Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please, let us choose not to translate names in other localizations

Hi,
I realised that in any localization other than English, such as Spanish, the character and city names are translated. Ex: Shadowheart -> "Corazón Sombrío" or Baldur´s Gate: "Puerta de Baldur", which sound horrible to be honest.

Would it be possible to add an option to choose to avoid translating cities and character names?

Thanks in advance

Im affraid that would require whole new pack of subtitles. :-/

But i feel you ...
"Baldurova Brána" or "Brána Balduru" (wich imply completely different things, but our translators seems to be unable to pick wich should be used) both sounds just as horrible, if not even worse, in my language.

I feel you haha.

The thing is i found a mod to fix this for Portuguese, so it shouldn´t be that difficult :S

Schmutzige Harry and Luke le Marcheur du Ciel both approve of this message.

My language never gets localisations, because anyone that speaks it, prefers English anyway. I certainly do. They tried for a bit, years ago, with Assassin's Creed #somehting and Command & Conquer 3. And holy crap, are those translations mood killers.
"Uw oogstmachine wordt aangevallen!" - Piss off, game.

Polish translation of Baldur's Gate1&2 tended to translate names as well, but I thought it worked rather well. I remember running into D&D novel translated to polish and I was put off immediately by "underdark" being written in english.

It's true, though, that translation of names can be tricky. One need to translate not only the meaning, but the feeling behind the name as well. Writing is basic enough in BG3 that I don't think it would be a problem, but when I looked at Polish translation of Pillars of Eternity I found it unbearable. That was the game, though, for which I had to dust of english dictionary and have it by my side when playing. No wonder, I found Obsidian's writing awkward, until I learned english well enough to play their games in native language.

I was shocked - and cried out "Na młot Moradina!" - to see Underdark in the Polish 5ed PHB. I've known it as "Podmrok" since the early 90s.
LOL!
Thanks for the giggles. The first sounds like a pr0n flick :P
As to the latter - I see we are skirting Bootleg Copy territory.

It's also kind of hard to properly pull off with fantasy, as well. In the Dutch version of The Hobbit for example; goblins are translated to Aardmannen; literally meaning Earth-men.

I know what to imagine with a Goblin, but I have never ever heard of an Earthman. I just don't get it. There's no such thing as an Earthman in our folkloreeither; it's just... A word they chose and I cannot for the life of me understand why.
Gnomes are oftentimes translated as 'Kabouters', which is accurate in a sense. You know, for Garden Gnomes, except in our folklore those Gnomes are way smaller, around the size of a Smurf. So it feels stupid weird to read about Gnomes in Dutch, when D&D-style Gnomes are intended. We have no distinction between Wizards, Mages, Sorcerers in our language either; we couldn't make that distinction if we tried.

Luckily for us, D&D books aren't translated in Dutch either. So, at the table, there is no confusion. We will speak Dutch but use English terminology for everything; no one says 'kabouter' and no one casts 'Steenhuid' or 'afschuwelijke verwelking' nonsense like that.

Orcs/Goblins being "Earthmen" is an interesting choice of word!
But not outrageous, as Tolkien in his various (often contradictory) writings does have them as "born of mud" as one of the many manners orcs came into existence. Hence its use in the LotR movies.

I get that, but in The Hobbit, that isn;t explained. Also, they translated Orc into Ork, which doesn't have my issue above. I get it when they say 'Ork'

That said. No one said Orc or Goblin here, prior to Tolkien, and the translation was probably done well before things like Warhammer and D&D came into existence - whereas I myself came after. So, my complaint is probably a little unfair.

Some BG 1 translations into German were not done until today e.g. Peldvale and Larswood or some locations had makeshift translations (Red Wizard Forest, Mutamin's Garden) or even no name at all (several locations north- or southwest of the map). At least with the vanilla versions.

Compare
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/World_Map

with
https://yiya.de/games/baldursgate/html/bg_wmap.htm

I like how they just added an L to Nashkel to make it more German.

Edit: The English map here is a little unfair, as this is not the map as ever shown in-game, this is edited for clarity. Things like 'Mutamins Gardem' don't come with a name in-game in the English version, either. The German map is actually spot-on the same, just Germanisher.

Haha, yes, but with the EEs it was the other way around. The same is true for Atkatla. It became Athkatla again. Peanuts. The industry needs more people with lore understanding and native speakers for good translations.

Let's take GW 2 Caudecus Beetlestone as a more neutral example. Literally translated Caudecus "Käferstein", but that's bullshit and so was left in the original English, I assume. I can only remember very vaguely that his last name had something to do with the construction of the city "Beetltun". So I did some research and did a little genealogy. Anyway, a reasonable German translation would have been "Caudecus Büttelstein" and the city "Büttelhausen".

But hey, most translators work unfortunately also only "Dienst nach Vorschrift" (work-to-rule? / duty by the book?). Whoever said English is the easier language. I sometimes doubt it.

Fun Fact: When I suggested this on the forum back then, it was a) not accepted and b) many others asked if we would be compensated for our volunteer translation work, since it is actually Arenanet's job. Then my contribution was completely switched to "invisible". Only I could see it. It was no longer visible to the public...

I like the sound of that.

Its certainly better than our "podtemnota" :-/

Service by prescription.

I'll never say that. English is quite an irregular language, and how you write things don't comply with how you say things: Through, though, tough, plough, etc.

Personally I rather dislike German, even though I can usually get away with just speaking Dutch in an exaggerated German accent. But, with all its annoying Grammar rules, German is fairly tough to learn. Also, you can speak crappy English in the UK and no one bats an eye. Speak crappy German in Germany and they don't bat an eye either - becasue they're staring at you intensely and angrily.