Conan will start speaking Russian later this year
by Samuel Axon 
Jul 31st 2008 at 8:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, MMO industry, News items
Funcom today announced a partnership with huge Russian developer/publisher 1C Company to localize Age of Conan for the Russian-speaking market. All text and voices in the game will be translated to Russian, and 1C will provide customer support and community services to the Russian community. There will also be a Russian server. This is all due in Q4 of this year.
The English language version of the game has already been released in Eastern Europe, and it's done pretty well. All the marketing hype quotes in the press release stress that the game will be a massive success when available in the native tongue of the region. We're not going to make any predictions about that, but this is probably good news either way if your native language is Russian and you're already playing the game.
The English language version of the game has already been released in Eastern Europe, and it's done pretty well. All the marketing hype quotes in the press release stress that the game will be a massive success when available in the native tongue of the region. We're not going to make any predictions about that, but this is probably good news either way if your native language is Russian and you're already playing the game.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Noctivagus said on 9:17PM 7-31-2008
Good plan! The Russians lived with Communism all those decades, so they won't know any better. When your game fails in the 1st world countries, hit up the 2nd world!
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Nafs said on 11:57PM 7-31-2008
It's wrong, it should read:
"Задавите ваших противников!"
But the whole sentence is quite lame anyway,
it sounds quite stupid in this context,
rather meaning "run your enemies over!" meaning kill them with a running vehicle.
So I'd say don't use babelfish for that :)
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Samuel Axon said on 9:43PM 7-31-2008
I'll admit I don't speak a word of Russian, and yes, I used Babelfish. ;)
It was supposed to be "Crush your enemies!" and it even translated back into English as such. Ah well. ;)
Jeromai said on 1:24AM 8-01-2008
Does a mammoth count as a running vehicle? :)
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Alrick said on 3:26AM 8-01-2008
It should say 'раздавите' if you don't want it to have death-by-vehicle meaning :)
The game has been sold in the shops in Russia nearly since official launch. So talking about 'bringing low-quality MMOGs to poor Russians' is ridiculous. It's already here, for better or worse. By thw way, the price of the lowest-tier version (DVD and account key only, no box) is around $15. Envy us :)
Oh, and some newsflash for the non-educated: Russia isn't a communist country by at least 17 years already. I'd say it wasn't communist even before that - socialist, rather.
I'm impressed with the power of propaganda in the western world - after having lost its ground nearly two decades ago, it still works somehow. You live and learn :)
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nickpick said on 7:24AM 8-01-2008
What Nafs and Alrick said. Though I have to add, I wouldn't say 'раздавите' either. You imply that you're going to kill them solely by putting rather something heavy on them. Crushing is breaking as referred to breaking bones. Additionally, 'противник' is a somewhat modern word you'd probably use in tactics. I doubt that a barbarian would refer to his enemies as 'противники'. IMHO you'd be best off with:
''сокрушите врагов ваших!" ("crush thy foes") is somewhat better, but still somewhat corny. I think, a Russian would prolly say "в атаку!/в пред!" ("charge!") or more likely, in the given context, "мочи козлов!" ("(rude, but not vulgar) kill those bastards", literary "wet the goats").
Eitherway, it's no biggy here. :P I think it's much more embracing when a 80 million dollar film can't hire a bum for 5$ to check their Russian/German/French/whatever.
PS: And, yeah, Noctivagus, go and watch "Red Dawn" or something.
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Samuel Axon said on 8:38AM 8-01-2008
It's the thought that counts, right?
I speak English and Spanish fluently, and French just barely well enough to be understood. I'd love to learn Russian but there are 6,000 languages in the world and only 24 hours in the day. Hopefully I'll get there eventually!
nickpick said on 9:22AM 8-01-2008
Hehe, I believe you misunderstood me, Samuel. I thought it was pretty funny header and considering the fact that 95% of the readers don't understand Russian anyway, it's not like there was any point to check. You could use one of the suggested lines in the future though. :P (I'm not sure if you really want to learn Russian. It's not really a walk in the park and unlike a good deal of other languages, you'll really have to spend ages on it to read any of the higher literature. I speak it, along with another half a dozen languages, because I'm a linguist. There's really no point of overdoing it.). But as I've said, it was not a critique and, from my point of view, a rather neat move. ;)
The only thing I don't get is: why can't the film producers get anybody to check their scripts? It's a matter of a couple of dollars, in an 80 million project, and they still manage to speak Bablefish-ish.
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