Cyberpunk 2077 devs considering multiple languages, requiring translator implant
It’s still early days in the Cyberpunk 2077 development process – what with CD Projekt RED also having a 100+ hour fantasy RPG to tackle. Not that it’s stopping them from sharing some of the details they’ve been kicking around internally. Speaking to dubscore.pl, CD Projekt RED’s Sebastian Stepien reveals the developer’s plan to record all NPCs in their original, intended language – with an translator implant acting as your in-game Babelfish.
“Decisions are not yet made, but we are thinking about some kind of system which could tell more about the game world,” Stepien says. “The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors.”
“Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation.”
Stepien goes on to say that the move would help solve a fairly big believability issue – that Polish actors trying to ape LA slang just wouldn’t sound convincing. Certainly it would be fantastically atmospheric. And while a steadily improving translation sounds like a lot of work, it’s a clever touch that would potentially gel perfectly with the theme.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/01/cyberpunk-2077-devs-considering-multiple-languages-requiring-translator-implant/
It’s still early days in the Cyberpunk 2077 development process – what with CD Projekt RED also having a 100+ hour fantasy RPG to tackle. Not that it’s stopping them from sharing some of the details they’ve been kicking around internally. Speaking to dubscore.pl, CD Projekt RED’s Sebastian Stepien reveals the developer’s plan to record all NPCs in their original, intended language – with an translator implant acting as your in-game Babelfish.
“Decisions are not yet made, but we are thinking about some kind of system which could tell more about the game world,” Stepien says. “The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors.”
“Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation.”
Stepien goes on to say that the move would help solve a fairly big believability issue – that Polish actors trying to ape LA slang just wouldn’t sound convincing. Certainly it would be fantastically atmospheric. And while a steadily improving translation sounds like a lot of work, it’s a clever touch that would potentially gel perfectly with the theme.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/01/cyberpunk-2077-devs-considering-multiple-languages-requiring-translator-implant/
Loved the guy (troll or not) on PCG forums who thought that we players should use implant in real-life to understand the languages. Talk about immersion xD
It’s still early days in the Cyberpunk 2077 development process – what with CD Projekt RED also having a 100+ hour fantasy RPG to tackle. Not that it’s stopping them from sharing some of the details they’ve been kicking around internally. Speaking to dubscore.pl, CD Projekt RED’s Sebastian Stepien reveals the developer’s plan to record all NPCs in their original, intended language – with an translator implant acting as your in-game Babelfish.
“Decisions are not yet made, but we are thinking about some kind of system which could tell more about the game world,” Stepien says. “The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors.”
“Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation.”
Stepien goes on to say that the move would help solve a fairly big believability issue – that Polish actors trying to ape LA slang just wouldn’t sound convincing. Certainly it would be fantastically atmospheric. And while a steadily improving translation sounds like a lot of work, it’s a clever touch that would potentially gel perfectly with the theme.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/01/cyberpunk-2077-devs-considering-multiple-languages-requiring-translator-implant/
i love this idea! i really really hope they will make it!!
It’s still early days in the Cyberpunk 2077 development process – what with CD Projekt RED also having a 100+ hour fantasy RPG to tackle. Not that it’s stopping them from sharing some of the details they’ve been kicking around internally. Speaking to dubscore.pl, CD Projekt RED’s Sebastian Stepien reveals the developer’s plan to record all NPCs in their original, intended language – with an translator implant acting as your in-game Babelfish.
“Decisions are not yet made, but we are thinking about some kind of system which could tell more about the game world,” Stepien says. “The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors.”
“Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation.”
Stepien goes on to say that the move would help solve a fairly big believability issue – that Polish actors trying to ape LA slang just wouldn’t sound convincing. Certainly it would be fantastically atmospheric. And while a steadily improving translation sounds like a lot of work, it’s a clever touch that would potentially gel perfectly with the theme.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/01/cyberpunk-2077-devs-considering-multiple-languages-requiring-translator-implant/
I loved a comment @PCG, made by one XFXOmar122:
"It would be awesome if you might get killed if your model fucked up the translation"
Yup, it'd be cool if you could mess up a situation because you skimped on your translator implant
EDIT: On an afterthought, there should be a way for players actually knowing the language to use their knowledge instead of implant. Otherwise it might become rather frustrating experience.
"It would be awesome if you might get killed if your model fucked up the translation"
Yup, it'd be cool if you could mess up a situation because you skimped on your translator implant
EDIT: On an afterthought, there should be a way for players actually knowing the language to use their knowledge instead of implant. Otherwise it might become rather frustrating experience.
this is really amazing, I guess this will be the first of this kind! I hope this is implemented. And I'm also wondering how many distince languages will be present, of course some will be more like polish while there will be others in (very?) less numbers. Although I'm from a more english speaking background, I wonder they will cover asian languages like hindi, tamil, japanese (well that one will most probably and only asian which might make it) will have an appearance?
Well, I guess I'm the only one here not too keen on this idea.
Just thought that by 2077, English language is even more globalized than at the moment and seeing loads of foreign speaking immigrants is NOT my ideal look and feel for Night City.
The only types of language in the cyberpunk world other than English should be coding & computer languages
(I'm not from an English speaking country if that matters)
Just thought that by 2077, English language is even more globalized than at the moment and seeing loads of foreign speaking immigrants is NOT my ideal look and feel for Night City.
The only types of language in the cyberpunk world other than English should be coding & computer languages
(I'm not from an English speaking country if that matters)
In all actuality, English is morphing towards Panglish; a language which we could recognize as a familiar language, but still not something we could speak. Blade Runner had an example of this back in 1982, called "Cityspeak".
By 2077, and especially in Cyberpunk 2020s world by 2077, there'd most likely be some form of Cityspeak in use.
Still, it's likely that Night City would have a lot of Spanish. There's no reason there wouldn't be a lot of Spanish there. And as such, why not mix in a lot of the other languages?
By 2077, and especially in Cyberpunk 2020s world by 2077, there'd most likely be some form of Cityspeak in use.
Still, it's likely that Night City would have a lot of Spanish. There's no reason there wouldn't be a lot of Spanish there. And as such, why not mix in a lot of the other languages?
I read about this on Rock Paper Shotgun and decided to head over to this forum for the first time to voice my enthusiasm... I think this is the sort of feature that could really get this game talked about in wider circles. A really fantastic idea!
Bluelighter, that crossed my mind too but I don't think English will have become universal by 2077, and as long as there is inequality in the world there will be immigrants who can't speak the local language. There are more Spanish and Mandarin native speakers than there are English native speakers, so there's still a long way to go (2077 is only 64 years away after all)
Bluelighter, that crossed my mind too but I don't think English will have become universal by 2077, and as long as there is inequality in the world there will be immigrants who can't speak the local language. There are more Spanish and Mandarin native speakers than there are English native speakers, so there's still a long way to go (2077 is only 64 years away after all)
Oh, Mandarin will never come anywhere outside of China, unless China starts conquering countries.
Spanish, though, will get very common in the US.
Back here in Europe, not so much. Here, English rules. The unnamed lingual backwaters who refuse to adopt English, and keep dubbing everything and don't offer services in English, will eventually bend to the universal language (English).
Spanish, though, will get very common in the US.
Back here in Europe, not so much. Here, English rules. The unnamed lingual backwaters who refuse to adopt English, and keep dubbing everything and don't offer services in English, will eventually bend to the universal language (English).
As a game mechanic, as I mentioned earlier, I suspect that the reason for this is because the developers are dealing with the situation today, which means that they need to appeal to a multilingual player base, and this seems to be an effective way of doing it. The argument that everyone should speak English therefore fails because not every *player* speaks English (and yes, I'm a native-English speaker). I also expect there to be full-voiced language packs for some languages, for the principal characters. I don't expect a Polish player to play the game in English any more than I expect to have to play The Witcher in Polish. There are times when game sales need to treated as more important than world realism.
In terms of reflecting a realistic state of Night City, the existence of a translator implant would in itself explain why everyone speaks their own languages - the impetus to learn the "native" language disappears when there's a readily available tool to do the job for you. And given where we already are with tools like Google Translate, good translation devices would probably have been around for a long time before 2077.
So yes, I think that having a polyglot community in Night City is very credible. I also agree that "English" would have probably changed a lot by 2077, but that's a separate issue - I don't know whether I'd necessarily want them to try to incorporate it.
In terms of reflecting a realistic state of Night City, the existence of a translator implant would in itself explain why everyone speaks their own languages - the impetus to learn the "native" language disappears when there's a readily available tool to do the job for you. And given where we already are with tools like Google Translate, good translation devices would probably have been around for a long time before 2077.
So yes, I think that having a polyglot community in Night City is very credible. I also agree that "English" would have probably changed a lot by 2077, but that's a separate issue - I don't know whether I'd necessarily want them to try to incorporate it.
Oh, I didn't mean Mandarin would take over as a language... just to point out that in a language community with so many native speakers as Spanish or Mandarin, the need to learn English for them is less except among the more international higher classes. In, say, Vietnam or Sweden, where the language community is smaller, there is a greater reward for learning English. So a world where everyone can speak English is still a long way off.
I think the places I've been where I found English as a second language to have been least common were probably South America and China, which sort of matches with what I've said above. This is purely anecdotal of course, I'm not a linguistics scholar hehe.
Come to think of it though, Armenia and Georgia didn't have very many English speakers either... when people spoke a second language it was often Russian, and Armenians in particular would mix Russian words in with their Armenian as slang.
If Armenian-speaking immigrants using Russian slang makes it into this game, I swear I will buy the collector's edition 10 times lol!
Your mention of Cityspeak/panglish is very interesting, I think you're right, especially with greater connectivity through the internet etc and huge numbers of speakers of English as a second language.
I think the places I've been where I found English as a second language to have been least common were probably South America and China, which sort of matches with what I've said above. This is purely anecdotal of course, I'm not a linguistics scholar hehe.
Come to think of it though, Armenia and Georgia didn't have very many English speakers either... when people spoke a second language it was often Russian, and Armenians in particular would mix Russian words in with their Armenian as slang.
If Armenian-speaking immigrants using Russian slang makes it into this game, I swear I will buy the collector's edition 10 times lol!
Your mention of Cityspeak/panglish is very interesting, I think you're right, especially with greater connectivity through the internet etc and huge numbers of speakers of English as a second language.
Really good point, hadn't thought of that... It would actually be quite nice to live in a world where everyone can retain their original tongues without being at a disadvantage.
I was at a bar Colombia and had a nice conversation with a girl I met entirely on her phone using google translate...
good times ahead thanks to technology
looks like it.....Well, I guess I'm the only one here not too keen on this idea.
Google Translate for text leads to automatic voice translation on smarphones which leads to translating earpieces - I don't think it'll be long before we have them.I was at a bar Colombia and had a nice conversation with a girl I met entirely on her phone using google translate...
good times ahead thanks to technology
Like translation a future wonder indeed! Translate of Google provide already wonders and allow enlightenment linguistic for us, so future like creation will be masterful to eradicate difficult walls.
(Let's hope that something other than Google Translate leads to those other things, though it should be mentioned that there's already an app that can do voice translation. It doesn't work perfectly, though better than one might expect aside from it absolutely refusing to translate profanity.)