Board Game Arena

Several translations of the terms in Formula D to German are not correct (not the same as in the manual).
But I cannot suggest different translations.

Much of it is also immediately noticeable to a native speaker. Like calling weather "veränderlich" instead of "wechselhalft".

‘Changeable’ was mostly translated as ‘wechselhaft’ and only twice as ‘veränderlich’. I have therefore standardised it to ‘wechselhaft’. Thank you for pointing this out.

There are over a thousand individual texts in Formula D. If you have any further suggestions for improvement, please use the forum for translations into German:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=419

(Btw, 22 other texts have been edited today by someone else, e.g. „Kurve“ instead of „Ecke“. These changes will be available tomorrow.)

Oh wow. While veränderlich is just a non-ideal translation, Ecke proves that the person translating that either can’t really speak German or doesn’t even remotely know what the game is about. Thanks Thomas, for being one of those who do quality work. I usually come too late to translate anything, and I prefer playing in English anyway, but sometimes I try to check newer translations in case I’m familiar with the game.

I think it might also show that they were using a machine translator without checking the translation afterwards. Without context, any translator (machine or human) would translate "corner" as "Ecke".

I used to use BGA in English but switched to German a few weeks ago also just to experience how the site works in translation. And while many things work well, there are games where I have to rely on the English-language text on card images because the German is incomprehensible. I can't change the translations because I haven't played that game 10x yet. And in other games it's a graphics problem because the German text is longer (20% longer on average afaik).

As you have to manually enter every translated sentence into the BGA form, and the sentences are short and fairly straightforward, that’s possible, but not really probable (unless someone has coded a script to fill stuff in automatically). In any event, others have to change these translations and don’t get a single gift point for that.

As long as you change translations within the first month, you do indeed get the gift points instead of any previous translator. Not so nice if it's a minor correction that's not really their fault. But it's meant to ward off these gift point hunters. I just think a month is too short a time with the wealth of games that gets added to Beta all the time.

And maybe if you change a translation later and check what might be an option saying "previous translation was made in bad faith" something could happen. I don't know. Added complexity of course...