Gale Force 9 Comments On Brazil Translatorgate

In the wake of Brazil Tanslatorgate, Dungeons & Dragons licensee Gale Force Nine has made a statement regarding the dispute between Fire on Board and FMR about the rights to translate D&D 5th Edition into Portuguese for he Brazilian audience. They have put translation plans for Brazil on hold pending an investigation. As yet, WotC has issued no comment.

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Gale Force Nine Comments on D&D Localizations

Gale Force Nine has been working for over a year on our plan to publish localized language versions of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS fifth edition products. Throughout the process, we met and considered many partners around the world based on the same criteria: a passion for the material and a commitment to deliver the complete plan. We wanted to offer every country the entire D&D fifth edition experience and the partners we have chosen to work with will be doing just that.

Currently, we are speaking with all parties involved in Brazil to sort out the situation. Our goal is to ensure fans can enjoy the products in their local language of choice and we are committed to supporting those fans and their community. As such our product release plans for this market are on hold until we ​fully investigate and ​hopefully resolve th​is issue. We apologize to D&D fans in Brazil for any delay this may cause but we’ll do our best to have a solution in place soon.

John-Paul Brisigotti
CEO Battlefront Group
GF9 is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Battlefront Group

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[volanin]

Fire on board has just stated that they are sure they will still publish the BR localization of d&d:

https://www.facebook.com/FireonBoardJogos/posts/1785765815075176

And they have the nerve to say that they always had transparency in their negotiations. LOL.

Fire on Board is completely nuts!

 

[Morrus]

It's my opinion that, after OGL allowed the unintended creation of the Pathfinder giant, which eclipsed D&D for years, WoTC is taking things reaaaaaly slow now.

5E is OGC.

Better being late to the market than completely losing it. And there are still some things that would basically bring in a lot of money, but WoTC won't allow: like PDF versions of books.

That's more to do with upsetting distributors and retailers.

 

[volanin]

5E is OGC.

I know. OGL was 3rd edition, and since then they were extra extra careful.
Anyway, it's only my own opinion though.

 

[robus]

It's still a mystery to me how it took them 2 years to even start translations.

Localizations are quite expensive, and doubly so for something as complicated as D&D books. So i imagine they were waiting to ensure the release was a hit and recoup some cash before making a major investment such as this.

 

[robus]

I mean imagine trying to explain the hiding rules in another language...!

 

[Morrus]

I know. OGL was 3rd edition, and since then they were extra extra careful.
Anyway, it's only my own opinion though.

OGL and OGC refer to the same thing. 5E has been released under the OGL, which makes it OGC.

Open Gaming License (OGL), which licenses Open Gaming Content (OGC).

You can find 5E's OGC in the 5E SRD.

 

[volanin]

As [MENTION=6777046]salvaterra[/MENTION] said previously:
After the Gale Force Nine comment, the CEO of Fire on Board posted his reply on facebook:

"We are confident in the partnership and commitment with Gale Force Nine, as we always had transparency in our negotiations. We are confident that we'll be able to go ahead with our [translation] process and that the D&D release schedule will be successfully implemented in Brazil."

After this announcement, there was a major backslash from Brazilian players on the company's facebook page.
Fire on Board staff was trying to contain the fallout by deleting posts and also, by forging "posts" supporting the company.
One of these forged posts was written by mistake using the own company profile, and quickly deleted thereafter.
But not fast enough:

https://i.imgflip.com/1m1yq4.jpg

The image caption says:
"New Meme: The company that supports itself by posing as a consumer"

And the forged Fire on Board post (the last one in the picture):
"You have my support... Business are business and personal relations are personal relations, and as a consumer of this company, I believe you will do well."

 

[af_sky]

Localizations are quite expensive, and doubly so for something as complicated as D&D books. So i imagine they were waiting to ensure the release was a hit and recoup some cash before making a major investment such as this.

I remember how 3e and 4e were translated only in a couple of months after release. I don't know how these contracts are made, but i'm pretty sure the major investment comes from whom is traslating, due to the license and all the translating and distribution expenses goes to the licesee (I guess).

Even though 5e is a massive hit, the way they treated their old foreign partners is weird, and even lost some partneship to Paizo along the way.

 

[seebs]

That's more to do with upsetting distributors and retailers.

Is it really? Steve Jackson Games said that distributors objected to PDFs a long time ago, but have since started selling them, and these days I don't see any evidence that distributors and retailers care.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Localizations are quite expensive, and doubly so for something as complicated as D&D books. So i imagine they were waiting to ensure the release was a hit and recoup some cash before making a major investment such as this.

One thing that might make 5th Ed. even a bit harder to translate than previous editions is the reversion back to "plain language" and less-specifically-defined rules elements, as opposed to 3.5's much more specific and tightly-worded descriptions (which were still hotly debated) and 4E's very standardized formatting. As we all know, English is a bastard language with grammatical rules that make even native speakers' brains bleed sometimes. You could write four different sentences that all mean the same thing, or write one sentence that could mean four different things. Applied to a ruleset intentionally designed to keep things loose and open to interpretation, that's going to be tough to work with...