Clutter in Spain and/or
Genius in France

Spanish, German, French and Dutch.

It was an exciting journey but I believe that all the localizations have been QA’d and are ready to go live on the Big Fish Games foreign sites.

It’s live in Spain (www.BigFishGames.es) and the others should soon follow in Germany (www.BigFishGames.de), France (www.BigFishGames.fr) and last but not least the Netherlands (www.BigFishGames.nl).

There weren’t that many translation issues but occasionally I needed to tweak the translations and I usually didn’t do it correctly. Google Translate is awesome but is no substitute for a bi-lingual person. For instance, “Matches” can mean “Matching two objects” (the Clutter way)….or it can mean something that lights a cigarette. Two very different words in other languages. ( Fósforo vs. Pares – Guess which is which.)

That was Spanish, in German I learned that you can translate Score into “Note” or “Punktestand”. Here’s a clue, one means “standings” and one means a “musical score”. Also, apparently when you abbreviate a word it can change from the masculine form to the feminine form under the covers. (I think that’s what happened).

The Dutch folks handling the localization were the only group that wanted me to change the name of the game to Rommel. Just wasn’t going to happen.

All in all I made 3 rounds of changes for German and French, while only 2 rounds of changes for the Dutch and Spanish versions.

Since I believe that very few players actually read the story and self-help-isms in the game, then I’m not too worried about other translation issues.

Curiously though, the Dutch translation changed my Mayflower fun fact to something about the Titanic. I laughed until I cried on that one. It was in the Plymouth Mass. part of the game with a picture of the Mayflower II showing. I was so drained at that point (and because I thought it was funny) that I let the translation stand.

I don’t know if they have forums for the game like they do in English (I’ll know tomorrow, I think they do), but I’m looking forward to dropping the comments into Google Translate to see what they say. I’m hoping that I’ll be like Jerry  Lewis (in France), David Hasselhoff (in Germany), or The Monkees (in Japan). They were all hugely popular (arguably even more so than in America) in the specific niche foreign market.

I can still hope and dream can’t I? Was Weird Al Yankovic a Genius in France or did he just write a song about it. Billy Joe Bob Jack says…Check ‘er Out.