Random: Hades In French Adds Lots Of Puns, And Makes Hypnos Extra-Sleazy

In my opinion as a French native speaker, the French localization being somewhere between bad and god awful is... Kind of the norm for video games unfortunately

And then it gets worse when you add voice acting to the mix

Thank you so much for talking about such a fun under-explored part of video game localization.
We hear a lot about Japanese > English localization, but there's so much to say about what's out there, this is so exciting.

As a french speaker, I don't have any problem with the "vous" + "genre"/like, as it reminds me of the way a teenager talks to his/her teacher. With the formal "vous" that you're used to, but still talking your heart and not really realizing that you're maybe a bit too familiar.
Funny how a single choice can change a characterization!

Thanks again for that article.

French translation in general are awful. They take way too many liberties to change literally everything, from names (ever heard of Dark Vador, Yan Solo and Z6PO in Star wars? Me neither) to puns, sometimes the entire story. Sometimes I even wonder if the translators even understand the language they are suppose to translate from.

@Mathias_Wolfbrok Agreed. Also a French native speaker and I play all my video games in English because of this. An unpopular opinion for a French person: I prefer Canadian dubs, because they are much closer to the original.

Yeah, I’m having horrible flashbacks to French class in high school. I’d say that the language was hard af to learn but admittedly, English is the language in which red, read and read can all mean different things.

The fact that they would do this is cool anyway.

@neufel I love talking about localisation and translation!! I have a whole degree in it (and don't get to use it very often!)

There were quite a few examples of the casual phrasing that I didn't write about, since the article was already QUITE long and I didn't want to accidentally write 2,000 words about French 😅 You make a good point about the "genre" though! Kids these days

@Rhaoulos how do you feel about French-Canadian accents in the voice acting, though? I have such a hard time in Quebec trying to understand the French!

@nessisonett and that's why it's so hard to translate! You can't just build a language out of ten other languages and expect it to make sense!!

Gendered language with translations must be a nightmare then, if you're trying to avoid actually having a gender.

@nessisonett English is much easier in writing, but a nightmare to pronounce for foreigners because there aren't any rules, or rules with way too many exceptions.

@KateGray French-Canadian sounds like a different language, but it depends on the person speaking. I met 2 guys in an online game who were neighbours in Quebec. One had a heavy Canadian accent, the other one translate every single sentence to French because we couldn't understand a word and we ended up speaking English to communicate directly. Both were born in the same street but the latter hated the local accent so much, he learned the French accent so he could be understood.

In voice acting it's usually alright and you get used to it. It's not any worse than people from Marseille. The problem are French-Canadian expressions, which make no sense to French people, and the reluctance to speak any English word like we do in France... kind of, because none of them are used properly.

That being said, I haven't watched a French (or Canadian) dub on my own in over a decade and I don't miss it.

Always an interesting topic, but as someone who used to do this for a living, a thread like this is a nightmare.

Slogging through thousands of words with insufficient budget, tools and time only to have a stranger on Twitter get picky about the six mistakes which slipped through the net? It’s a rotten experience.

@RevrsblSedgewick I can imagine that it's even trickier without the context - when all you get is a bunch of English lines, and you're not exactly sure what they're referring to because they're out of order, then it's going to be REALLY hard.

I've only ever been on the writing side of localisation, and I tried to tone down all my idioms and slang because I knew it would be a nightmare to translate!

Then bless you @KateGray , you have more self control than I do. When I've been on the other side generating source text for a game then I've probably gone worse on the idioms (on the flip side I'm happy that it's the translator's business whether it gets retained/replaced/removed and will keep my nose out).

I did read the full Twitter thread and most of it was great, discussing the different approaches. I just had to wince for the poor translator every time that the thread author pointed out a "wonk"!

@nessisonett it calls homonym is is not proper to English

Nintendo games tend to be very well localised to French, as those of their second party devs. Back on N64, I actually preferred the French script over the original English one for Jet Force Gemini because they made up puns that were not in the original, such as for ALL weapon and ammo names or just for characters in general using a ton of slang. It made the game just so much better in general. Because I stream in English these days, when i had to replay through it all in English instead of French, the script there felt flat and more generic by comparison. It may come across as disrespectful of the original intent of the creators to modify the script to this extent, but I can't help but love it more the way I first experienced it in my own language.

Really nice article about a really nice game which might not be so nice to play in French. Great read!

French language is great, but it is proven that narrative is always better in original. Unfortunately the time of great translators has gone, like the most of highly qualified but underpaid professions. Thanks capitalism.

@Rhaoulos Honestly for me it's very dependent on the dub and dub actors. Obviously I will always have a soft spot for Roger Carel & Jean-Claude Donda, but I do agree that the Canadian translations are closer generally to their English counterparts specifically (e.g. Rosalina VS Harmonie, Mike Wazowski VS Bob Razowski, the Pokémon dub using all of the English names in Quebec but not in Europe)

I will say though, the Canadian dub of The Simpsons is completely unintelligible to me ^^

I love how they talk about using genres and making everything masculine is something like never seen. Like if it's the only language in the world that has genres.

I don’t think I get it.

@Oppyz666 The usual word in English is "gender", not "genre".

how do you feel about French-Canadian accents in the voice acting, though? I have such a hard time in Quebec trying to understand the French!

@KateGray Do you really? I myself have trouble understanding when I visit "le Québec profond" (as in, "deep in the heart of..."), but in Montréal or Québec City?

It's not any worse than people from Marseille. The problem are French-Canadian expressions, which make no sense to French people, and the reluctance to speak any English word like we do in France... kind of, because none of them are used properly.

That being said, I haven't watched a French (or Canadian) dub on my own in over a decade and I don't miss it.

@Rhaoulos Interesting. This question may be inappropriate for you, but - do you know of any good dubs in French? I mean, for me, the option to play in French has only really been available since the Wii. I would appreciate a European French perspective here.

I often hear European francophones say that Québec in particular tries to avoid using English words, and I find this quite amusing. Many English words are used casually in Canadian French! On the other hand, genuinely good new words like "le réseautage" (networking) and "le courriel" (E-mail) are not used in Europe. I cringe when I hear Europeans say "un mail"...

@RevrsblSedgewick I am curious. Are there any localizations you consider particularly good? At least, for any well-known games?

@COVIDberry I have actually played one French game with French voices because the fake French accents in English, from actors who seemingly have no idea what French sounds like, was way too annoying. The game was A plague tale: Innocence. Although you can expect stiff voice acting and unnatural pronunciation (no contractions and painfully insisting on every single sound).

@Kalmaro Sadly americans have made it cool and trendy, things like non-binary, or identifying as a kettle or a penguin

@Doktor-Mandrake I'm not sure it's all our fault that happened, though we certainly aren't making it LESS trendy.

@COVIDberry usually in Montreal it's pretty easy to understand with my France-French background, but yeah, I once went to see a French play that had been translated into Quebecois French, and there was a character from the countryside that I could not understand at all! Although maybe that was the point???

@Kalmaro I guess, maybe it seems like that to me because over here in the UK people love to copy what's cool and trendy in America

@COVIDberry Most games aren't bad, they're just fine. The problem is that games are a relatively new medium (so the pipelines for getting them translated aren't as settled are equally new), in most cases they have way more text than linear TV or film, and they're never finished until the last possible minute.

All of that means that everything gets rushed, so it's not as easy to get the same level of consistency like those linear media.

So if you're looking for a great translation then you're most likely to find it in a game which added the translations some time after launch, when the game was already finished and settled. Which will be most common with indie titles.