Print On Demand and other languages

The English language has not been a barrier for new players in Portugal.
Since Portugal has never invested in any type of translation from foreign (mostly American) culture items, most gamming-oriented people are rather fluent in English, as some of you already seen.

The language is more of an issue for Spain and Brazil, I think.

Brum wrote:

The language is more of an issue for Spain and Brazil, I think.

The same thing could be said for France, since on average, French have horrible english skill (and everything is translated and/or voice acted). But apparently, french vtes player are despite that good english speaker

Unlike what Marcus Vitel say, in my experience, translation is pretty difficult, mainly because consistency is key, and often translations errors or ambiguity can change the meaning of a card quite a bit. Having only english card may be better than translated card with errors on some cards that force to check Secret library at each rule question just in case.

Brum wrote:

The English language has not been a barrier for new players in Portugal.

I suppose the main topic of this thread isn't about the players, but about the quitters / people not interested in playing the game.

Pascal wrote:

Brum wrote:

The English language has not been a barrier for new players in Portugal.

I suppose the main topic of this thread isn't about the players, but about the quitters / people not interested in playing the game.

I think its too much pulling resources into suboptimal areas to reqlly consider.

Maybe down the road spanish, french, and german cards could see print. Maybe even italian.

Going to russian, chinese, etc, is way more work than worth doing to my knowledge.

Laibon cards in swahili would be neat, but not worth effort.

Localization costs for such project would be quite high considering the volume (several thousand cards + rulebook + erratas + rulings) and nobody's going to pay for this. The logical choice would be to do it basing on volunteers in target countries - finding them may be tricky (this WILL be a time-consuming project), although that may not be such a barrier as one may think. And in the end, who would translate the content in a better way than people who love the game and who have played it for many, many years?

Personally I don't like playing games in my native language, I will always choose the English version when given a choice (I grew up on games played in English and it just stayed that way). However, from the marketing perspective, the popularity of V:TES may greatly increase and player acquisition should get a massive boost, so I wouldn't reject the idea. If anyone can print the cards in any language, the accessibility barrier is pretty much gone, and so is the language one. Which directly translates into "good for business".

I used to work in localization in the past (coordinated global translation projects as a PM, corporate level mostly) so I have a pretty good idea on how to run such project - give me a shout if you ever consider doing it and I can give you a hand (stuff like project planning, terminology validation, coordination between translators, basically the ropes). Resource-wise you need a PM who can run the whole thing + one or more coordinators per target language / country, who can recruit and coordinate volunteers. I'd say it is doable in 6 - 8 months. Happy to give out more details if you need them.

Another possible issue, playing the game is, at least in theory, always donexin english at largexevents.

It could be rough forxplayers to only need thier nativexlanguage to play continental events done in english.