German translation is horrible with lots of mistakes
Hey there,
so I'm one of those Grammar Nazis, mostly because it's my job to be - I work as a translator, mostly for English and German. I'm also an avid fan of science fiction and horror stuff, so you may understand why I'm totally into DBD. I've grown up bilingual and I read all my books, play all my games and watch all my movies and shows in their original language as long as I speak that language, which is - for most games - English. But I, as a German, have German friends of course. And they keep telling me how horrible the German translation of DBD is whenever I'm trying to get them to play, so I took a look at it myself... and yeah. They're quite right, and I don't think most of them meant the typos, spelling mistakes, capitalization errors (yes, we Germans love caps) but the general translation itself. It sounds from wooden and artificial to downright awkward.
That's something I personally can't stand, especially when it ruins a pretty nifty game in the process, because most Germans don't know more than a few words in English, so they absolutely depend on the translation of the game. Not everyone gives a rat's bottom about typos, spelling and similar, but some people actually do. And I can't stand the idea that the game looks like it was translated by an underpaid non-native speaker, because most people will instantly think that the game itself sucks when they see crappy translations. I'm guessing it was translated the usual way - raw text was sent to some translation office where it was copied into SDL Trados Studio without any kind of context or even a basic idea what kind of atmosphere the texts were supposed to invoke.
I think this actually belongs in the wish list forum, because I honestly, really wish someone with something to say will read this and question the translation, maybe even re-do it for some aspects of the game. Hell, I'll translate it for free for you, because it's really not that much text to begin with.
But please, share some of the game's great verbal atmosphere with those who only speak German, and don't scare them off with amateurish translations.