Language in the game.

[Lara Kroft Rus.3954]

Dear employees of ANet,As I have read, your choice of which languages will be in the game, and which are not, determined in what language the participants of the exhibition spoke in Germany.Sorry, but you made the wrong decision. Only the inhabitants of Germany, they spoke in their native language. But most of the guests spoke in a foreign language for them.Naturally, only those who speak fluent German, or in English, went there.

But not everyone has such a level of language knowledge. Someone who can translate the text, but can not communicate, he is lost, forgetting the words. They were prevented by the "language barrier" from coming to Germany, and not just to the exhibition.

Maybe you just do not know that Armenians, Georgians, Tajiks, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Moldovans, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Turkmen - use the RUSSIAN LANGUAGE for communication, with each other, instead of English.

[Dante.1763]

Im..confused about what you are trying to suggest/discuss here?

[Bloodstealer.5978]

I am guessing its another.. we wants a Russian language option... same thread has done the rounds most years.. and has been answered clearly each time by anet and the playerbase.. the cost to translate the whole game likely is the barrier if I recall.

[Ayrilana.1396]

Checked their post history. It looks like they want localization in the game for Russian even though the game isn’t marketed for there.

It costs money to do this and I believe there’s a recent post from Anet stating they currently do not have any plans to extend this out to other languages.

[Lara Kroft Rus.3954]

The game is necessary, the Russian language. Anet, lost a huge number of players who have Russian as a foreign language instead of English (I have listed the countries here).

For example, I communicate with you, through Google translator. Imagine what I feel in the game, where I can not understand anything. what they write and say?

[Lara Kroft Rus.3954]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Checked their post history. It looks like they want localization in the game for Russian even though the game isn’t marketed for there.

It costs money to do this and I believe there’s a recent post from Anet stating they currently do not have any plans to extend this out to other languages.

For sale in Russia. Just the English version is sold poorly. But the first Guild of War, which was localized in the Russian language, was sold well.

[Lara Kroft Rus.3954]

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:I am guessing its another.. we wants a Russian language option... same thread has done the rounds most years.. and has been answered clearly each time by anet and the playerbase.. the cost to translate the whole game likely is the barrier if I recall.

Friend, is translation into Spanish, French, or German worth less?

[Dante.1763]

@Lara Kroft Rus.3954 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:I am guessing its another.. we wants a Russian language option... same thread has done the rounds most years.. and has been answered clearly each time by anet and the playerbase.. the cost to translate the whole game likely is the barrier if I recall.

Friend, is translation into Spanish, French, or German worth less?

If there is more of a market those languages are worth more.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Lara Kroft Rus.3954 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:I am guessing its another.. we wants a Russian language option... same thread has done the rounds most years.. and has been answered clearly each time by anet and the playerbase.. the cost to translate the whole game likely is the barrier if I recall.

Friend, is translation into Spanish, French, or German worth less?

Why not Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, and so on? Because there are costs to adding this and maintaining it.

[Amaranthe.3578]

What the....

[Schnuschnu.9857]

Isn't GW2 blocked in Russia? I rember reading about this on the forums and reddit in the past. Also many languages (especially english, which many people learn) use the latin alphabet and most can understand this. The cyrillic alphabet isn't that much used around here (Europe&America). It would need seperate russian etc. servers for this. This is a bit expensive if the game is blocked in some of this regions. Not worth the effort.

[Dante.1763]

@Schnuschnu.9857 said:Isn't GW2 blocked in Russia? I rember reading about this on the forums and reddit in the past. Also many languages (especially english, which many people learn) use the latin alphabet and most can understand this. The cyrillic alphabet isn't that much used around here (Europe&America). It would need seperate russian etc. servers for this. This is a bit expensive if the game is blocked in some of this regions. Not worth the effort.

You know, i think you might be right, i remember reading about that a few times, and i do remember reading other games are blocked as well. Though i guess there are ways around it.

[segman.3560]

I don't think it's worth the effort and may actually cause more problems than profit.

[Schnuschnu.9857]

@Dante.1763 said:

@Schnuschnu.9857 said:Isn't GW2 blocked in Russia? I rember reading about this on the forums and reddit in the past. Also many languages (especially english, which many people learn) use the latin alphabet and most can understand this. The cyrillic alphabet isn't that much used around here (Europe&America). It would need seperate russian etc. servers for this. This is a bit expensive if the game is blocked in some of this regions. Not worth the effort.

You know, i think you might be right, i remember reading about that a few times, and i do remember reading other games are blocked as well. Though i guess there are ways around it.

But is it worth for Arenanet to market a game there if some fixes might work... for some time... maybe? I don't think so. And they won't help you working around an offical blockade. Should they now even support a language based on some poeple maybe working around this for some time? Another no. To much risk and costs.

[Ben K.6238]

Localizing in Russian is a risky move after the game has already been out 6 years, and the market is relatively small compared to western Europe and all of the English-speaking nations. Portuguese would probably be bigger at this point in time, and it's not vulnerable to political embargoes.

[Rhyse.8179]

Considering that GW2 has several canonical same sex relationships, I don't think Anet would even be allowed to market to Russia. It's no wonder they don't want to invest in it.

[Ashen.2907]

OP,

I understand your concerns here and even agree with them to a certain extent. Unfortunately, as nice as it would be to have the game embrace every customer's prefered language, it is not practical (according to statements made by Anet representatives). I hope that you can overcome this obstacle and continue to enjoy the game.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/670636/#Comment_670636

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:We have been asked in the past about supporting other languages. As others have pointed out in this thread, there is much more to localization than simply translating game content. Here are a few examples:

• The UI may need to be altered in size or presentation to accommodate different text, and may need to be adjusted from time to time as changes are brought to the game.
• Localized content would require constant monitoring to keep it at its top quality. (We have that now for FR, DE, and ES, where localization experts watch for in-game reports and forum threads and comments about needful changes)
• We would need to hire customer support representatives conversant in the language in question, to review and respond to tickets, and to assess in-game reports.

At this point, we find that supporting the four languages currently on offer is best from a development and business standpoint, and we do not have plans to offer Guild Wars 2 in any additional languages.

[miraude.2107]

Because of the propaganda law, GW2 would have to either completely rewrite, replace or delete Kasmeer and Marjory (can't promote the gay, think of the children~). If Blizzard and all their money can't release a twelve page comic about one of their heroes in Overwatch, I don't see Arenanet wanting to gamble on spending the money only to have it go for naught.

[Obtena.7952]

I hate to tell the OP this, but English is a Lingua Franca, even in Europe. Obviously there are places where the localized language of preference is Russian ... I'm willing to bet that GW2 is about as popular as Borat in the countries listed by the OP.

@Lara Kroft Rus.3954 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Checked their post history. It looks like they want localization in the game for Russian even though the game isn’t marketed for there.

It costs money to do this and I believe there’s a recent post from Anet stating they currently do not have any plans to extend this out to other languages.

For sale in Russia. Just the English version is sold poorly. But the first Guild of War, which was localized in the Russian language, was sold well.

I'm going to bet that Anet's experience with GW1 in the Russian Language is what lead them to the decision to NOT translate GW2 to russian.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@Lara Kroft Rus.3954 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:I am guessing its another.. we wants a Russian language option... same thread has done the rounds most years.. and has been answered clearly each time by anet and the playerbase.. the cost to translate the whole game likely is the barrier if I recall.

Friend, is translation into Spanish, French, or German worth less?

Of course they are if ANET have done their marketing right.. they know where more copies of the game have been sold, and apparently Russia is not it.Now of course after 6 yrs they may of sold a few more into Russia, but its still not significant enough to warrant the cost of getting the game translated once more.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@miraude.2107 said:Because of the propaganda law, GW2 would have to either completely rewrite, replace or delete Kasmeer and Marjory (can't promote the gay, think of the children~). If Blizzard and all their money can't release a twelve page comic about one of their heroes in Overwatch, I don't see Arenanet wanting to gamble on spending the money only to have it go for naught.

You have a good point there.. different countries have different laws and views on some topics so this may also be a barrier.

[phs.6089]

There are several Russian speakers streamers of GW2 each of them has stated many times, that game won't be translated, juts use wiki and translator if your English isn't good enough.GW2 never was blocked in Russia, it were amazon servers that got IP locked (login servers of GW2) for some reason not related to GW2 at all, they unblocked it.And guys here have a point. Game would never be allowed in Russia due to gay -relationship propaganda.

Russian speaking games learned Dota all starts(no russian lauguage) They were in Dota2 Beta withough knowing the language. Hell any MMO that comes out in Korea ,Japan and even China you can find lots of Russian speakers actually playing it and doing good. From the top of my head Revelation Online was in China with google translated hand made Eglish patch. Russian speakers were playing it with that horrible English translation.

[FyzE.3472]

I would not mind if the game was in English only. And Russian is my mother tongue. English is considered an international language (especially bad English)

Edit: I remember when a Russian server was added to League of Legends. It was a cringefest having sounds and announcements in-game, that you used to hear in English, changed to Russian.

[Menadena.7482]

@Obtena.7952 said:I hate to tell the OP this, but English is a Lingua Franca, even in Europe. Obviously there are places where the localized language of preference is Russian ... I'm willing to bet that GW2 is about as popular as Borat in the countries listed by the OP.

I agree. BTW, I am not saying that because it is my language of choice ... I play with linguistics as a hobby. The fact is that, with all the problems it has, english has been adopted as the default language for a lot of things. A lot of that is because 2 empires in the past few centuries used it.

Companies can not support every language obviously so they have to choose which ones to support. For example, Finnish is not a supported language so the Finns I know have to use another language in GW2 (I am guessing english as it is taught as a second language in schools).

The russian educational system strangely is not one of the things I have had dealings with. Do they not teach second languages over there? The supported languages are widely taught as second languages in other countries but the further you get from russia the less likely you are to run into a school that teaches russian.