What's going down?

[phreak0]

im with phalanx on this one, most people understand english in some way. i studied french, german and spanish in school for s couple f years but my teenage behaviour got the best of me since i have a hard time understanding any of them (granted german is easier since im swedish but still).

[mzi]

It might be interresting to know that 4 French-speaking guys (namely: Alaster, Liancour, YoshiRyu and me) have spent months correcting, testing, proofreading, etc.

And no, not everyone understands English well enough in the French-speaking community to be able to play the game.

[Phalanx]

I'm aware about the effort that the french community put in the new helldorado, however I believe that the new countries has higher priority than french or italian, two countries that already has all the material in their own languages.

anyway the french distributor can translate and publish the new manual in french, as I hope that the new italian distributor will do the same.

I played one year with the french manual, before have an italian version, and even with my bad knowledge of french I was able to play, I guess that french pepole that have a better educational system than in italy can put a little effort playng with the english manual for a while.
FRance is a big country I'm sure you will not wait for a long time for french edition

[mzi]

The distributor being Millenium, that very one who never translated Warmachine in French, I cannot help but be very pessimistic. There is no need to argue about this question: many players are disappointed, and so am I. Although I can understand Cipher's point of view, I know this will end the burial of HD at my local club.

[Cipher Dave]

We in no way wish to say that French or Italian aren't a priority. As you say Alaster, yourself, and many other French players have made huge contributions to the game, but I think you understand what I mean when all materials have been released in French. Not printing the updated book we are going to do in French is far different than never having released the game itself in other languages. They are similar but orders of magnitude different.

We are working on new models that will be released in all languages at once, as a way for the current markets to not be totally dead while we get everything up to speed. All languages are a priority, as we see it the decision to only release the game in French severely hampered its ability to b a viable product. The game is being re-released in general, but not with huge gigantic changes made to it that where never seen or available already in the original languages.

As I said and Phalanx reiterated it really is up to Millenium to decide if printing a book based on the English update will be monetarily feasible for them. The same is true in every language really, we will produce it in English, make our files available to our exclusive partners who wish to do localizations and they can decide whether the project is something they wish to undertake. This causes some delays, but such is inevitable when putting a product into multiple languages with a fairly small team.

MZI I am sorry to disappoint you, and I can understand why you are disappointed, but we are doing our best to get the game into a sustainable position as quickly as possible. So I hope you can still be involved and enjoy the game and world.

[mzi]

Thank you for your reaction.
One thing that would really ease he pain would be the publication of the corrected cards in French as well. Actually, that is the most important.

Best,

[mathieut]

I guess, that the english manual has the highest priority, everyone (more or less) can understand an english manual, translate them in french (or in italian) require a great effort, and our two countries already have the handbook in their respective languages, spain and german, needs new manual, I agree with CS decision.

Two things to keep in mind:
 - in this particular case, translating to French requires very little effort since the original material already is in French;
 - the upcoming rulebook is very different from the one that released in French (and in Italian). For all intents and purposes, the 1635 book (or whatever they call it) is a second edition of the 1634 one.

So please understand that, given the huge amount of work people have injected into this game (earlier rules translation by myself, putting the errata together, testing them, working on their translation,... by Alaster, mzi, et al.), being told now that the game won't be published in French despite earlier statements feels quite frustrating to say the least. And quite frankly, being told that it won't "not be published" but that it depends on Millenium is adding insult to injury. French gamers have known Millenium for quite some time, and the odds of ever getting a translated book from these guys are very slim.

To be honest, I for one couldn't care less about a French translation. I've lived in the US for long enough that the language isn't an issue, and I don't anticipate to play the game in French anytime soon anyway. I just feel that this whole move by CS is very wrong.

[Warmaster_Of_Puppets]

I can understand the frustration of the French team, but we remember that the actual situation derives also from the missed edition of the game in English from Asmodèe.
In any case I prefer that CS makes no missteps with the print of the manual, printing the manual in English covering the world with thousands of copies is cheaper than printing the manual in Italian / French / German / Spanish, who are few hundreds of copies for languages.
Not to mention that there may be trade agreements that prevent CS to translate the manuals in other languages...
I believe that many things will be clearer when Hell Dorado will rise from the grave in August ...

[phreak0]

*please excuse the following rant of bitterness*

Being Swedish isnt at all easy, no company has thus far translated any minicombat game to our most proud and delightful language. Even though it has been around in some form as long as or even longer than the English language. nor have anyone ever considered doing it. Our educational system starts teaching our kids english at the ripe age of nine, to give us the ability to somewhat communicate and/or understand the written English word.

should'nt all miniature games be translated into Swedish just aswell as French, Spanish, Italian, Swahili or Mandarin aswell (or whatever language floats your boat?).

we all know that the origins of Hell Dorado is French, as stated above one reason for things being the way they are is the lack of an English rulebook.

im sorry but to me it just feels like everyone are playing the ignorant ***hole card over the language thing, should we not rejoice that we finally might have people to play against in some kind of concievable vicinity to ourselves? i for one will not demand a rulebook in my native tongue just because i feel like it, i have translated numerous texts into Swedish for a number of reasons (mainly to teach younger people how to play) and i can keep doing that for free.

as far as i know you can get english courses pretty much anywhere in europe, so if you are having difficulties may i suggest one.

best regards
Dennis

and once again im sorry if i come off as a total jerk, but i felt like it had to be said in some way or another

*going back into my cave*

[Jens]

I'm happy that things seem to progress with Hell Dorado and looking forward to the english rulebook and I know many local players will be most happy since it was mentioned a german printed version might be available too. The printed cards are what I'm looking forward to most however.

Even though it took me some time to translate the french, I personally would have hoped the fluff would have been continued to be written in french by the old author(s) and get a professional translation to all other language. Obviously the fluff texts are not what might break the game for me, but I really did appreciate that whoever wrote them must have had a very good background knowledge in european history / religion and i loved all the little hints and references (and many were rather subtle, besides the more obvious ones). It had a distinctive style and feel to it and I might call it 'european' (the isle in the north doesn't count) - and please don't get me wrong, I do like amercian or british literature as well, it usually is quite differnt however. I hope fluff won't drift to a more amercian style, since this old style did fit the setting perfectly. And the wording was very 'rich' / 'typical medival phrasing' - I don't think it might work just as well in other languages.

[mathieut]

im sorry but to me it just feels like everyone are playing the ignorant ***hole card over the language thing, should we not rejoice that we finally might have people to play against in some kind of concievable vicinity to ourselves? i for one will not demand a rulebook in my native tongue just because i feel like it, i have translated numerous texts into Swedish for a number of reasons (mainly to teach younger people how to play) and i can keep doing that for free.

Good for you man, just FYI the reason why you could play Hell Dorado just days after its release in French, or simply the reason why you could play it for the longest time is because I too do translations for free. I don't see how that has anything to do with anything really, but that might just be my being an ignorant a-hole.

Everybody rejoices about the game being picked up by Cipher. I don't think I will bother reiterating the reasons why some of us are slightly crossed about the lack of a support in French in particular. I'm sure that even if reading entire posts evidently isn't you stronger point, you can go back and figure it out for yourself. Hint: it has nothing to do with asking for a rulebook just because we feel like it, or any other preposterous assumption you may be able to come up with when barely skimming through posts.