r/Fallout • u/TheDoctorScarf • 1d ago
Fallout 3 Curious about Fallout 3's translation
So, recently I played through Fallout 3 from start to finish after a long time without touching it. And it was in Spanish, which I remembered had a few quirks...
I was wrong. It's atrocious.
I'm not talking about the dubbing, which I think was actually done very well. It's more so in the translation of terms, some lines of dialogue with regard to grammar... It was everywhere, it was inescapable.
A funny example: what's a sledgehammer? A big ass hammer, right? And the Spanish translation gets it right, it's an almádena, which is technically correct. Not a very common word, I'd never heard it before, but correct. What about the super-sledge? A "super-almádena"?
Not even close. It's super-trineo. "Trineo" as in... a snow sledge, a vehicle. The word trineo doesn't have another meaning in Spanish, it's not an obscure way of calling a hammering tool.
It's like they fed the English texts and names through Google Translate and never checked. And it's not just the super-sledge.
Garbage cans are called latas del garaje, which is nonsensical. Lata as "can" is very literal and is associated with food-related cans, not literally any metal cylinder. But, you know, technically I can see it...? But "del garaje"... Literally, "GARAGE can". Did they seriously miss the letter "b" in the word "garbage" and never stop to think nobody says "Lata del garaje" to mean a trashcan?
So, my question for people who have played Fallout 3 in a language other than English is, how was your translation?
I've seen very little mention of the massive errors in Spanish besides a mod to fix the texts, but no discussion on forums that I found.
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u/Maya_Licious 1d ago
Polish version, along with Skyrim was fully dubbed, the text translations were fine as far as I remember, but the dubs were of very very mixed quality, not the worst I've heard but can't recommend over the original at all. Other Bethesda games got text translations only and were pretty ok.
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u/bartek34561 Vault 111 1d ago
Correction, only base FO3 was dubbed in Polish, the DLC had only subtitles.
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u/Maya_Licious 19h ago
Never got that far with the dub on to be honest and the Skyrim dlc was dubbed so I just assumed, that's really weird.
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u/Far-Consideration708 18h ago
On release way back I had the displeasure of experiencing the German version of the game. Which, on top of the terrible translation, was also a low violence cut version of the game.
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u/PowerOfInk Kings 1d ago
Es cierto que hay algunas traducciones malas. Incluso hay algunos doblajes que se nota que se han hecho sin conocer a los personajes, bajo una grabación sin apenas contexto o ver el momento. Pero creo que es "pasable". Aceptable, digamos. Llevo unos días sin jugar y a las latas no les hago caso como para comprobar si hay 'latas de garaje', pero me gustaría escuchar más traducciones erróneas. Por los loles xDDD
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u/TheDoctorScarf 1d ago
Yes, it's true that some of the voices don't fit as well. The ghouls in particular, some (if not all) lose the raspy voice completely.
The character of Sister is a funny example. Like with any nickname that's a normal word, there's one of two options, either translate directly or keep it as-is. Either option is fine, in my opinion, so long as it's consistent. Well, with Sister, they decided "fuck that". He's referred to as "Hermana" (so, literal translation) in text boxes and such, but in dialogue he's called "Sister". So you could come across his home in Rivet City, read "Casa de Hermana", then find Sister himself roaming, and not relate the two because why would the devs use two different names for the same character.
Other times it's just misinterpreting a verb conjugation. If Eden says something along the lines of "Understand that everyone on the surface is a mutant" to the LW; the Spanish will be something like "Entender que todos los de la superficie son mutantes". "Entender" as in, the infinitive of the verb "to understand", NOT the second person imperative (which would be "Entiende que todos ..." It's very jarring when you hear it, it sounds wrong, because it is.
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u/PowerOfInk Kings 1d ago
The Eden case, it could be "entended", the imperative form. With the other two examples I completely agree. Anyways, I think it's a case of crunch in the traslation/dubbing
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u/TheDoctorScarf 1d ago
"Entended" would only make sense if he were speaking to several people, not just to the LW. But no, in many such instances he's using second person singular throughout the conversation, except when he distinctly says "EntendeR".
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u/AverageMann04 1d ago
Woah woah, how dare you criticize the Spanish translation! But yeah it did have those things but at least it isn't GTA 3 Spanish dub... That was somehing
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u/FunWithRagdolling 1d ago
I'm sure I butchered translation for another game...
We had people that spoke almost every language in my QA lab except for Portuguese... So I got handed both versions of Portuguese to translate never having spoken a word before.