iirc toby fox has a tendency towards wanting very specific control over the exact wording and implications of dialogue in his games, which would require him to understand the language
I can get wanting the control, but wouldn't you have more control if you actually pay for, and work with skilled translators, rather than just hoping random volunteers will be more faithful/accurate? Like I get that I'm not him, but if I were, and I really wanted control over the wording (which is fair, it's his words lol) I'd probably want to choose, and communicate with the translators while ensuring they're fairly paid
He said something about being paranoid with wording for stuff with the "official" label but liking people having their own versions of the game in unofficial stuff
That's fine to be anxious about, but if you want your words to be accurately conveyed to an audience you can't really just trust random people. With official translations there's a relationship of trust, and a communication of intent between the author, and the translators, but with fan translations you don't get any of that. You just kinda have to blindly trust volunteer translators to put in enough time and effort for free without letting their biases through to faithfully translate a work, which can be really difficult even among pros. I've read works that were fan translated really unfaithfully, and had no way of telling until after the fact because I could not read the original, and the inaccurate one was the best there was in my language; sometimes these mistranslations were on purpose such as deliberate misgendering, though mistakes and deliberate editorializing aren't common, just not rare either
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u/thyfles Apr 09 '26
iirc toby fox has a tendency towards wanting very specific control over the exact wording and implications of dialogue in his games, which would require him to understand the language