Chinese soldiers speaking atrocious Mandarin!

Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:08 pm

All the Chinese soldiers in the game speak a sing-song version of Mandarin which sounds a little like Cantonese and is almost intelligible. It's like some foreigner trying to speak Mandarin and failing horribly. Surely Bethesda can afford to hire a proper Chinese speaker to do the voiceovers. If they are out of budget, they can get help from some Chinese students in college. Chairman Mao will turn in his grave to hear his beloved PRC soldiers speak like that. Very unprofessional.
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Leticia Hernandez
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 5:08 am

Really? I never noticed ^_^
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Adam Baumgartner
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 11:38 am

I thought the chinese soldiers speaking chinese was ok, although you could blame that on the studio being in Rockville instead of outside Los Angeles.
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Nick Pryce
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 6:08 am

I have heard this said of the Chinese Dialog before, but since I don't understand the language, I couldn't tell one way or the other. I do agree that they easily could have gotten plenty of help from some students in making it more accurate.
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Hot
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 4:46 am

What is their dialog (translated)?
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Rebecca Dosch
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 3:20 pm

I speak this language all the damn time.
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Beth Belcher
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 8:41 pm

What is their dialog (translated)?


In the main game, they say something along the lines of "Die, you Capitalist dogs". I can't really make out much of it because their pronunciation is so bad.
In the Operation Anchorage DLC, I have to depend on the English subtitles for the final speech. Bethesda might as well do the voiceovers in English.
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FirDaus LOVe farhana
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 11:55 am

Typical. I heard someone complain about this before.

Kinda goes with a similar point that the palms of black people`s hands are black in the game. The palms of black people`s hands are WHITE (or pink more accurately), but Bethesda have never changed this. Imagine white people being depicked with black palms.

I guess they don`t hang around that many Black people or Mandarin Chinese speakers...

But what the hell, it`s just a game.
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Bigze Stacks
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 5:13 am

If I could speak Mandarin I would have done free voice acting for Bethesda just to be a part of one of their games. So Bethesda, take note: if you ever need a rural Irish accent in one of your games, don't waste your money on a professional. :P
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A Boy called Marilyn
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 8:22 am

I really couldn't care less about this. It's a game.
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Céline Rémy
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 8:52 pm

Typical. I heard someone complain about this before.

Kinda goes with a similar point that the palms of black people`s hands are black in the game. The palms of black people`s hands are WHITE (or pink more accurately), but Bethesda have never changed this. Imagine white people being depicked with black palms.

I guess they don`t hang around that many Black people or Mandarin Chinese speakers...

But what the hell, it`s just a game.


There isn't really an easy way they could change it, since the black, asian and hispanic characters all use the same skin texture as the caucasian characters, but with different shaders.
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Spaceman
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 5:11 pm

i think this actually makes sense. in anchorage its a US made simulation. americans dont care what they say as long as it sound like chinese
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Astargoth Rockin' Design
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 1:28 pm

i think this actually makes sense. in anchorage its a US made simulation. americans dont care what they say as long as it sound like chinese

That might work for OA, but how about Mama Dolce's, aren't? there any Chinese there?
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Stephanie Nieves
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 5:32 pm

I really couldn't care less about this. It's a game.

This.
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Louise Andrew
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:12 pm

I really couldn't care less about this. It's a game.


All together now: "Game, game, it's a friggin' game"
When did gaming become such serious business? I remember when we played to relax, to pass time, to compete with our friend on the other end of the couch. We laughed, we made bets, we enjoyed ourselves. It was just fun.

Get offa my lawn.
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I love YOu
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 5:16 am

My fun tends to be pretty serious fun. Guess my days playing Arma and WW2 flight sims have done that.

But everyone`s view of fun is subjective, right?

Though I suspect some of the people who don`t care would probably be squawking like a little bird if they found something they didn`t like to do with their character.

It also seemed annoying how all British speaking characters are BUTLER ROBOTS in FO3. Why is this?

Just to add petrol to the fire.
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Matt Gammond
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:53 pm

All together now: "Game, game, it's a friggin' game"
When did gaming become such serious business? I remember when we played to relax, to pass time, to compete with our friend on the other end of the couch. We laughed, we made bets, we enjoyed ourselves. It was just fun.

Get offa my lawn.


I laughed way to hard at this.

But yea, I agree. The general audience isn't going to be able to speak Mandarin. It's close enough for the vast majority of us. But I guess if it's that bad, they could have stepped it up a touch.
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Milagros Osorio
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 9:31 am

I would have preferred that Chinese remnant soldiers speak English without an accent. I know it sounds strange but when you see it it makes a better impression to someone whose English is their only language:

Consider this video about a battle in Japan played by Japanese actors who speak in English with little or no accent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8DWGbQpcS8
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Lillian Cawfield
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 11:21 am

The same people who said they don't care probably would care more if the English voiceovers were done with an Asian accent or if the grammar is all wrong. It spoils the immersion and atmosphere of the game. It probably won't net the game any game of the year awards.
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Nikki Hype
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 8:09 pm

I love how people automatically assume that racism is involved whenever somebody tries to speak a different language and can't speak it perfectly. Seriously, it's just a game! A game made by an American development team no less, so what if they couldn't get the actors to speak the language perfectly? Last I checked the main language spoken in the United States is English and not too many people here can speak Mandarin, so if the developers had a hard time getting actual Chinese voice actors to do the voices of the Chinese Soldiers that does not mean they did it on purpose as part of some sort of evil racist conspiracy. :facepalm:

I'm with ghouls, it's sad to think that games used to be all fun and... well, games. Get offa my lawn too! :swear:
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Josephine Gowing
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 2:07 pm

I don't speak Cantonese or Mandarin. But I thought the Chinese Remnants were muffled sounding and not precise enough. The Chinese Soldiers in Anchorage are diferent. But not good still I think.

They should have got chinese people or people who speak Cantonese or Mandarin to do the voices properly. Like you said, chinese students doing it for free if they did not have enough money for a proffessional linguist.

It is not good to get that sort of thing wrong.
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Zualett
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 8:07 pm

I'm not too concerned with whether they were speaking good Mandarin or not....it's not like the fascists who run China will ever allow the game to be sold there, after all....what I would have liked is to have been able to interact with them peacefully. They aren't feral and know the war is over and both the US and PRC are gone...why would they be blasting away at everyone? I'd have put in a good-sized quest where you could do stuff for them and convince them to move to Underworld or something.
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Dylan Markese
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 5:39 pm

I would have preferred that Chinese remnant soldiers speak English without an accent. I know it sounds strange but when you see it it makes a better impression to someone whose English is their only language:

Consider this video about a battle in Japan played by Japanese actors who speak in English with little or no accent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8DWGbQpcS8

japan is different than china?
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Bad News Rogers
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 6:20 pm

It's a matter of professionalism on the part of Bethesda. If you want to produce a good product, you would want to make sure that you get as many things right as possible, not take the easy way out. If other games like Age of Empires 2 can bother to get their languages right (Mandarin, German, French, Japanese, to name a few, all in the English version of the game), why should we expect less of Bethesda?
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Kayla Keizer
 
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