DotA 2 localization problems in China. Coming soon?

Written by bby

It looks like more and more problems occur for Perfect World - the company who is trying to distribute DotA2 to China.

There was a document released by SGamer, as they confirmed that comes out of Perfect World, which claims that an internal tournament for employees will be held and the end date of this event would be March 21, 2013. The idea behind this tournament is to test the Chinese servers before their offical announcement. So far, so good.

A couple of days after this got published, HippoVic, a key member of the localization team for DotA2, decided to see check the headway of his colleagues in the translation department. And this is where the problems started.

After that he shared his thoughts of their work in his Weibo account:

Translated, from bottom to top:

“Must not flame… must resist…”
“Lacking culture and education is one thing, but resorting to Chinese idioms, such a damn embarrassment. I beg you all to not be so fucking stupid, okay, if you must be a dumbass then fine, but keep it to yourself, don’t make me fix your dumb shit. What have I done to deserve this?”
“Rework then, dumb shits! This is what you get for tormenting my ears!”

I think that you got the idea. HippoVic has revealed some examples on SGamer (http://dota2.sgamer.com) and if you understand Chinese you will see that they are really bad translations.

Yet, this is not the biggest problem in front of Perfect World. As we all know, Asians are way more conservative than the rest of the world in some aspects. This is the case with DotA2 as well - it can't pass the Chinese censor approval process and it will need 'harmonization'. This is not the first case of 'harmonization' at all. It has happened with World of Warcraft and due to the changes needed to be done it has delayed its appearance in China for almost a year. It is not certain whether there will be a delay caused by this in DotA2.

Another translated chat log by Dotaland:

Steam chat suggesting that Skeleton King will be one to be ‘harmonized’, as his current model has no flesh, and thus violates the government’s ban of depicting skeletons in media.

So here are the supposed changes that need to be done so DotA2 can spread to China:

1. Skeletons ‘harmonized’ — Skeleton King, Clinkz, etc
2. Names ‘harmonized’ — various hero names
3. Blood color changed — change the color of blood splashes, for example Phantom Assassin’s effect
4. Icons altered — seems like there are many places for this in Dota2

Let me tell you that after what has happened with World of Warcraft, Chinese players were not satisfied, at all. Will these changes be as big as they were in WoW? Will DotA2 players will actually accept the changes? Stay tuned and you will see.

Source: http://dotaland.net