D&D 5E WotC will not allow translation of D&D NEXT.

[Cybit]

IIRC WotC / Hasbro has a fairly large translation team of their own in-house; it seems as if they intend to do it all in-house.

 

[Alzrius]

IIRC WotC / Hasbro has a fairly large translation team of their own in-house; it seems as if they intend to do it all in-house.

That wasn't my understanding for WotC. Heck, a lot of what they do already is done by freelancers.

Now, that might be the case for Hasbro. However, I've been under the impression that Hasbro is fairly hands-off where D&D is concerned, with comparatively little corporate oversight for the actual game itself; rather, they're focused on IP-branding across various media. I can see them translating some D&D media materials themselves, but not the actual game.

 

[Plageman]

I guess that depending of the country and partner translation can be more or less of a success. If WotC decide to move translation in-house we may have a more steadier flow of released products.

On the other hand the TTRPG market is nowhere near the wargaming (with GW tranlation of WH and WH40K lines) or CCG (WotC own Magic release schedules) one so it may backfire on them.

 

[Vanye]

That wasn't my understanding for WotC. Heck, a lot of what they do already is done by freelancers.

Now, that might be the case for Hasbro. However, I've been under the impression that Hasbro is fairly hands-off where D&D is concerned, with comparatively little corporate oversight for the actual game itself; rather, they're focused on IP-branding across various media. I can see them translating some D&D media materials themselves, but not the actual game.

And that may have changed with the advent of a new version of the game. Maybe there were some issues with the way things were translated in some countries, and rather than continue to let it go as it had in the past, Hasbro decided to keep it all in house. We don't know.

 

[Baumi]

Just one other thing .. none of the WOTC Boardgames got translated to German (except Magic the Gathering of course).

 

[Iosue]

Our local translator got in contact with WotC representive Veronica Fridrich (I might butchered her nam, I'm translating back to English) according to her WotC decided not to offer translation licenses to local companies and that the decision is a strategic decision by WotC and won't be changed by the OGL announcement at the start of 2015 and that it's unlikely that they will reconsider this decision in the future.

Warder

I guess in the interest of fairness, until WotC makes an official announcement, we must assume that your local translator misunderstood Ms. Fridrich actually saying that WotC merely has nothing to announce at this time.

 

[Zireael]

There goes any hope of a Polish D&D N translation...

 

[Jhaelen]

Just one other thing .. none of the WOTC Boardgames got translated to German (except Magic the Gathering of course).

Yep, and the last translated rpg books were the three 4e core books. 5e is distributed exclusively in Europe via Pegasus Spiele without any plans of translating it.

 

[Goemoe]

Yep, and the last translated rpg books were the three 4e core books. 5e is distributed exclusively in Europe via Pegasus Spiele without any plans of translating it.

Which is a pity. I know more people who would buy a german one than people owning the english original. Perhaps when 5E is a bigger success as wotc has planned, they change their view on translating the books.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not 100% on what you're getting at. But unless there's something unusual about HJ's customer/business relationship that I'm just not grasping, I'm pretty sure it's HJ who is losing face by informing their customers they won't be able to purchase the product they want. (You can see this same standard in effect every day when shopkeepers lie and tell you that the product you want will be in soon, so as to avoid doing exactly what HJ is doing.)

HJ is the name the Japanese think of first with D&D... and several other games. (Including Traveller.)

HJ is already cut out of the loop for MTG. Now, with D&D. They have little to lose by claiming there won't be a Nihonjin D&D translation, because, even if one is done by WotC, HJ won't see any money from it.

The Announcement comes across more as a passive-aggressive attempt to kill the market, and/or shame wotC into letting them translate and thus cut themselves in for a share.