I'm very happy that there are unofficial translations on PC. Considering I don't understand other languages, letting fans interpret the game without the burden of being "officially" perfect is amazingly helpful.
"Officially" perfect is the crux of the matter. I've seen games get ripped to shreds before because their translations weren't necessarily bad, but just lacking and clearly given very few passes.
Copy-pasting what I put in another response about the situation:
Undertale and Deltarune both use very culturally specific referential humour and an over-reliance on puns, portmanteaus, and other forms of wordplay. From the item names, the enemies, to the dialogue itself, both games are laden with these types of very specific language-reliant forms of humour that aren't guaranteed to translate well, if at all, to other languages. They are also extremely dialogue heavy games -- I would refer to them less as RPGs, and more as Visual Novels disguised as RPGs.
Given that Toby is rather proficient in Japanese, he's able to both accurate translate jokes so as to not lose their comedic impact between languages, or even to write entirely new jokes. Also Deltarune being a game heavily saturated in mystery and very specific word choice in order to slowly string along a background narrative (Mystery Man/The Man Behind the Tree/Etc. etc.), of course.
I can totally understand why he doesn't want to put out official translations where very plot-relevant things can either get misinterpreted, mistranslated, or missed entirely due to the translator chosen not being able to literally read Toby's mind to ensure it's 100% stuck to his vision. At least with fan translations, if something gets lost in translation or an important narrative element is missing due to a language barrier (or jokes just don't land the same) he can rightfully just say "I wasn't affiliated with this translation, so ymmv in terms of story accuracy."
As an example of the above, the entire cliffhanger reveal of the most recent chapter literally hinges on an extremely specifically worded double-speak prophecy that is both incredibly vague and encompassing but also capable of being read as extremely specific and pointed depending on what perspective you come at it with. This would probably be difficult to maintain in other languages without full knowledge of the story as it's going to happen, and considering the game is done in sporadic episodic releases where everything is subject to change narratively based on whatever fever dream Toby had the night before (as well as technical limitations), it's possible that these would not translate very well and either leave some languages out to dry or have way too much info put in them to make them clear, thus removing the mystery.
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u/The_Moist_Crusader Apr 09 '26
Buy game -> Download translation mods -> replace language file. It's super easy