Translation Debt: The Narrative Slayer for Elite Dangerous?

TheSisko

TheSisko
Like many, I've been dismayed about the axing of all lore and narrative in the game. What once was a vibrant galaxy featuring plots from superpowers, factions, Aegis and even Thargiods, has, IMO, become a dead husk where the story of the week is variations of "Why was mining nerfed!?!?" and "What will happen to hotspots this week??!"

I can't help wondering if the cost of translating all of those Galnet stories, Community Goals, Interstellar Initiatives and anything else narrative related was one of the reasons why Frontier has made this decision.

You can't just type out English Text, go to Google Translate (or your #1 translation tool), copy-paste and click on the translate button.....well, you could but mistakes could be made in the translation process which could be offensive to native speakers of that language. Hence the need for professional translators, and since they like to eat and drink- they require to be paid good coin.

Do any other Frontier games feature on-going storylines, like Elite did with CGs etc? Maybe someone looked at the Translation Debt for Elite Dangerous, compared it to the Translation Debt of the other games and thought "Wait! Why are we spending X amount of money telling players that Hudson is a criminal?* We don't do this for our other games!"

* Which he so is. ;)
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
The reason they don't spend time on it is the same as with everything else. The game is paused while they work on Odyssey. My advice would be to pause playing it so you aren't too burned out when it launches.
 

DNA-Decay

DNA-Decay
Most threads engage with this issue as though there was some faceless organisation making these decisions. It's not. It's specific people.

We are not permitted to identify the decision makers, because that is classed as harrasment.

I put it to you that identifying the decision makers could only be viewed as harrassment, if those decisions were universally objected to.
 

Enderby

E
FD think not bothering with current game and saying how exciting new FPS is is somehow gonna resonate and appeal to us
"Don't worry suckers, we aren't working on that game you like cos we developing some bolt on naff fps. So, honestly, think yourselves lucky cos even tho we gave up on that, we want you to buy and love this. And we're really excited about it."
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
I'm sure there was a cost associated with producing the narrative. I think the uncoupling of the narrative from in game events (CGs, goids, guardians) rendered the exercise less than attractive for continuing the cost.
 

Pristine_Bump

Pristine_Bump
The votes will come at the till

Personaly I still find ever new narrative and roles expanding but thats dependent on me and those i assosiate with I wont buy the "new" bolt on till folk I trust and YT point me in that direction
 

CMDR Tony

C
DNA-Decay said:
Most threads engage with this issue as though there was some faceless organisation making these decisions. It's not. It's specific people.

We are not permitted to identify the decision makers, because that is classed as harrasment.

I put it to you that identifying the decision makers could only be viewed as harrassment, if those decisions were universally objected to.
Click to expand...
We live in such an emotionally fragile age.
 

Schmack

Schmack
TheSisko said:
Like many, I've been dismayed about the axing of all lore and narrative in the game. What once was a vibrant galaxy featuring plots from superpowers, factions, Aegis and even Thargiods, has, IMO, become a dead husk where the story of the week is variations of "Why was mining nerfed!?!?" and "What will happen to hotspots this week??!"

I can't help wondering if the cost of translating all of those Galnet stories, Community Goals, Interstellar Initiatives and anything else narrative related was one of the reasons why Frontier has made this decision.

You can't just type out English Text, go to Google Translate (or your #1 translation tool), copy-paste and click on the translate button.....well, you could but mistakes could be made in the translation process which could be offensive to native speakers of that language. Hence the need for professional translators, and since they like to eat and drink- they require to be paid good coin.

Do any other Frontier games feature on-going storylines, like Elite did with CGs etc? Maybe someone looked at the Translation Debt for Elite Dangerous, compared it to the Translation Debt of the other games and thought "Wait! Why are we spending X amount of money telling players that Hudson is a criminal?* We don't do this for our other games!"

* Which he so is. ;)
Click to expand...
This reminds me of an instrument in a lab I visit that has an error message "something bad happened". It's translated from another language.
 

CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost

C
TheSisko said:
…
I can't help wondering if the cost of translating all of those Galnet stories, Community Goals, Interstellar Initiatives and anything else narrative related was one of the reasons why Frontier has made this decision.
…
Click to expand...

I think the main reasons for stopping GalNet, CGs and Interstellar Initiatives was the cost for the authors in addition the planing and deploying of theses things. Maybe all the resources have been transferred to the next paid patch/DLC/Elite game.

In addition to that a lot of players complained about GalNet - how it had no connection to the game, how it was pointless as nothing happened in game that players could see and interact with.
FDev probably was happy to comply. They even mentioned that in their explanation why they stopped GalNet articles.

And automatic translations can be funny and difficult to understand, but I never read an automatic translation that was insulting. Translation is difficult as it not only requires good understanding of the two languages involved, but also good understanding of the topic that gets translated.
Even translations made by humans can be hard to understand, if the translator is not familiar with the topic and then uses the "wrong" choice if multiple options for a word are available.
(I play this game in English, because the German translation was/is at times confusing - not a problem of Elite Dangerous alone, but an issue a lot of games have.)
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Translation is certainly a cost for these things, though for CGs the majority of the text was on a template so it only needed a couple of new paragraphs translating each time.

I think the problem is more with other non-text requirements.

In 2018 they did a lot of stories without in-game impact. Then one of those stories was popular enough to be taken seriously and have player groups get further interest in it, and Frontier said "No! Bad writers! No producing stories that the players get interested in. That scares us! They might stumble across Raxxla while on their wild goose chases!" and put a stop to that.

Their policy then was to only have stories tied to immediately visible in-game events. The Interstellar Initiatives were good - but all required significant one-off technical effort:
- a pair of moving dockable megaships and some new modules
- the addition of several new systems, stations, megaships, Thargoid attacks, a new engineer, etc.
- an entire new BGS state and a couple of new commodities
- a new generation ship
(and of course all of them had CGs as well)

...and of course that's several teams who really need to be developing Odyssey, so that was stopped as well, without even any of the "background" stories to cover its place.

I agree things like translation would be a significant cost for things like regular player-submitted articles just due to the volume, but should be relatively small for their in-house stuff.
 

Techmonkey

T
Schmack said:
This reminds me of an instrument in a lab I visit that has an error message "something bad happened". It's translated from another language.
Click to expand...
I see it every day at work. Most HMIs were translated from English by Google translator, and it is amusing to irritating so sometimes I have to switch to English to comprehend what the integrator was trying to tell me.
 

Michael Whatever

M
I believe Elite Dangerous supports six languages.

Professional human translators via an on-line bureaux (ie translated.com) will charge about £20.00 for 200 words. So less than £150 all done. I'm sure this could be reduced by shopping around or finding a subscription service.

Given the (in)frequency of narrative content this expense does not seem prohibitive. (I can't imagine that it makes financial sense to do this translation “in-house”.)

Of course, there must be other expenses involved. Community goals and interstellar initiatives would require developer input and management resource. Even Galnet stories have to written to be consistent with lore and actively planned if they are to be part of an overall directed narrative.

In practice, I suspect it is the ongoing direct in-house cost of implementing the changes and managing this content that represents an overhead or workload that has been re-directed, downsized or abandoned. That FD are not prepared or able to ( efficiently) maintain this functionality is a shame. It adds to the regular accusations of little commitment to the game in it's current form.


I fully accept that what I perceive as a shame, may of course, turn out to be inspired streamlining of limited resources - in which case, I will deny everything.
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Heh, never thought of that but that is likely quite a cost factor. Not sure if it's really worth the expenditure - Galnet is supposed to be a bit "procedural" with the galaxy evolving as the game is played. You can't really expect a game dev to make an universal translation machine or pay themselves poor for ever changing story bits. If they had a subscription model maybe.
 

VR jefranklin18

VR jefranklin18
If that's the case, then I am pretty unsympathetic and it is just poor planning. I would have hoped that they set aside an annual budget for translations across all their portfolio, which ED got an allocation of to cover in-game updates and Galnet translations.

At least that's how I would have managed it.
 

Luponator

L
Ian Doncaster said:
Their policy then was to only have stories tied to immediately visible in-game events. The Interstellar Initiatives were good - but all required significant one-off technical effort:
  • a pair of moving dockable megaships and some new modules
  • the addition of several new systems, stations, megaships, Thargoid attacks, a new engineer, etc.
  • an entire new BGS state and a couple of new commodities
  • a new generation ship
(and of course all of them had CGs as well)

...and of course that's several teams who really need to be developing Odyssey, so that was stopped as well, without even any of the "background" stories to cover its place.
Click to expand...
In short, it had content developed, and that was considered superfluous.
 

CMDR Harada

CMDR Harada
I don't think it was the cost of translating, it was other behind the scenes issues.

They had to coordinate with new releases, like a new triple hot spot, Tharg sightings, Princess Bluehair making a speech, or a new CG.. these had to work with the existing game features. Setting up CGs required work on some level, as did new Tharg encroachments.. So the Dev team had to modify things to match. Maybe the small mods required to do that took too many man-hours..

The game sure seems silent without them.
 

Xious

Xious
Not being a big fan of the lore myself, I can't really tell the difference in the game.

Not a fan of Power Play really.... at all.
 
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