Which language version of WC do you prefer?

Which language version of WC do you prefer?

  • English

    Votes: 21 87.5%

  • French

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • German

    Votes: 1 4.2%

  • more than one

    Votes: 1 4.2%

  • all of them

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I don't know/care

    Votes: 1 4.2%
  • Total voters
    24
F

FekLeyrTarg

Rear Admiral
As you may know (or not), there are at least 3 language versions of the WC games: English, German and French. (if there are more, please tell me)
So which one do you prefer?
Here are examples:

German WC3 intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPO-3cDfKLU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgpZ-2uEsb8

English WC3 intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt8vD5y0eE8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SsRzzYJ1mI&feature=related

French WC3 intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeUxgk9biQw&feature=related
 
(sorry, can't edit 1st post anymore)
I see that the first four (including me) have voted for english. I'm not surprised.
Honestly I don't like the french dubbing that much. The german one is almost as good as the original english version but I still prefer english.
 
I think the English version would be the most popular as a larger percentage of the game's fan base was English speaking countries IIRC
 
I'm a native german speaker (from Austria) - so it's the german version for me.

IMO they did a great job with the german version - which is not always the case with games - the only downside I remember was that they had a different voice actor for Captain Eisen in WC4 and this new voice was really horrible and didn't fit his character at all.
 
t.c.cgi said:
Not really. English is my first language and the game was originally in English so I had little motivation to experiment.
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I understand.
Death Angel said:
I'm a native german speaker (from Austria)
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Same here.

Death Angel said:
IMO they did a great job with the german version - which is not always the case with games - the only downside I remember was that they had a different voice actor for Captain Eisen in WC4 and this new voice was really horrible and didn't fit his character at all.
Click to expand...

I agree. His german WC4 voice fits more to Malcolm McDowell. But his german WC3 voice (which sounds a little bit like the german Spock) fits well.
 
Watching the Youtube videos of French-dubbed version of WC3, I thought that it wasn't very good. The Kilrathi grawling voice isn't there, and some sentences weren't even translated to mean the same thing.

I usually find French dubs good enough to be enjoyable, but this one seems only fair.
 
Dubbing into other languages is never good IMHO, whether it's English being dubbed into a foreign language or a foreign language being dubbed into English. It's only OK with comedic Asian films or animated films. Sometimes with DVDs I'll switch to the foreign dubs (if available) for a little laugh at how mismatched the voices are to the original actors.

And sometimes I find it irritating when I try to find a clip from a film on Youtube and all I end getting a French or German dub. Dubbing something like Blackadder Goes Forth into German (which I've seen on Youtube) is plain absurd (surely I don't need to explain why)
 
English for me. The reason for this is that some things simply get "lost in translation" in other languages, or are simply not translated correctly.
 
I believe--and you native German and French speakers can correct me--that Origin was known for having especially good translations at times because they did the localization in-house instead of farming it out to a third party (which was what all the other American developers did at the time).

I know they brought native German and French speakers in to do the set of games that immediately preceded the EA buyout(Ultima VII, Wing Commander 2, Strike Commander) and then decided the practice wasn't worth the money... only to rebuild the translations department again in 1994 for games like Wing Commander III.
 
My German is extremely sloppy. A good comparison would be in STE when Hoshi tried to decipher what the Klingon Klang was trying to say... it gets pretty comical. So I'm going to go with the English Version. :p
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I believe--and you native German and French speakers can correct me--that Origin was known for having especially good translations at times because they did the localization in-house instead of farming it out to a third party (which was what all the other American developers did at the time).

I know they brought native German and French speakers in to do the set of games that immediately preceded the EA buyout(Ultima VII, Wing Commander 2, Strike Commander) and then decided the practice wasn't worth the money... only to rebuild the translations department again in 1994 for games like Wing Commander III.
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Actually, the dubbing was done by professional dubbing studios in France and Germany. From the WC III credits:


French Dubbing by: Studios Lincoln, Paris; German Dubbing Supervision: Kirsten Vaughn; German Dubbing by: Film-und Fernseh-Synchron, GmbH, Munich


http://www.answers.com/topic/wing-commander-the-kilrathi-saga


The C&C games by Westwood had a good German localization too. The voice acting that is. The games were horribly censored - soldiers replaced by "bots" and "druids", several cutscenes removed/cut in Red Alert - BUT the voice acting itself was pretty good (with the exception of the mad scientist in C&C 1, he was horrible). I liked the German EVA voice more than the English one. The German EVA (yeah, pun) is most of the time clearer and "stronger".


German version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTzk3zL5IR4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIioZW40Roc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcpDWsp5KmI&feature=related - They cut the baby!

English:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6906MLBkIsM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMstBfNZor8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVtPf5ATROY&feature=related

It was pretty funny too. So is the EVA voice mentioning that Tiberium harms "positronic brains"... only in the German version.
 
One bad mistake was the German voice actor for Jason Bernard in Wing Commander 4.


The German Wing 3 had a different voice actor for Jason Bernard than Wing 4, and he was much better. The actor in Wing 4 sounded weak and totally not like Jason Bernard would sound like in German. It sounded almost like a joke.


Interestingly, both voice actors dubbed Star Trek. The voice actor for Jason Bernard in Wing 3 dubbed Mr. Spock, and the Wing 4 actor dubbed Hikaru Sulu!


It's no surrprise that the end result in Wing 4 was terrible. Whose idea was it to dub Jason Bernard with Sulu's voice?
 
I haven't played the german versions since 1997 anymore, since I bought all wing commander games in english after that and enjoyed the original speech of the actors.

I must admit that the german voiceovers are the best, compared to french (horrible) and spanish and even japanese.

Nevertheless the best is the original
 
Maybe some people here will find this interesting:

In the German language version of WC Prophecy, the word "Kn'thrak" is pronounced differently than in the English original. What's more, it is pronounced differently in the Intro (Kilrathi Prophecy) and the rest of the game.


In the intro, the Kilrathi voice pronounces it like "K(i)n-Truck" - which would be like how a german person would read that word if not told how it should be pronounced, and not suspecting the origin to be in an english language work.

In the rest of the game, the characters pronounce it "Amthrak"... Exactly the same like Anthrax, only with the m instead of the n, and a k instead of the x.


This appears to be quite different to the english "Na-Thrak" pronounciation.
 
Back in my schooldays I looked into the English, German and French versions (with the excuse to improve my language skills while playing, yeah yeah) - and while the French one is rather funny and often inaccurate, the German dub is very close to par with the English original, and very well written as well as acted. Seeing modern games (even the bestsellers) that don't even bother with dubbing anymore may show the state of the industry, but it's sad nonetheless..
 
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