| Mail |

You might also like: WoW Insider, Joystiq, and more

More Sites You Might Like

Star Wars: The Old Republic being localized in French and German

by James Egan on Aug 18th 2009 3:00PM

Sci-Fi, MMO Industry, New Titles, Star Wars: The Old Republic

One of the unique aspects of Star Wars: The Old Republic is that it's being developed as a fully-voiced MMO through the efforts of hundreds of voice actors. According to BioWare, the script for SWTOR contains 40+ novels worth of content. This is impressive -- not to mention a bit frightening -- but what happens if BioWare and LucasArts want to tap the non-English speaking markets? (They do.) BioWare stated: "Today, we are revealing that BioWare and LucasArts will be localizing The Old Republic into French and German and we are launching the French and German versions of the official website."

Our understanding is that the French and German releases of Star Wars: The Old Republic will be fully voiced as with the English version. If the localizations for each of these languages truly encompass everything in the English version of SWTOR, this could mark the biggest localization effort undertaken to date in the MMO industry.

Source

Tags: bioware, french, fully-voiced, german, localization, lucasarts, mmo-industry, new-titles, sci-fi, star-wars, swtor

Reader Comments (22)

Shit man... I mean... fuck. You know? Damn.

Ditto!

Best. Comment. Ever.

I believe everyone no-matter what language they speak should be able to enjoy a game, but... is there really enough, say, German-speaking MMO players to make this cost effective?

the seven most natively spoken languages in the EU are (percentage of total European population):

19% German
13% French
12% English
11% Italian
9% Spanish
9% Polish
6% Romanian

Oh, and this one:
These figures change slightly when foreign language skills are taken into account. The list below shows the top eight European languages ordered by total number of speakers in the EU:
49% English
35% German
28% French
16% Italian
15% Spanish
10% Polish
7% Russian
6% Dutch

They also showed off the German dub of the "Deceived" trailer. The Sith sounded very appropriate as German.

Doesn't the French quarter of Quebec Canada require games to be in French to be released there? This news of a French dub will at least get TOR selling in that small region of Canada.

Wow if this game failed it may be the end of Bioware.... Sounds really risky!

Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age will more than compensate.

Hope that means voiced and not split up onto servers without being able to choose. I'm fedup of mmorpgs spliting regions up because I play mmos to play with people from all over the world and not just in my Country.

If you don't like the U S and A, then you can just giiitout!

Ya, and quit takin our jearrbs!

I wonder how many DVDs will European retail version will have.

I bet the development time for adding new areas to the game is going to take a lot longer with all these voices.

I doubt it's that much longer. BioWare Austin just has to send scripts of dialogue through e-mail to their German and French offices(hell, the French dubbing might be done at their Canada studio). Those studios then translate and dub. There might be a couple weeks tops on delay, with the big delaying being some translating and hiring of VAs in the native tongue. It shouldn't take too long for experienced translating and dubbing studios(like the ones that translate/dub American cartoons and video games).

I am betting that they do the French work at their Canadian studio though. Or maybe I'm thinking of Ubisoft. BioWare has always seemed more English-oriented than BioWare.

Release date pushed back to 2015. Obviously im kidding. Though it seems every time they open their mouth its about somethign that adds a massive amount of production time.

Relese date has been pushed back to 2015.

I never understand why they bother with french and german over, say, spanish. Or even chinese. The EU is not a huge market at all, and it always seemed to me to be kind of a waste of localization time for german especially.

More money to be had in the EU, I'm sure.

All it has to do is be profitable. It may be more profitable to do a Chinese localization at some point but honestly I'd be surprised if they even want to make the effort - look at all the trouble WoW's having. You really think a Star Wars MMO, with its themes of large oppressive government, rebellion, warfare, and so on will fly in China? Yikes.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments

Star Wars: The Old Republic being localized in French and German

Reader Comments (22)

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 3:08PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 3:12PM jpkustra said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 7:32PM Macabre 13 said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 3:09PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:53PM Wieland said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:56PM Wieland said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 3:16PM RogueJedi86 said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 3:52PM TheJackman said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:33PM LaughingTarget said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 4:00PM Miffy said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:01PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:34PM LaughingTarget said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 4:00PM mko said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:06PM Pojoh said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:34PM RogueJedi86 said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:14PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 5:12PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 6:47PM Dblade said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 7:26PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 18th 2009 7:43PM foofad said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Massively-that-was

Featured Stories

Norrathian Notebook: Landmark celebrates Year 0 anniversary

The Daily Grind: This is not the end

The Stream Team: Sneak a peek of FACTIONS: Origin of Malu with devs

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW