Print On Demand and other languages

Juggernaut1981 wrote: The obvious translations would be those languages with wide usage around the world, Spanish, French, Portuguese. Maybe at a stretch something like Chinese but that would become a real hassle since you would need to then maintain almost an entire website in Chinese (and I don't think the game is particularly strong in China).

I recall legal issues selling things with pictures of skulls or human remains in china as well, which could be yet another problem.

Honsetly, spanish would make sense. Maybe french(but again, most players from france, spain, mexico, brazil, etc who play typically havr at least some knowledge of english.)

A nifty idea!

Could be rather useful for spreading the game in countries that don't have that widespread command of english.

Totally agress with Damnans about the card names (applies to keywords etc too).

I seem to remember that cards have already been translated to at least spanish so perhaps some experiences from there could be used?

It takes a lot of investment to take on a new country, especially China. I don't think anyone has that kind of money to put on VTES. Time would be better spent supporting the languages of the existing playgroups.

Technically translating cards to a new language is easy to do. As long as you create a dictionary for the terminology used in the game and hold on to that standard. For example a ‘retainer’ is A and a ‘minion’ is B and ‘+X stealth’ translates to ‘+X C’, but the term will not be translated as it is a key term/action for the game and players also use while the rest of the game is played in language XYZ.
As requested by Andreas N. about 2 ½ years ago, I have done that for the German rulebook and it worked fine. So get your rulebook translated, thereby define the terminology and then translate the card texts. I was also hesitant about the translation of card names, but as long as you keep reference I don’t see a reason why names should not be translated. The ‘other game’ has been living with translated card names for decades and has done pretty well. As an additional remark, it was very helpful for me to have the full set of German V:tM rules handy. The folks who originally published the RPG put a lot of effort and thought into finding the appropriate terms. For example: ‘ally’ vs. ‘retainer’
-MV-

The English language has not been a barrier for new players in Portugal.
Since Portugal has never invested in any type of translation from foreign (mostly American) culture items, most gamming-oriented people are rather fluent in English, as some of you already seen.

The language is more of an issue for Spain and Brazil, I think.

Brum wrote: The language is more of an issue for Spain and Brazil, I think.

The same thing could be said for France, since on average, French have horrible english skill (and everything is translated and/or voice acted). But apparently, french vtes player are despite that good english speaker

Unlike what Marcus Vitel say, in my experience, translation is pretty difficult, mainly because consistency is key, and often translations errors or ambiguity can change the meaning of a card quite a bit. Having only english card may be better than translated card with errors on some cards that force to check Secret library at each rule question just in case.