Ren'Py Recommendations about bilingual (English/Spanish) releases / Recomendaciones sobre publicar un juego bilingüe (Inglés/Español)

[lamarcachis]

Hi everybody!

Well, this is a message in principle addressed to Spanish-speaking forum members, but I would appreciate any insight from everybody regardless of their native language.

My question is related to a RenPy game I'm preparing, which I've originally written in English. Being Spanish, I was wondering whether it would be a good idea to make the effort to also prepare a translated version. What would be your output? Do you think it would have a particular appeal to that potential audience? Or is may be too much work?

(PS. Sorry if a similar question had been already asked, I did not find that info in the forum...)
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Hola a todos!

En principio este mensaje está dirigido a los miembros hispanohablantes, aunque agradecería cualquier comentario de cualquiera independientemente de su idioma nativo.

Mi pregunta está relacionada con un juego RenPy que estoy preparando, que inicialmente he escrito en inglés. Siendo español, me estaba preguntando si sería buena idea que me tomara el trabajo de preparar también una versión traducida. ¿Qué opináis? ¿Pensáis que tendría un atractivo particular para esa audiencia potencial? ¿O a lo mejor me da demasiado trabajo?

(PS. Disculpad si ya se ha preguntado algo parecido, no lo he visto en los foros...)

 

[moskyx]

Hi everybody!

Well, this is a message in principle addressed to Spanish-speaking forum members, but I would appreciate any insight from everybody regardless of their native language.

My question is related to a RenPy game I'm preparing, which I've originally written in English. Being Spanish, I was wondering whether it would be a good idea to make the effort to also prepare a translated version. What would be your output? Do you think it would have a particular appeal to that potential audience? Or is may be too much work?

(PS. Sorry if a similar question had been already asked, I did not find that info in the forum...)
---------------

Hola a todos!

En principio este mensaje está dirigido a los miembros hispanohablantes, aunque agradecería cualquier comentario de cualquiera independientemente de su idioma nativo.

Mi pregunta está relacionada con un juego RenPy que estoy preparando, que inicialmente he escrito en inglés. Siendo español, me estaba preguntando si sería buena idea que me tomara el trabajo de preparar también una versión traducida. ¿Qué opináis? ¿Pensáis que tendría un atractivo particular para esa audiencia potencial? ¿O a lo mejor me da demasiado trabajo?

(PS. Disculpad si ya se ha preguntado algo parecido, no lo he visto en los foros...)

Don't understimate the work needed to make a proper translation: not only it will take a significative amount of time if you do it all by yourself (you'll be effectively writing 2 scripts), but you will also need to take extra care when fixing a typo or editing some lines in your original English version, as that will break the existing translations for those lines and you'll need to update them too. Also, if your game includes some complex mechanics or relies more on python functions than on ordinary ren'py language, some parts will become a coding nightmare to translate.

So I'd say focus on your English version and try to make it as polished as possible, as that's the one that will bring you more money (most likely), and let players create their own translations. There are quite a few users in this forum who offer machine translations into Spanish of every single ren'py game that gets uploaded here, and players don't seem to mind the lower quality of those translations as long as they are able to understand the basics of what's going on. Sure, they appreciate a good translation, but it's not that high on their priority list.

 

[lamarcachis]

Don't understimate the work needed to make a proper translation: not only it will take a significative amount of time if you do it all by yourself (you'll be effectively writing 2 scripts), but you will also need to take extra care when fixing a typo or editing some lines in your original English version, as that will break the existing translations for those lines and you'll need to update them too. Also, if your game includes some complex mechanics or relies more on python functions than on ordinary ren'py language, some parts will become a coding nightmare to translate.

So I'd say focus on your English version and try to make it as polished as possible, as that's the one that will bring you more money (most likely), and let players create their own translations. There are quite a few users in this forum who offer machine translations into Spanish of every single ren'py game that gets uploaded here, and players don't seem to mind the lower quality of those translations as long as they are able to understand the basics of what's going on. Sure, they appreciate a good translation, but it's not that high on their priority list.

Thank you very much for your message!
I see that the translation can indeed be too much work, so I will stick to the English version.