Topic: Nintendo Explains European Brawl Delay

[Nick DiMola]

Sheer number of titles to be localized is to blame.
 http://nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=15991

 In an interview with Official Nintendo Magazine (UK), Nintendo of Europe representative Laurent Fischer has accounted for the late arrival of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to the European market by stressing the size of the overall localization workload in the region.    

According to Fischer, the European localization team behind Brawl is part of the "same pool of teams" responsible for localizing all of the numerous other titles being released by Nintendo in the region. These teams must translate games into multiple languages: a process that applies not only to text, but to voice samples as well, creating a significant amount of work to be done in the case of Brawl.    

In addition to the impact of translation efforts, Fischer also cited production issues as contributing to Brawl's European delay. Hundreds of first party and third party games are on the global production line, and there is also the possibility that extensive localization may create bugs and other issues that must be resolved before pushing the product out the door.    

Finally, Fischer apologized for the wait and stated that Nintendo of Europe is taking strides to improve the situation in the future.    

"We know that we are still not reaching the expectations of all the people, but we're really doing our best to resolve this."

[Nick DiMola]

Seems like a weak excuse to me.

[Crimm]

It seems like gamers of Europe should demand a unified language.  Certainly, getting your games earlier is worth such a changes.

[Ian Sane]

Nintendo doesn't exactly seem to be cranking out games at a huge rate.  Sounds like a total bullsh!t excuse to me.  Somehow other companies aren't so inept.

Do they legally have to release each game in multiple languages?  Couldn't they just crank out a quick PAL version using the American translation and release it in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and then just let the rest of Europe either buy the English language version or wait it out for a translation.

[Plugabugz]

This is the same excuse they cranked out a few years ago.

It took NOE 5 months to localize Super Paper Mario and little "errors" like color made their way into the game. Now how can Brawl, a game with largely no text, somehow have a date of "2008" while the rest of the world already (at the time) had confirmed dates in December 2007?

[vudu]

This is the same excuse they cranked out a few years ago.
Now how can Brawl, a game with largely no text, somehow have a date of "2008" while the rest of the world already (at the time) had confirmed dates in December 2007?

No text?  There are over 500 trophies, each with a half screen of text that needs to be translated to umpteen languages.  I can't remember if the stickers have text descriptions, but if they do that's another 500+ descriptions that need to be translated a half dozen times each.

[Nick DiMola]

I honestly question why translation isn't done concurrently with development. Would it really be that hard for the people who write the text to work with the people who do all of the translations?

[King of Twitch]

copy, babblefish, paste, click, copy, paste i could've done it myself in like 2 seconds

[Plugabugz]

That reason doesn't hold water because we got Mario Galaxy (which was text intensive) only 4 days later.

Translating concurrently would mean that NOE would need to be proactive. How is that possible?

[nickmitch]

Mario Galaxy has to have a lot less text than Brawl. The only thing about Galaxy is that you're more likely to read it.

[Crimm]

That reason doesn't hold water because we got Mario Galaxy (which was text intensive) only 4 days later.

Translating concurrently would mean that NOE would need to be proactive. How is that possible?

NOE is only slightly more effectual than Aussie Nintendo.  Aussies have an excuse, it's hard not to fall off the bottom of the planet.

[Plugabugz]

We have one too! 60 Degrees Farenheit (20c) and half the country run around semi-or-practically naked for 12 hours a time to "get some sun", happy that our 4 days of summer (for all of 2008) has arrived.

No wonder NOE gets so much work done.

[blackfootsteps]

Nintendo - learn to prioritize.

[oohhboy]

An easier solution for the next generation is to simply release the same American NTSC console in to all english speaking territories. US, NZ, AUS, UK Canada, all under the same banner. Non english countries will have to wait anyway and you can't buy a TV that can't interpret NTSC in PAL areas. If you have a TV that can't use NTSC that TV has to be at least 20 years old.

I also don't care whether it is North American english, english english, or just plain bad english. It's all english. I don't care whether it is spelt center or centre. Although I would like my measurements in metric, I think I can live. Hey wait, the Japanese use metric. 

[Shift Key]

An easier solution for the next generation is to simply release the same American NTSC console in to all english speaking territories. US, NZ, AUS, UK Canada, all under the same banner.

But that would make NAL redundant. REDUNDANT!

I have NAL to thank for setting up a Wii Fit demo at a shopping centre today and making me laugh at a guy fall over attempting to snowboard. It was even funnier than seeing a real snowboarder fall over.

[blackfootsteps]

An easier solution for the next generation is to simply release the same American NTSC console in to all english speaking territories. US, NZ, AUS, UK Canada, all under the same banner. Non english countries will have to wait anyway and you can't buy a TV that can't interpret NTSC in PAL areas. If you have a TV that can't use NTSC that TV has to be at least 20 years old.

I also don't care whether it is North American english, english english, or just plain bad english. It's all english. I don't care whether it is spelt center or centre. Although I would like my measurements in metric, I think I can live. Hey wait, the Japanese use metric. 

Exactly. They set the precedent with NTSC Metroid Prime 2 on GameCube and I thought that would usher in a new age of negligible delays. Yet they've managed to go backwards.

[famicomplicated]

This is exactly why I stopped buying PAL systems!

How long does it take to translate the text in Brawl? - Not that much
How long does it take to re-record all the voice samples in Brawl? - Well seeing as only a handful of characters actually speak...not that long!!

Halo 3 had over 10,000 voice samples and that got a worldwide release.

No excuses.

[ATimson]

If you have a TV that can't use NTSC that TV has to be at least 20 years old.

But can that be explained in an idiot-proof way? Nintendo doesn't want to deal with people sending consoles in for repairs because they didn't read the system requirements on a box that is usually devoid of them.

This is the company who thought that HDTVs didn't have enough penetration to bother supporting them; they seem to expect people to be playing with their Wii on ancient TVs...

[UncleBob]

Also, if the same English translation was released everywhere, you could end up with more crap like the "spastic" incident in Mario Party 8.

[Crimm]

An easier solution for the next generation is to simply release the same American NTSC console in to all english speaking territories. US, NZ, AUS, UK Canada, all under the same banner. Non english countries will have to wait anyway and you can't buy a TV that can't interpret NTSC in PAL areas. If you have a TV that can't use NTSC that TV has to be at least 20 years old.

I also don't care whether it is North American english, english english, or just plain bad english. It's all english. I don't care whether it is spelt center or centre. Although I would like my measurements in metric, I think I can live. Hey wait, the Japanese use metric. 

Exactly. They set the precedent with NTSC Metroid Prime 2 on GameCube and I thought that would usher in a new age of negligible delays. Yet they've managed to go backwards.

Aren't there EU laws that would make this more difficult?

[Ian Sane]

I also don't care whether it is North American english, english english, or just plain bad english. It's all english. I don't care whether it is spelt center or centre. Although I would like my measurements in metric, I think I can live. Hey wait, the Japanese use metric.

Being the next door neighbours to the most influencial country in the world, us Canadians have adapted pretty well with American English spellings and the imperial system and such.  We pretty much have to know two slight variations of everything.  90% of the books I read spell it "honor" because they're American and the spell checker wants it spelled that way but if I write that in any paper for school I'm expected to spell it "honour".  We have to deal with kilometres and miles, kilograms and pounds, Fahrenheit and Celcius.  Animal Crossing in Canada had Independence Day instead of Canada Day.  But it's no big deal.  So I agree that English is English.  If Canada can constantly deal with balancing our own culture and the similar but different culture of another country I would hope that all other English speaking countries could deal with it as well.

At the same time if a game originated in the UK I would not care if it used British English or even British slang.

[Crimm]

I dub this thread "The Official Cultural Imperialism Thread"

[Bartman3010]

copy, babblefish, paste, click, copy, paste i could've done it myself in like 2 seconds

Right, like translation is really that easy and 100% fool proof and has no grammatical errors whatsoever. Oh, and the term LOCALIZATION is an oxymoron. In no effort is there to make sure theres no offensive content to certain races or demographics during that process.

Do they legally have to release each game in multiple languages?

I thought that was the case some time ago. That there was some law or something passed that all the languages had to be represented or something. My memory is kind of vague on this.

That said, there is a little bit of Nintendo having problems with their European division. At least they've improved in certain aspects (Like they actually have some Virtual Console games that US gamers really want)

[Kairon]

I could go for more engrish games.

[KDR_11k]

Voice samples? Since when does NoE translate voices? Sure, there were one or two announcer changes in SSBM for the names of the Pokemon (which change in each country as they're pun based) but that doesn't constitute a full dubbing. The only Nintendo game with translated voice acting I've ever seen was Doshin The Giant.

Also nice to see thatz Nintendo puts SSBB at the bottom of their priorities list.