Blogs - Hyeron

When you set to work on something as trivial and crucial (sure it's an oxymoron, so what?) as a translation, there are a few things you should keep in mind.
A. The original is not perfect.
B. You are not perfect.
C. Your work is not perfect.

With those in mind, I am still baffled by the sheer chutzpah of some people. I won't pretend I don't leave a typo or two in my translations. I'd be lying to myself and to all the people who ever saw one, from POV to Calendra's Cistern, The Dark Mod or more recently Monster RPG 2. I'm neither perfect nor a Merriam-Webster on feet. Still, I can NOT understand how some people dare abuse the trust of those who took weeks, months, sometimes years to create a game. And the practice is so widely spread, from AAA titles such as The Elder Scrolls to indie games such as Amnesia or - once again - Monster RPG 2, it's almost painful to see.

We've all been noobs in our time, while coding, translating, playing with html/css, whatever. But how many of us are the kind of dumbfucks that'll go ahead and say "Look, I'm good, I'll do it for you and you can spread it around" while not even knowing half the basics?

Amnesia suffers from bad...scratch that. From ATROCIOUS conjugation mistakes. Monster RPG 2 suffered from sheer laziness and incompetence in the head of its translator. Who in his right mind would ever publish a work without first giving it to a proofreader or a betatester, a friend that has eyes and taste when it comes to webdesign? When you write a script and you have 25 if's in a row, don't you FEEL something's wrong? When you type a translation and your spellchecker wreaks havoc on your screen, don't you have the faintest idea you're doing something wrong?

tl;dr:
Devs: PLEASE, pretty, pretty PLEASE install a spellchecker in the wanted languages. You may not understand them, but when your screen turns into a bowl of chili or alien ooze, you'll know something may be wrong.
Noobs: PLEASE, PLEASE, will you PLEASE F***ING TRAIN? READ. WRITE. LEARN. Then the rest of us won't have to clean up your mess. And never, EVER think you're perfect. You have the tools, you have a whole damn web only waiting for your goddamn good will. Translation is WORK. Hard, underpaid, ill-considered WORK. If you don't do it with passion, don't do it AT ALL. I wouldn't translate TO english. Don't translate to YOUR language if you don't master it to some extent. And when/if you ever think you do, reconsider. You DON'T. You NEVER do. It's not your friends who tell you you write sooooo well (when they're barely able to spell their own f***ing name) who define your bloody level. It's the legion of grammar and spelling nazis out there. Of which I am a proud member, if far from the best. Any lesson is good to take. If you're not ready for backlash, even from your own spellchecker, DON'T. DO. IT.