Pirated or illegal translation/localization for old games with examples

We invite you to discuss with us specifics of your situation with pirate translators in your country. Are you aware of examples where translating any game was illegal, for instance bad or poor voices (recorded at home), only capitalized fonts, wrong or nonsense text of mission? Let's do I tell about our situations?

Russia and the Ukraine. From the period of the early 1990s, but mostly in the second half of the 1990s, in our countries, there was a large number of pirate companies that translated the games, mostly from English into Russian. The best known of them were such companies and translaters as Fargus, Sedmoy volk (The Seventh Wolf), Dyad-ushka Risyouch (The Uncle Research, Risyouch sound like as Research with Russian accent), Stream, PC Boheme, GSC Game World (A company of pirates, after 2000 year became serious company which release the Stalker game in 2007).

Here you can see typical capitalized pirated fonts (Quake 2 for consoles). The information can be naturally read by natives.
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And now, this fonts (from Quake 2 mod) is more difficult to read the letters. ЗАСТАВА СТРОГА [Zastava stroga] (Strog's Outpost) or ЗАСТАВЯ СТРОГА? [Zastavya stroga] (You Get to Do Strog Something) Missed Й from НАИДИ ВХОД (НАЙДИ ВХОД). Also fatty contours КОММУНИКАЦИОННУЮ СВЯЗЬ like IKOИМУНИКАЦИОННУЮ СВЯЗЬ (correctly КОММУНИКАЦИОННУЮ without И after O) (also wrong СВАЗЬ). And finally, missed Ё from КОРАБЛЕМ [korablyem] (correctly КОРАБЛЁМ and read as korablyom like yo from yota).

You can hear typical Russian pirate voice from Quake 2 PC by GSC Games (when they were company of pirates): https://yadi.sk/d/2DEWqcEs3EpDy8 This is translate 'Compete Update' as '[You ] received the new task' (in Russian grammar also correctly without You)

Sometimes it was wrong and incorrect translation. For instance, Sarge command from Russian pirate version of Doom 3 (Alphalabs 2): https://yadi.sk/d/r8NoU52V3EpEm3

"Soldier, [someone] told me that they have blocked your position, but you can unlock. Try to use the technical facilities and contact with the main sector three." (in Russian grammar without someone)

Blocked your position sound in Russian like 'we cannot go'. Some examples you don't understand mistakes, because in English they sound correctly, but incorrectly in Russian. This is a simple example that is still easy to translate. Sometimes were created perfect translations by pirates (high quality translation, good sound recording and natural fonts). Explained will be more difficult, because quality grammar after reverse translate into English looks neutral, or at least, not exactly the same.

Other regions. In Hungary has also been pirated translaters, for instanse recorded Hungary's voice for Half-Life at home by someone pirates: https://yadi.sk/d/W2x02z-73EpFHZ

Sorry, I did not know the Hungarian language, because I shall refrain from commenting about the quality of translation. Also, I have seen French Half-Life pirated version with recorded voice at home. And despite the fact that Sierra company has released an official translation into French. French's pirate only copy English version and fastly translate to French?

Do you known any other examples, like this? Please, post information, screenshots, audio files. These games are old, I do not think that the pirated files from them now interesting for someone. We are ready to see, hear and get some information about similar pirates from other countries and to hear your opinion about the quality of the translation, if you know the language of translation, see your screenshots. For example, Russian pirates translated text and sound (often through capitalized every character). Hungarian and French were limited only audio, without change the fonts or text, and text were English only.

 

"Sedmoy Volk" means "The Seventh Wolf", not "The Seven Wolf".
Also you forgot to mention such a big player as "Akella", who were pirates at first (for example, when they released a pirated version of "Full Throttle" with a pirate localization of top quality (better than many officially localized games - which was very uncommong for most pirated games)) but later shifted to legal publishing and localization.

 

@Grue13, sometimes, at least some Akella games were not signed by logo (were produced anonymous). These companies always put his logo by box and acted openly.

 

@Virgil, I am interested in pirated translations into languages other than Russian, and I do not think that these two pirates from Hungary and France will exception.

 

I'm afraid that there are not so many people from other countries visiting this forum to facilitate the proposed discussion.
But as far as I know, it is Syria that had (has?) the leading industry of bootleg games productions. You can see some of its labels here.
The piracy is flourished rather in underdeveloped countries, you know. Like Africa etc.

 

Well, if the topic is dedicated to unofficial translations and not to the industry of bootleg video games production, then it is very broad indeed.

As, you see, 'unofficial translations' rather mean all those fan-made translations created not only in Eastern Europe or Hungary, but in Italy, Germany, Spain etc. etc. Even the game translations made and published by Old-Games.ru are completely unofficial - thus, they are truly illegal, as nobody had authorised @Dimouse and other our colleagues to translate 'Alley Cat' or 'Maniac Mansion'

 

One good thing is that there is basically no point in pirating games nowadays. I bought Skyrim for 5$, for example.

 

Do you have for us some stories about pirate game translations and releases in Poland back in the day?

 

Most likely licensed, but didnt feel like creating a new post for it. Word Rescue got released in Norway as Ordeventyret. The version on archive.org also include Danish and Swedish.
Ordeventyret (1995) [Norsk] : Redwood Games : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
It is the Word Rescue Plus version with all 45 episodes or however many it had.

https://i.ibb.co/8jW6N7w/Uten-navn.jpg (Danish version)

 

You would need a telegram account to access the downloads, but here you can find games dubbed in Persian (Iranian), or Persian only games. Many of the Persian only games are either Total conversions or amatuer/indie games in general.

Hope it is okay to post the link despite there being a few newer titles there.
دانلود بازی های دوبله فارسی و بازی های ایرانی

This change happened recently as before they had a invite only system to acess the downloads, aside from a few archive.org links.

Keep in mind that many of the downloads may contain malicious files or extra junk.

 

For some reason, there is a Polish translation of Julius Caesar, a German strategy game for the C64 which was not released in English. I dought that this translation was released officially.

GB64.COM - C64 Games, Database, Music, Emulation, Frontends, Reviews and Articles

 

Considering the year 1996 as the release date, it might be just the early fan translation, not necessarily the pirated one, made for the thousands of copies for sale. In 1993 two Dutch fans translated the MSX version of the SD Snatcher game - a Japanese-exclusive game for the Japanese computer was translated into English, which is funny, because MSX was almost unknown in the English-speaking countries. Also there were instances of German computer games being translated into Russian in the late 90's by pirate translation teams, as far as I'm concerned.

 

Oldpersiangames have started to add more of their games to Archive.org.. Below is the official account.

User Account (archive.org)

You can sort by iranian only games on their site.
download persian dubbing games and iranian games (oldpersiangames.org)

 

If you want to look at the various bootleg releases in Iran. I think the majority of the titles they published are dubbed. They only ship to Iran however...

بازی های کامپیوتر - عصر بازی (asrebazi.com)