With the German translations going downhill. Hearthstone is full of errors and Overwatch 2 is also letting us down. MyMMO demon Cortyn asked Blizzard – and the result is funny.
It’s time for a whining Wednesday again. One that I wanted to write a few weeks ago. I have noticed things that lead me to believe that the quality of German game translations at Blizzard has drastically decreased, especially in recent months.
Before the article, we had asked Blizzard for a statement regarding my observations and assumptions.
Unfortunately, there has been no response until today – this only makes the article a little more cynical, but hopefully more amusing for you. But more on that later. Back to the beginning:
The German translations of Blizzard’s games, the localizations, are getting worse.
This is incredibly unfortunate. Because Blizzard’s games, especially the German versions, are associated by me and many others with high quality. Blizzard manages to transform English wordplays into meaningful German variants and incorporate the peculiarities of a country in localizations – just think of the Kul Tiraners with their northern German dialect. Brilliant and cohesive.
And just to be clear: I do not mean translations like “Eisenschmiede” (“Ironforge”) or “Prachtmeer” (“Proudmoore”) in World of Warcraft. These were conscious decisions to localize a game. This can certainly be a matter of opinion, but it is not objectively bad or wrong – just a matter of taste.
I’m deliberately referring to things that are either simply incorrectly translated or done so sloppily that one can be sure that no one knowledgeable has looked over it.
You know I like Hearthstone. I really do. I enjoy spending money on card packs every few months because I enjoy the game. But especially because I play it a lot – and have since release – I notice that localization is going downhill.
But let me now name a few examples.
Blizzard doesn’t know what Blizzard is writing
Just fresh, just yesterday, with the announcement of the new Hearthstone expansion “Showdown in the Wasteland”, there are some such examples – not only in the game but also on the Hearthstone website (as of: 18.10.2023, 11:00 AM).
To make you understand the extent: Out of 12 cards presented so far, 4 are faulty. They either have incorrect grammar or use wrong terms.
Let’s start gently with the card “Reap What You Sow”:
At first glance, everything looks correct, right? Well, almost. “Dig up a treasure” is very different from anything Hearthstone has ever written on cards. Because cards in Hearthstone are always polite, always addressing “you” and “your.” So the correct version would be “Dig up a treasure”.
Okay, I see – this point can still be brushed off as “smart-aleck”.
But with the next card, it’s more serious. Take a look at “Elise, Wasteland Rescuer”:
Her battle cry “Summons copies (4/4) of 4 random minions in your deck (…)”, is simply wrong. You don’t summon copies into the deck, but from the deck. They appear immediately on the battlefield and are not shuffled into the deck.
How do I know this? Because the English version of the card and the official introduction video explain it just like that.
Next mistake. Hearthstone announces a new keyword. It is called according to the website
