Well, as a citizen from Portugal who's worked in videogame localization for the last few years, I can't resist commenting on the article's last statement.
The Portuguese playerbase vastly shuns translations in regular videogames, preferring to play in English. Even if this applies mostly to Brazilian Portuguese - in fact, I've seen surveys that indicated 86% of local gamers prefer playing in English over PTBR - the sentiment is also present towards local EU Portuguese. This is mostly down to cultural and social roots, where dubbed media is seen as meant "for children", so those who admit preferring dubbings over subtitles are stigmatized as cognitively stunted.
We can also add to this sentiment the sad fact that it's very common for Portuguese and Brazilian players to be extremely reluctant about trying their counterparts' versions due to 1) a common feeling of pride and superiority 2) the differences between both versions are far more extensive than those i.e. between UK and US EN, which - depending on the topic - can sometimes prevent players from properly understanding what's going on.
Adding this to the fact that Portugal is a relatively minor territory for videogame income compared to Brazil and about a dozen others, we end up with the surmise that localizing a game to PTPT is unfortunately only common for specific companies (like Nintendo, whose playerbase is mostly juvenile and therefore with a more lacking command of English than normal) or topics (like soccer, which moves a lot of money in the country).
Comments 2
Re: Video: What Was Your First Video Game Ever?
@Erigen I presume you mean everyone... in the US. Because nobody really had that where I grew up on.
Re: Random: Did A Cheeky Nando's Inspire The New Pokémon Games? Probably Not
Well, as a citizen from Portugal who's worked in videogame localization for the last few years, I can't resist commenting on the article's last statement.
The Portuguese playerbase vastly shuns translations in regular videogames, preferring to play in English. Even if this applies mostly to Brazilian Portuguese - in fact, I've seen surveys that indicated 86% of local gamers prefer playing in English over PTBR - the sentiment is also present towards local EU Portuguese. This is mostly down to cultural and social roots, where dubbed media is seen as meant "for children", so those who admit preferring dubbings over subtitles are stigmatized as cognitively stunted.
We can also add to this sentiment the sad fact that it's very common for Portuguese and Brazilian players to be extremely reluctant about trying their counterparts' versions due to 1) a common feeling of pride and superiority 2) the differences between both versions are far more extensive than those i.e. between UK and US EN, which - depending on the topic - can sometimes prevent players from properly understanding what's going on.
Adding this to the fact that Portugal is a relatively minor territory for videogame income compared to Brazil and about a dozen others, we end up with the surmise that localizing a game to PTPT is unfortunately only common for specific companies (like Nintendo, whose playerbase is mostly juvenile and therefore with a more lacking command of English than normal) or topics (like soccer, which moves a lot of money in the country).