Amateurish Finnish translation

By Whitmire, in Death Angel

I'm sorry to post this, but the Finnish translation can be described as amateurish at best. Frankly, I'm now sorry that I bought the Finnish version instead of waiting for the English one to be published, but I was hasty to get this game as soon as possible, and the English version has suffered some delays.

The translation is by no means up to the standards one would expect in a FFG game. There are lots of grammatical mistakes and strange word choices. Furhermore, the fluff hasn't been familiar to the translator, which makes the game rather ridiculous at times and makes you only wonder what the English choice of words must've been. And this game is heavy on some quality fluff, which the translation does not carry through to the Finnish player.

This is not a subjective rant ("waah, my favourite book/story/game hasn't been translated as I would've wanted") but an objective observation: the grammar is off, there are typos and poor word choices and line divisions, and the translation simply leaves the idea that it is not very well thought-out... and Space Marines are called "Space Marines" in Finnish, which I find it a strange mix of Finnish and English (strangely everything else has been translated).

I'm probably going to buy the English version as soon as it hits the shelves, so I feel robbed of 25 euros. What do you think - could I get a reimbursement for a poor translation? There is nothing wrong in the game per se, so it is playable. It's just annoying as heck when you come by the same strange wordings or mistakes over and over again.

This also makes me wonder what the other translations are like. The game has been published at least in Spain, right? What are your observations on other translations?

I knew from the get-go I wasn't touching that translation, not with a 10 metre pole(axe). Popped to Fantasiapelit in Oulu earlier this week, from a brief chat with the staff I got the impression the translated version was very rushed (yet still came out earlier than the English version, which they still don't show as in stock sad.gif ).

From the rules themselves, my pet peeve was "geenivoro", which utterly fails to invoke the horror of the genestealers.

What, "gene pilferers" do not strike fear into you? :P

I have had to "retranslate" geenivoro in my mind. Instead of thinking of the rather comical sounding voro as "pilferer", I think of it as an abbreviation of "vorous", which works rather well and creates a rather ominous mental image of "eaters of genes".

But yeah, I should never have bought the translation. Bummer.

IIRC, the Finnish version of Space Crusade had them as "geenihirviö" (said game too deep in the stack to pull out just to check) which is essentially retranslated as "gene monster", while not quite there, at least gives the impression of something inhuman, alien.

Heh, send me a PM if you want to sell me your version of SC. ;)

I remember reading about "geeninsyöjät" (gene-eaters) in the past as well. And yeah, "geenihirviö" (gene monster) sounds rather familiar too.

Yet they didn't translate Space Marine .. but "geenivoro", c'mon!

I'm not sure if the words Space Marine are not protected by some weird GW's IP policy. You never know with them :D

I'm too a fan of either translating all the names or none (to keep you in the know). I just wonder if there's ever going to be a Polish version :D I would be more than happy to help FFG in the translation process. Of any game for that matter :)