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Correcting the horrible English in the game

SailSurferSailSurfer Posts: 8Member Beginner
Suggestions
Hello Papaya,
I am an English major with an emphasis on Creative Writing.  While playing through the various aspects of this game, I am noticing an atrocious amount of typos, grammar errors, and even incorrect entries to quests and other dialogue.  I understand that this is due to the game being translated (badly) from Japanese and that these errors are due more to the programs used for translation than anything else.
However, such errors in a game that is being marketed to English-speaking players who have already seen the game fail (at least twice) due to poor management, are troubling to players.  Incorrect quests can lead to frustrations of new (or long-away returning) players that can lead to a decision to stop playing the game.  New players may see such horrible English as a lack of dedication to cater to the language group you are marketing.  Many players new and old may simply stop playing.  Others may see the lack of dedication as a reason to not support the game that doesn't seem to want to support the language it uses.  This leads to a loss of income due to players not using the in-game credit shop.  I may be over-reaching here but this is a possibility of what led to the downfall of Uncharted Waters Online over its run.  Dedicated players want a dedicated management team that present them with a clean copy of a game that doesn't require constant questioning in chats or pouring through outdated online resources like Wiki and Ivyro trying to find the correct solution to a quest that is poorly written.
I could go on forever about this but I believe I've made my point.  Now to the suggestion (since this is a suggestion thread, after all):  I would love to volunteer my time to edit and correct the dialogue in the game as well as fact check and correct mistakes in the dialogue and quest areas of the game.  I want to see this game succeed where so far it has failed and I'm willing to put my time up to make that happen.  I don't see it as a waste of time if we can correct the errors and make the game thrive again.  True, correcting this won't correct all the issues people have with the game, but it will make a huge dent in those players negative opinions.  Please, consider this and my request seriously.  You may, of course, contact me through my account on this website.
Thank you for your time and attention in this matter.

Comments

  • ReziliaRezilia Posts: 0Member Beginner
    They likely won't give one single person the privilege to do this. Rather, it's best to make a thread with those corrections which they can refer to later.


    1. Find out which thread is best to post the thread in. Captain's Logbook, Suggestions, Bug Report, or General Discussions. Do you see this as more of a help to other players (CL), an update to the game (S), an error that needs to be fixed (BR), or something that fits in neither of those categories (GD)?

    2. Make sure you list the quest, area, NPC, and so on which you're correcting. Provide screenshots of the dialogue if you can, or otherwise post the lines of the dialogue as they are given by the NPC, then list what the lines should be (don't just type paragraphs; the team needs to know which old lines to replace with which new lines). Find out what the character limit is for each dialogue line (you can count them in chat to guesstimate this) and make sure that your new lines are within that limit.

    3. Release these corrections all in the same thread, with each post being a large batch. Make sure that they are well-organized, perhaps providing a Table of Contents and To-Do List in the first post of the thread. If other players are willing to help you, make them aware that you know but don't completely rely on them to meet deadlines. Also, don't let this effort get in the way of your normal gameplay - do it as you go along, not as if it's a major grind or job.

    4. Lastly, understand that your own translations might not be completely accurate. English translations/corrections are always seen as best efforts, and are appreciated for the fact that accuracy has been attempted, so don't get too worried about perfection.


    I wish you luck. :)
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