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

[Nikosandros]

Could they be taking the translations in-house? As in, hiring their own third party translation company?

That's certainly a possibility. I thought that they were moving in the opposite direction what with the outsourcing of adventures and electronic tools, but they might have good reasons for keeping foreign localization in-house.

 

[Nikosandros]

I'm surprised why wouldn't you expect an Italian version? The Italian D&D community seems quite large/active based on the no. of posters online in many prg sites, plus they make up quite a large portion of the people involved keeping the Mystara setting alive.

The community is fairly large, but - from what I know - the market is rather comatose.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Whatever their plans, I highly doubt they plan to remove D&D from foreign language markets permanently.

 

[_sheepy_]

Seems to be consistent with what we know: Wizards won't considering licensing D&D (RPG rules) until end of 2014.

Edwin_Suijkerbu: any chance of the online recourced being offerd in multiple languages, for young people who aren’t that good in english?
Mike: not early on – still formulating plans for translations

(can't find the above tweet now, but I remember seeing this on twitter myself, before the official post below)

I wanted to take a moment to address a common question we receive about the Open Gaming License and what it means for the future of D&D.
(...)
For that reason, we don't want to launch anything at least until the Dungeon Master's Guide has been released in November.
(...)
While the details are still in flux, we can say that we plan to announce the details of our plans sometime this fall. After that announcement, we plan on launching our program in early 2015.

If Wizards does not know whether (or how much) Basic D&D would be freely re-distributable and/or translatable, it would be difficult to negotiate translation license with publishers.

But Hobby Japan's announcement still surprises me. They have been publishing Japanese D&D for many years and is one of the most successful D&D translators.

 

[Blackwarder]

What a load of crap, if WotC think for one second that folks won't translate the game they are very much mistaken. I already got ⅔ of Vault of the Dracolich translated and you can beet your ass that I'm going to translate other stuff so that the kids in here could play.

If true than that's just plain stupid and it's a slap in the face of the international D&D community, and I never talk like that but this just pisses me off.

Warder

 

[MasterTrancer]

I'm surprised why wouldn't you expect an Italian version? The Italian D&D community seems quite large/active based on the no. of posters online in many prg sites, plus they make up quite a large portion of the people involved keeping the Mystara setting alive.

As Nikosandros says below, the italian rpg market is quite starving... I can see though that Mystara is a leading setting, since after all is the BECMI one, that was fairly popular here at the time.

The community is fairly large, but - from what I know - the market is rather comatose.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Sorry I don't know Japanese but... The OP wrote that WotC won't grant publishing rights for non-english editions. This is compatible with a "we will publish non-english versions ourselves".

AfaIK Feder&Schwert, the last German publisher of D&D, declined a new contract offered to them in 2008 because WotC demanded a high guaranteed number of sales - too high for them.

We'll see...

 

[MasterTrancer]

Sorry I don't know Japanese but... The OP wrote that WotC won't grant publishing rights for non-english editions. This is compatible with a "we will publish non-english versions ourselves".

AfaIK Feder&Schwert, the last German publisher of D&D, declined a new contract offered to them in 2008 because WotC demanded a high guaranteed number of sales - too high for them.

We'll see...

That's my take as well: hoping for an in-house translation and distribution to give new life to a market which after all WotC itself contributed to kill with M:tG ;-)

 

[Blackwarder]

That's my take as well: hoping for an in-house translation and distribution to give new life to a market which after all WotC itself contributed to kill with M:tG ;-)

That would require a massive recruitment effort on WotC part, why should they do that? this in tire situation is baffling.

And I was so hoping to give my 10 y/o cousin the starter set for his 11th b-day.

Warder

 

[MasterTrancer]

That would require a massive recruitment effort on WotC part, why should they do that? this in tire situation is baffling.

And I was so hoping to give my 10 y/o cousin the starter set for his 11th b-day.

Warder

That, or rely on community work...or cater only to english speaking people