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I'm sure that it's more than just a translation artifact.
That'd just make him sound retarded.
I'm an American native English speaker.
I like the English voice actor, and I'm an American native English speaker.
It's gravelly, cool and composed. It suits his script and his wry sarcasm.
I'd love it if I understood Polish, though. Must be interesting to hear the script in the native tongue.
I'd love it if I understood Polish, though. Must be interesting to hear the script in the native tongue.
The thing that stood out the most in Twitcher 3 for me was that every single character in the game said 'me' instead 'my'. Me house, me mates, me wife. Is that some kind of special potato English? :D
It's a pretty common lower class British speech pattern. Many medieval fantasy games use it.
The thing I've noticed about Witcher 3 dialogue is that Geralt rarely uses pronouns. Always "Must have gone somewhere", not "He must have gone somewhere".
Do you mean - Christian Bale in Batman? What an interesting way to refer to him.He's not absolute garbage-can tier, but I get the feeling that either the direction or how the actor is taking the direction isn't so great. He sounds like he's a professional voice actor, but comes across the same way Bateman did in Batman: silly. And considering Bateman is a really good actor, it's a natural comparison of what happens when a good actor does something silly. He was probably told to sound gritty and detached, took it a little too far, and the VA director either thought it sounded great, or was too timid to correct it.
Do you mean - Christian Bale in Batman? What an interesting way to refer to him.He's not absolute garbage-can tier, but I get the feeling that either the direction or how the actor is taking the direction isn't so great. He sounds like he's a professional voice actor, but comes across the same way Bateman did in Batman: silly. And considering Bateman is a really good actor, it's a natural comparison of what happens when a good actor does something silly. He was probably told to sound gritty and detached, took it a little too far, and the VA director either thought it sounded great, or was too timid to correct it.
I've always wondered if Bale is even a good actor.
Bateman was the guy Bale played in American Psycho, I think.
I kind of like the Chris Nolan Batman voice.
Bateman was the guy Bale played in American Psycho, I think.
I kind of like the Chris Nolan Batman voice.
I guess he was being....punny...
I've played Witcher games in both English and German and found them to have, by the low standards of the industry, very solid scripts. Forget the actual story--just the words coming out of characters' mouths usually work really well, and I've never seen any of the madness Engrish typical of localized Japanese games. Does anyone know what language the games are originally written in? Does CDPR just have a writing staff hyperfluent in English who start their scripts there? Do they just hire really good teams to do the localization? Has anyone played the games in Polish and English or German both? Is Polish "the original," and is it even better there? Been curious about this since forever, not sure if CDPR has ever commented on it.
I've never played a game as well-localized as any of the Witchers. I've never been so impressed.
witcher 2 and 3 (and I imagine their future games) are written in English, but the Polish localization is not only a translation - it's a full fledged localization, meaning it contains more stuff pertaining to Polish culture, some rewritten text, and in general feels rather like the original version. The Polish translation is as amazing as may CD-Projekt's translations of other games they publish in Poland.
Game is going to be sold all around the world, but you've written it in Polish. Did you try to make the translators' work easier already during the process of writing the original script?
J.S.: We didn't care at all. In our script, elvish soldiers sing "Scoiatel have come to the windows" [parody of a Polish independence fighter's song from IWW], in other places some drunkard sings "Oh, Slivovica, my wife!" [parody of Polish blues song]. The translator either change it for something easier understandable for an American audience or just leave it "as is" as an exotic curiosity. Let's say we make a reference to some legend about old Poland that every Polish kid knows since kindergarten. We were quite curious, what would they make out of it, how they're gonna turn it into something universal. They've just left it for it was exotic.
K.S.: Sapkowski's made an universal character. A monster slayer for hire, wandering from one village to another. In every culture you can relate to him, Americans relate it to the Wild West mythos.
J.S.: And the Japanese see Geralt as a ronin, wandering samurai who's not serving any lord. A Japończycy z kolei w Geralcie widzą ronina, czyli wędrownego samuraja, który nie służy żadnemu panu.
Yeah, but still, in Sapkowski's prose you have some very concrete references to Polish politics or history, for example an alegory of the Pogrom of Kielce. Do the translators come to you asking for a clarification about certain lines?
K.S.: There's no need to, they're great professionals, bilingual, fully fluid in both cultures. Borys Pugacz-Muraszkiewicz is a Pole who grew up in Arizona. Travis Currit is an American with Polish wife who's lived in Poland for years. Sometimes they do ask, but that's just coffee machine conversation, after all we share the same building.
J.S.: I'd rather say it's them explaining stuff to us. Borys is a walking Witcher encyclopedia. At times who storms into our room ranting that this scene cannot refer to a great-grandfather of some king but at least his great-great-grandfather or else the chronology would be screwed.
I was just amazed that a Polish language game routinely uses puns in the English language version.
Best would be using the polish version, but I am not fluent enough for that sadly.
Played all three games in three languages: Kwan, Potato and Putinski. I think Kwan VA has been excellent, especially Geralt. While he is grave spoken, his acting is actually very subtle, but very fitting the character. In fact, I feel the other two actors overplayed him. They seemed to have approached VA from a more stage centric perspective, with stronger intonation, which I don't think works for Geralt.