We received messages from our lovely commanders, saying they’d like to help with the translation of Czech, Burmese, Turkish and many other languages. We thank all of you for your kind support. We will send our warm invitation to you once we have detailed plans to support more languages!
Up to now we have already supported 11 languages. They are Simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Traditional Chinese, and Thai. It is such language supports that bring commanders all over the world to Art of War: Red Tides.
Without our lovely language volunteers, none of these language versions could be possible. You may be curious about these behind-the-scenes volunteers. So in this episode we invited our Italian Translation Group. They are a group of young and energetic players, having a strong passion for video games and game translation.
The group consists of 5 members. They are Mogua, Khryon, MizuNoMashu, Lodakris,and Mengons. (As shown in the picture from left to right)
Lodakris, Mengons, MizuNoMashu are classmates in school. They met Mogua in games, then met Khryon in a live tournament. “We knew we are the same in that split-second.” This is how they described their encounter. Since they live in the same city, Aprilia, they often hang out to play games together. They set up a clan in Red Tides called Italian Furious, and a group in Facebook called Butchers Gaming Group, where they regularly host game tournaments and events.
Now let's come to meet our volunteers from Italy!
Q: It's really cool to play games with a group of friends! How long have you been playing Red Tides?
Lodakris: Since the beta in 2016. At first, it was just Mogua and me. Then we invited Mengons, MizuNoMashu and Khryon to play with us. I also wrote a review on Steam to recommend it to other Italian players.
Khryon: We used to play League of Legends and StarCraft together. We were looking for a game featured both MOBA and RTS, and then we met Red Tides. We immediately fell for its innovative mechanics!
Q: I guess you love strategy games. Do you play other games besides Red Tides?
MizuNoMashu: We also play Dead by Daylight, Don't Starve Together and many others.
Mogua: We love playing games. It's our passion! We will play more games! We're waiting for Art of War: Red Tides Android release. We're excited about that. XD
Q: Hah, I indeed feel your passion for games. So how long have you been volunteering for Red Tides?
Mengons: We’ve been doing this since the start of Italian localization. And it's like a training for our English.
Khryon: Yup! Furthermore my girlfriend is a translator. We always talk about translation. It's the first game we translate and we enjoy this process very much!
Q: We’re very curious about the game translation. Could you please tell us the process?
Mogua: We get tasks from the Facebook group. Lodakris is the guy who coordinates us. It’s like Avengers: when he calls, we go to Teamspeak XD. Then we subdivide the tasks so that we can work faster. In this way we can share terms and discuss in real time. Mengons optimizes the translation then. And in the end we proofread the work together.
MizuNoMashu: Yeah, we saved a file of terms and unit names so we can refer to the previous translation. It’s really fun when you do something with friends lol.
Q: Hah, then is there anything interesting when you’re translating? Any happy moments?
Lodakris: Emm, the translation of Skycrab! We translated it as "Granchio Celestiale". It’s a name combined both epic and comedy in Italian. It was so hard… Really guys, have you ever seen a Skycrab flying in the sky?!
Khryon: For me it’s Tamerlane. The first time we saw this name, we didn’t know what it was! We spent much time in searching “Tamerlane”. In the end we figured out that he was a Turco-Mongol conqueror.
Q: So the most difficult part is translating names?
Mengons: Em, Not exactly. The most difficult part is understanding why the unit has that name and what does the unit do. You must know everything of the unit before translating it. Many words in Italian have various meanings, and it’s hard to associate these meanings with the correct terms if you don’t know what the word really means. After you fully understand the unit, the “description” is easy to do, especially when we are all on the work. XD
Q: Ohh then I guess you prefer translating sense for sense, instead of translating word for word, right?
Khryon: Yes, right! Word for word is impossible. It will be a mess if you translate word for word without getting the meaning.
Q: Since you’ve been translating Red Tides for quite a long time, I’m sure you have in mind the requirements of a qualified game translator
MizuNoMashu: Passion! We’re not the best translation group, but we like the game. We know the game. So it’s easier for us to express the meaning and let Italians understand it.
Lodakris: Yeah, we can imagine how Italians understand it, and we translate according to that. We don’t use Google Translate ahah. We don’t like it.
We had a great time talking with our Italian translation volunteers. They are a group of boys full of energy and passion. It’s lucky indeed to be accompanied by friends. Hope you will find your life-time friends in Art of War: Red Tides!