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Sunday, February 25, 2007

Mobile Game Translation... Hilarity?

- Over at the Spyro-powered (uh?) Pocket Gamer, they have a fun little feature discussing mobile game translation oddities, noting that: "The money often just isn't there for foreign developers to pay for careful translations." And then fun happens!

Such as: "Magnetic Joe, for example, provides unexpected entertainment when it spontaneously imitates Sacha Baron Cohen's globe-conquering Khazak Borat on the instruction page, complete with boyish exclamation mark: "Take Joe to the exit while avoid spikes!"... Moorhuhn, on the other hand, adds literary depth to its translated marketing text when it warns that the player may "Get no air and fly deep frozen through the darkness of space." A line that wouldn't be out of place in a volume of poetry."

Pocket Gamer's favorite, though? "In the game author's words, Death Trap is "the best strategy that the survival horror games lovers have been hassling... Never heard of Death Trap? What better way to learn more than to read its very own marketing text: "Death Trap is a horror action game that the terrifying graphics will make you enticed with surreal illusion."" Fun piece.

Comments

Isn't Borat Kazakh, not Khazak? In other words. aren't you misqualified to judge the quality of these translations?

Oh, sorry. So that's a quote. That just means they are disqualified to do it.

idiot

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