3 ms·
$100k per language subtitules? Really?
by drKarl 11y ago
$100k per language subtitules? Really?
- bussiere 11y agoIt my be abusive but there is a lot of side things in the shenmue game so ...
- roneesh 11y agoSeems like a lot, but if you consider cost of translation, studio time, voice actors, etc, I can see it being 100k, especially if you want to pay the translators and actors fairly.
- dagw 11y agoThe translation is only text and subtitle, so no studio time or voice actors.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago1. stretch goals are just sales goals, there's no reason they have to correspond to actual costs. 2. that's gross, not net. Subtract 5% for kickstarter, 3% for the credit cards, royalties for game shipments and reward costs, and you're probably looking at less than $50K 3. good professional translation costs ~$30K per man-month if you use an agency. I wouldn't be surprised if Shenmue contains more than a novel's worth of text.
- babuskov 11y agoAs per 2. I fail to see how number of supported languages directly increases cost of game shipments (per unit)? I'd say that just put arbitrary numbers in there since the project will require much more than $2 mil. to complete. You are right about points 1. and 3. though.
- Lancey 11y agoPoint 2 is referring to fulfillment of Kickstarter costs, not translation. Backers on Kickstarter receive rewards with their pledges, which someone has to pay for, including shipping on not just games but also t-shirts, art books, and other novelties (most likely internationally). Part of the money earned will go towards that.
- Scuds 11y ago4. You want that tested? See what translation to German will do for your character counts, and if that'll work with the space allocated on screen. Granted this isn't the 16 or 32 bit era where all this typography stuff had to be rolled by hand, and probably looks like ass with a monospace font in anything other than japanese.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jackvalentine 11y agoThis is one of those things where if you're unfamiliar with it the cost seems outrageous - but if you want to do it properly you need to pay good money.
- djloche 11y agoYeah - I recently looked into getting a longer fictional work translated, and when I backed out the numbers from the seemingly high priced quotes, it made sense. You want translations from people that are fluent in both languages AND that are experts at translating the meaning from one to the other. These skills are available, but are expensive.
- astrodust 11y agoGoogle Translate isn't going to cut it, and hiring a professional translator that can handle the context and nuances will set you back that much. Translating a movie is one thing, it's only a few hours of dialog. Games often have way, way more.
- emodendroket 11y agoDon't forget stuff like keeping the game consistent with previous translations, blah blah blah.