About Video Game Translations

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When it comes to video games, Germany is a place full of contradictions. While the gaming scene is booming and becomes more popular by the hour in my home country, the old stereotypes (read more here) of socially inept and awkward gamers are still prevalent. It goes so far that many people shy away from mentioning their interest for games in public.
And while there are Germans who prefer to play their games in English to preserve the "clever writing" and "original message", there is a huge crowd of gamers who refuse to play or simply can´t understand English games.

Getting a German translation for a game is always a pleasant surprise, but it is often marred by very obvious translation errors. It happens often when you hire a translator who is not very interested in gaming and doesn´t even testplay the material he is working with. Not only do you need to convey the quirks of the writing and the personality of the characters in dialogues, you also have to consider differences in grammar when the game automatically creates words, like randomly generated equipment. Everytime I see "Iron Helmet of Cruelty" translated to "Eisen Helm von Grausamkeit", I cry a little bit.