A studio that handled Baldur’s Gate III translations has apologized after outsourced workers were omitted from the game’s credits. “We take full responsibility for this omission of our freelancers’ names and apologize for the effects that it had,” Altagram Group founder and CEO Marie Amigues said in a statement. “We would like to thank Larian for allowing us to quickly fix that error and update the credits section. The names of the Brazilian Portuguese translators will be included in an upcoming patch to the game.”
Although the credits did not feature the translators Altagram worked with, they included the names of the company’s executives and department leads. Contractors who translated Baldur’s Gate III into languages other than Brazilian Portuguese were credited, though different companies handled those localizations.
Baldur’s Gate III developer and publisher Larian Studios said Altagram was to blame for the oversight. It asked the company to rectify the situation, and it seems Altagram swiftly obliged.
Unfortunately, outsourced workers who contribute to games are not always fully credited for their work. That can impact their future prospects, as it makes it slightly more difficult to prove to potential employers that they worked on a given game.
Crediting workers may not be a concern for some localization studios in the coming years, though. We’ll surely see certain developers attempting to use artificial intelligence to translate games into different languages in the hopes of reducing costs. However, localization is skilled work that requires people who can not just mechanically translate text from one language to another, but can take into account factors like idiomatic quirks and cultural references that may not make sense to a certain audience.
Source: www.engadget.com