in-game message system, quests/missions, descriptions, NPC text and others. While not as complex as translating the names, the amount of text that was to be translated was massive. As in Phase 1, without a proper understanding of the game, translation would be difficult. Translators are required to go through the game at least through the earlier levels to get a feel for the game. Much of the text would only come in at the middle and advanced stages of the game where the quests would be more complex and the storyline more developed.

The total number of lines of text that were translated numbers in around 98,000+++++ including names, descriptions and all. The translators literally worked day and night with only little time to rest. The translations went through at best speed since 6 months ago. Since we did not use any other versions of Perfect World for translations, everything was done using our own resources and we tried as best we could to keep true to the original version without loss of meaning.

Every translation of the quests and storyline needed to keep true to the standard given by the pre-translated names in Phase 1 so the names were not to be confused or different from each section.

The translations for the website are also done at this stage and referenced from the translations done. This includes the storyline, guides, descriptions and more. The non in-game portions such as the guides are quality checked and corrected before going live.

Phase 3:
This part of the process includes the first quality control check as well as the translation for the in-game graphics. The in-game graphic translations include the main launcher, loading screens, buttons, menus, in-game action graphic text and more. Due to the space limitation of the graphics, the English text had to be shortened significantly and we had to employ other methods such as reduce the text size, use abbreviations and others.

The text translations are also test integrated to view the translations in-game to check the text. Each line of text that was translated had to adhere to the text space limit for each line to avoid concatenation. The text which are found to have visible errors or are out of place are modified and reintegrated to test. This portion is very time consuming and requires a lot of modification.

Phase 4:
The grammatical errors are checked and modified as necessary by the translation team. This includes the process of relocating the text to grammar correction software, checked and reinserted into the main text file. All this is done line by line to ensure everything is done properly. All this is done while adhering to the text space limit.

Up until this point, there are still ongoing changes made to the translations including place names, monster names and others. This is done after considerations on the suitability of the names for the game.

I have also asked for assistance from forum members about the correction of grammar especially in the quests section. There is a large amount of text and it needs to be understandable.

Phase 5:
At this point, most of the translations are incorporated into the test game platform and the game client itself is being tested for bugs and other client or technical related problems. There were a few major bugs but they have already been resolved during the earlier stages. Progress in this phase depends heavily upon the game developer as their assistance is greatly required in preparing the game client. Completion of this phase will provide a stable Closed Beta client for production.


The translators for Perfect World have done a great job so far in the time-frame that they have. 6 months for a project of this scale is actually quite short in comparison. They've worked hard day and night to complete what they have so far and I would like to personally thank them for their efforts. Translation from Chinese to English is not easy and there tend to be many misconceptions and lost meaning through the translations but I believe that we will achieve a fairly good amount of original content transition. Even seasonsed Chinese language users have found the Chinese used in Perfect World to be difficult to understand.

Finally I would like to thank all of you once again for your kind support and understanding. Please bear with us for a little while longer and you will have a quality product which you can definitely enjoy.

Thank you.
Daemonator

I think this means that I'll be playing this about the same time as I get let into the Hellgate: London beta. In 2038. Or worse, in 2142 (which is when the 1.4 patch is scheduled to come out.) OH SNAP!

Anyhow, I finally succumbed and have started to download the Chinese version. I tried to get the JP version to work (since at least I wouldn't have to patch that) but seems that I can't actually get into the game. *sad* Oh well, moar waiting!!