Topic: Way to few languages supported on Switch

The fact that the Switch only supports major languages is just sick. Sure, to have all languages would be too much work. But to only support 6 European languages? I’ve been in contact with Bergsala, who is in control of Nintendo Nordic, and they say they can’t do anything about it. “Vi har försökt i 8 år i sträck att få andra språk att läggas till. Men, Nintendo JP har ignorerat alla requests från oss.” Which translates to “We have for 8 years been trying to make more languages a reality. But Nintendo of Japan has ignored all of our requests.”
To me it’s sick that it’s been years and nothing has happened. It’s not hard to translate menu’s. It won’t take long to add more languages. It’s not too much work. Then why isn’t it being added. 6 languages, 6 European languages. Some might say “Storage, it would take up too much space” No it wouldn’t. It’s menus we’re talking not voice recordings. Just please, I’ve seen over a hundred requests, begging for more languages, and it’s just being ignored. Nintendo, a company with family in mind, looses on this. Not everyone knows English. Adding more languages would increase the amount of people understanding and being able to enjoy the switch, instead of guessing what button does what.

cmon, it’s 2021. Just add more languages!

Oh and to add even more, there is no way of knowing if a game supports a language that is not supported on the Switch itself since the eShop ONLY shows the games that supported by the UI and the game. The only way of knowing is to buy physical and see if it says on the box

@jullebulle0505 Unless there's a bug in your region, every game's page on eshop should have a Software Details section at the bottom of the page, and you'll see the list of all supported languages for that game. Same applies to Nintendo's game store online (which is basically an online version of esho)

Here's Hyrule Warrriors page as an example.
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/hyrule-warriors-age-of-...

The back of game cases also have the language list on them, although the text is tiny.(SillyG below pointed out this isn't always true, and I think SillyG is right)

As for which languages get supported, game companies make that decision, and it can be disappointing, as you've seen. I know there are some Japanese games that people really want in English, but the game companies have chosen to support a only a few languages, or Japanese only.

The eShop thing is not a bug, Nintendo have said they won’t be showing languages unless they are supported in the OS as well. For example, Minecraft, the game supported almost every language, but the eShop only mentions the languages that are supported in the OS too.
Assassins Creed: The rebel collection supports Swedish, but the eShop doesn’t say that it supports Swedish because it’s not in the OS

@jullebulle0505 : The box doesn't always list the supported languages, and there are some games that contain a LOT of languages that aren't otherwise listed in the eShop or are otherwise not normally supported by the Switch GUI. A few examples that spring to mind include Florence, AVICII Invector, and Minecraft.

Ultimately, Nintendo are only going to support languages for the markets that they directly cater to. As much as I would love for, say, more Turkish support, the market in Turkey (and other Turkic countries) is virtually nonexistent as video game consoles are luxury items (often heavily taxed as a result) and far out of the price range of even a reasonably well-off person.

Publishers/developers can choose to offer additional language support on a game-by-game basis, but I can't see Nintendo changing their stance when there is little commercial need to do so, especially when the majority of games are not designed with such languages in mind.

@Silly_G I just find it weird that Nintendo Nordic says they want to add more languages but aren’t able to because Nintendo of Japan ignores them. Like Nintendo ignores Nintendo. Shouldn’t they be able to communicate internally?

@WoomyNNYes @Silly_G Nintendo has really heavy marketing in Sweden. There are Swedish commercials made just for Sweden. The Switch box that is sold in Sweden is written is Swedish. Game cases are mostly written in Swedish. Everything is in Swedish, but not the switch itself. They really cater to the Nordic countries, they really do. I see a Swedish Nintendo ad at least one time a day, but the Switch doesn’t support the language.

The game boxes will tell you everything you can do in the game, in Swedish, bu the game doesn’t support it. The Switch Box is in Swedish it tells you what to do in Swedish, but when you start it up, there’s no option for Swedish. It’s weird that they have really heavy marketing for products and then not supporting the language

@jullebulle0505 It's not just menus though. Each language added to the core operating system gives people the perfectly valid reason to say "why don't these games support the language as well?" The amount of work needed expands rapidly.

More languages would always be nice, but there's a lot more work than just translating the menus.

We also have to consider how many people speak a target language. According to Google there are about 27-28 million people in the Nordic countries. That's not a small number, but it's less than the population of England. Not the whole UK, just England. It's less than the population of just Texas. It's less of just the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Again, I agree that it would be nice to support as many languages as possible, but each added language is a lot more work.

@Heavyarms55 Yes I get that. But you can’t tell me it’s not weird that Nintendo’s marketing is so heavy that everything from The switch box itself to the box art of most games are in These languages but not the UI. I know Nintendo isn’t really competing with Sony and Microsoft, but they have supported these languages since the launch of the Xbox 360 and ps2. And no, they could totally do just menus. They’ve done it with languages like Polish. And the problem isn’t that the games doesn’t support the languages, cuz most of them do. There are plenty of games that support the Nordic languages, but they aren’t included in the UI. So the “Why doesn’t this game support the language as well” argument doesn’t hold up since the games support the language but not the system.

@jullebulle0505 Well that's a fair point too.

Nintendo is an imperfect company run by imperfect people. It could be internal corporate politics getting in the way.

@Heavyarms55 Oh, and the fact that Bergsala, who controls all things Nintendo in the Nordic Countries, told me they want to do it, they are willing to translate the menus and games, but Nintendo of Japan won’t let them, just makes the scenario even weirder.

@jullebulle0505 What you're describing does sound like a case of internal corporate politics to me. Which means we're not likely to ever really know what's going on.

Yeah, as always we don’t really know anything really. But adding more languages is something I will be continuing to try to make a reality until it is.

@jullebulle0505 unless you can come up with a cost savings to the labor need to do that for Nintendo and the software developers your barking up the wrong tree. Nothing is free or easy to add to or change when you need money to do it. Adding language is easy to say it's another thing to pay someone to do it and the cost goes up. So whom will east the cost if the buyers don't pay for it??????

What I want to see is that Nintendo Switch would support Russian, because it's really big language and so on. Etc in my country there is a lot of people that only knows our language Lithuanian and Russian, so.
Polish is quite big language too.
I want to see my country's language Lithuanian, but my country's language is still not big. So at least give Russian language that more my countryman could be able to buy console, because my country's TV now has, for some years, commercials for Nintendo Switch and it's games. And before that we didn't had commercials about video games and consoles for extremely long time.