Using official translations to fix validated translations

[arisanana]

Hi,

In brief, I was playing King of Tokyo (Power Up Evolutions) with some Japanese friends, and it became a topic that bugged us for the rest of the games that a couple of cards were translated incorrectly — a completely wrong word for one, and confusing wording for another (such as grammar errors). I visited the JP translation forums and we reached a quick fix about it, but it seems it's a point of concern regarding using official translations out of fear that it clashes with the wording style of the other translations (and I suppose, would lock out people who don't own the game from translating). https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 81#p120781

I wanted to ask what is BGA's stance on using official translations after strings have already been validated — whether it's just to fix problematic strings or to go over the entire system and sync it to the official. Not just for Japanese, but an open question for all applicable cases.

I understand that there is no gift reward for fixing validated strings, and this is purely out of interest for making the game experience better. I also don't believe that just because making official translations an end preference means others can't write translations without the game first, but perhaps that mixed process just makes things too complicated?

[ufm]

BGA Translations should follow the real-life game's translations for consistency, unless they are so terrible to be tolerated.
In fact, BGA translation guideline recommends referring to the real life rulebooks and game components.

- 重要: 翻訳をお手伝いいただくなら、翻訳先言語が母国語であり、あなたが対象のゲームを知っている(出来れば所持している)必要があります。

[arisanana]

I get the part where it's recommended to have and follow the official translations when translating, but how does that translate for already validated translations, when the translations have been used and accepted (enough that no one is bothering to pick themselves up to come ask forums or fix it themselves) for a while?

Just translating some of these such strings (say, of the ones you have images of) according to the official seems to carry the fear of making the translations out of sync in respect to each other, but on the other hand, and especially for big games with a lot of text, doing an overhaul to sync all the translations to the official (thereby making translations also in sync to each other) could potentially change the entire game text and reading experience (all correct meanings protected), if up til now it was manual translation according to feel and native understanding of the translated language.

I want to stress specifically on the act of fixing validated translations with the official ones because it appears there is some assumption (at the least, concern) that by declaring "the use of using the real game's official translation" as "preferred" bars people who don't have it from translating in the first place, even if the BGA guideline says "if possible, preferred".

[fruktansvärt]

if validated translations are wrong, so that it bothers you, then you should fix them. when you fix them, use the official translation if you have it available. if fixing the translations results in inconsistencies, then you must fix these also.
in my opinion.

when i saw that Race for the Galaxy had a lot of incorrect translations in Swedish, that were validated, i took it upon myself to fix them. even though i did not get points for it. it was a lot of strings.

[arisanana]

if validated translations are wrong, so that it bothers you, then you should fix them. when you fix them, use the official translation if you have it available. if fixing the translations results in inconsistencies, then you must fix these also.
in my opinion.

Now the thing for me personally is that if I had a hard entire copy I would love to fix them all, regardless of lack of points, but all I could get my hands on was a few photos of some out of the ~extremely vast expansions that is King of Tokyo cards~ in Japanese... and in regards to simply correcting an incorrect string to correct (without referencing official), I could probably do it, but since I'm not a native speaker, without the official translations I would probably defer to the others on that thread to do those :')