The game is entirely in English.
They do not speak English.
Like, you would think that a video game aimed at small children, would be available in the language that small children in the country it’s sold in would actually be able to understand, but apparently not? I guess their thinking is “why bother with localization when we can just make the parents translate all the text on screen for us”
It’s available in Japanese, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional)
Which does cover a pretty substantial share of the world’s population, yes, and it is a good thing that the game is available in more than just one or two or three languages, but it’s also like… By my measure, that doesn’t cover any of the Nordic countries, nor does it cover Greece, nor the former Yugoslavia, nor most countries of the former Eastern Bloc except Russia and Belarus, nor Mongolia, nor any country in Central, West, South, or Southeast Asia, nor the vast majority of Africa, nor a sizable part of Oceania and the Caribbean region, and that’s not even getting into microstates and minority languages.
And sure, in a lot of cases if oneself does not speak one of these 11 languages natively, one can still get by in one way or another — it’s a Mario game, so there’s next to no text that one absolutely must be able to read in order to play. But should one really have to “get by” when playing a game? Games like SMBW, I think could be great for helping people develop their reading skills, so why can’t these be reading skills in one’s own language?
You’re right.
For a game like this (without much dialogue) more languages should definitely be involved.
Nintendo has always been kind of stingy when it comes to translation. They’re getting better but it’s not nearly good enough.This is why fan translations are important, but of course Nintendo is so much against romhacking and distribution that it impedes progress in that area.
Imagine if game companies saw a fan translation and were like “We’ll buy that and release it”. We’d have mother 3 in English by now and several other languages.
This is why I’m not a fan of such strict copyright laws.
Edit: sorry for the rant
Hey no need to be sorry for ranting, I 100% agree and I think about this exact topic perhaps concerningly frequently
I just came across this and thought I’d post it
Mario games should be played in Mario’s native language, which is Italian.
Diavolo sì, fratello
I hated that happening as a kid, rarely do games get translated into Arabic, and never into Tamazight so I would get softlocked into a random place because I didn’t know English, for example I tried playing GTA Vice City before I learned english and I couldn’t finish the game because I kept getting stuck at the mission “cop land” because you had to steal a police vehicle and trap two cops into a garage marked on the mini map, something that you would only know if you spoke the language the game is in, unlike every mission before which had color markers and you could get through using trial and error.
One benefit of AI does seem to be the rise of fans using machine translation for things that never ever would’ve gotten it in the past. I’ve even seen some things that do the translation in realtime.
💀 they suck ass at translating, translation just like art and writing requires a proper human being with skills and culture knowledge to do, maybe it’ll make the job easier then a proper human being can do the bits it did wrong, but it can’t do it all
Depends on languages in my experience. You’re right though some suck ass, with that said it’s still better than not having them at all.
Can’t wait for the future where everything is AI translated slop that makes no sense
The Sims, believe it or not, was actually trying to predict the future of human language under AI translation
Wait, your native tongue is Tamazight?
ih
It’s not really necessary for a Mario game.
This is word for word exactly the first reply I expected to get when I posted this. The fact that they had fewer words to translate makes the fact that they didn’t bother translating them worse, not better.
Nintendo has never been great in this regard. They tend to rely on game design for accessibility
I am aware, but I do not like it.
I don’t disagree
They should just leave them in Japanese then
Unironically preferable to forcing kids to learn English
Edit: the funnier thing would’ve been Esperanto
There are a couple of parts where you would need to know the language. There is at least one Wonder Seed that includes a trivia round.
Clearly you’ve never heard the German super Mario Brothers song.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Eh, for this it does really help younger kids. There’s a lot of secret crap in levels and a lot of it is cool and some is necessary and there’s lil plant guys that drop hints in the levels
I finished multiple supernintendo RPGs without knowing any English back in the day. I got stuck fpr months on chrono triggers end of time when the monster ask you turn around 3 times around the room
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“Oh, you’re into pronouns, huh? Hmmm… Well, let me she/them titti— *tries for babies with the Grim Reaper*”
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Reference 1: https://youtu.be/9ZSWOy1MsxU
Reference 2: https://youtu.be/WvdJmSqCmdk
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Pssh.
Mama mia!
My sibling was like 5 when they played through the entirety of Fire Red on the GBA, no English ability there either. Not being able to blunder through a Nintendo game is a skill issue
(Real answer: The Nordics literally do not exist on a market demographic chart, no foreign media will be translated for the region ever)
no foreign media will be translated for the region ever
Unless you take the effort to do it yourself, but this is easier said than done for a closed-source video game… In fact this is easier said than done for most anything, really. Especially if you like me have developed this whole “language complex” due to growing up bilingual and autistic in English and Norwegian, that causes you to second-guess and third-guess and fourth-guess your translations into Norwegian, and then beat yourself up over your nth-guessing, and then you just wish that US cultural imperialism would go die in a hole because that’s currently the main thing making this stuff more complicated than it really has any right or need to be.
There is some amount of translated foreign media in Norway, but it’s nowhere near the amount that I’d like there to be; and even when translations do exist, a lot of the translations were clearly not given as much TLC as translations into other languages. The heyday of translations into Norwegian has long passed, it seems, but perhaps there will be a renaissance some day soon. We can dream.
Video games are almost never available in any of the Nordic languages unless they’re developed here and are aimed at children. The ones that aren’t aimed at children usually just go straight to English.
Meant that I learned a lot of strange phrases as a child though. Didn’t help that my parents were worse at English than 7 year old me was.
Which Nordic-made games did you play as a kid? I can only really recall playing one of the Josefine games, dunno which one, though.
Tended to be tie-ins with childrens books such as Pettson and Findus and Astrid Lidgren properties. Those used to be available in the library.
The only games I had at home that were in Swedish were Caesar III and Rollercoaster Tycoon. Not sure they were available in Norwegian though. Caesar III was notable as it employed Hans Villius who was the guy that was employed for almost all Swedish history programming from the 70’s to the 00’s.
Poggers!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
There was a pretty decent selection of Nordic edutainment games in the late 90s/early 2000, both original titles and translations. I remember Flåklypa Grand Prix being extremely popular here in Norway, as well as the Josefine and Mulle Mekk games
I played a bunch of those children’s edutainment games, and also a game called I.G.I 2: Covert Strike. It was made by a Norwegian studio, but I don’t remember if it had Norwegian language support. I think it was more it was more intended for an international audience. The gameplay was pretty good, but I also remember the story being about a western spy going around “saving the world” by murdering a bunch of Arab, Russian and Chinese soldiers, so I have mixed feelings about it
there were never any nintendo games translated to my language growing up. i can’t remember it ever bothering me having to play them in english, or that it required my parents to translate for me. kids are quick to pick up language
It doesn’t seem to bother the kids, either; nor did it stand out to me that my own Nintendo games were all in English as a kid, since English is my own native language. But I’ve over the years ended up just supremely hating the role that the English language has come to have in Norway, so I become sensitive to anything I see as representing the language dynamic. I guess it’s something I’m more consciously aware of than most because of my own language situation.
oh, norwegian is actually my native language lmao. personally i’m more bothered by the homogenization of dialects (every translation of children’s media, unless it’s done by NRK, almost always ends up being in this “vestkant Oslo” dialect), but yeah, i can see where you’re coming from
Dialektnivellering er også et stort problem. Historielaget i hjemkommunen min har gjort veldig mye for å bevare den gamle dialekten her, og det er egentlig fascinerende å tenke at folk snakket så annerledes ikke så lenge siden, mens jeg vokste opp med denne langt “kjedeligere” dialekten på norsk. Jeg tenker også på dialektnivellering på engelsk, siden dialektnivellering også førte til at jeg snakker en langt “kjedeligere” dialekt av amerikansk engelsk enn tippoldeforeldrene mine ville brukt.
Både dialektnivellering, og at engelsk har blitt så “intrusivt” i samfunnet, er egentlig bare to deler av det samme problemet, synes jeg. Så at ting blir oversatt til norsk i det hele tatt er det som jeg selv vil prioritere, og så kan dette være et godt grunnlag til å oversette til forskjellige dialekter.
Wowie Zowie!
If the main Switch changed languages, would the Mario game change as well? I’ve seen this with other first party Nintendo titles. If it doesn’t then
Doesn’t the game have language settings?
I know you can at least change the language of the talking flower.
There are, but Norwegian is not among the supported languages, nor is Swedish, nor is Danish.
The game definitely has language settings and is localized into like a ridiculous fourteen different languages, including the voice acting.
wait really? its not translated? My only exposure to it has been playing my brother’s copy and he said they switched the language the little talking flower speaks in to Japanese, so I would have assumed everything was translated
wow
edit: someone below already said this, I didn’t scroll far enough. They probably should have at least localized the text into the languages of everywhere they’re going to release it…
Yeah, I would’ve been satisfied if it was just the text that was translated and the VA was left as-is. I would’ve been impressed if they translated the VA too.
My partner and I played through it in Brazilian Portuguese lol
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Uao um homicidio
Lmfao
Pog
