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The Neglection of Culture

January 31, 1999
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Author: Y Dienyddiwr Da

When someone hears the word "Translator" they think of someone who takes a game from a forign language into one they know, namely, Japanese to English. People tend to forget about other languages; Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Chinese, etc.. , and most often, think nothing of them. "We don't need to learn another language, everyone speaks english all ready". The number of Japanese to English patchs is enourmous compared with English to Thai or English to Spanish. Although Spanish and French do get a large amount of patches, the lack of people who care is disturbing. Too many people, just one translation so they can have a game they can't play, run into a game thats been translated into another forign language, and they spit in its direction. They do not care about the forigners who have trouble speaking english, if they speak it at all. Not everyone speaks English and\or Japanese. When I say to someone, "I'm a translator", they get somewhat intrigued and often ask me, "What game are you translating?". I reply with an older game like Final Fantasy 1, and they wonder why I would translate such an old game that is, not to mention, all ready in english, so I explain to them iI translate games from English to Esperanto, and suddenly their entire intrigue in me vanishes with out trace. They don't care, and they don't listen, and even people who don't nativly speak english do this on occasion. I'm scared that eventually the entire world will be people consumed by American culture and the English language. I'm not saying that any language should be erradicated or any language should be greater, but above all, languages should be equal despite low use or difficulty, like Basque or Welsh. I think the emulation scene should grow to be more like a multi-cultural world. It is also noticable that there are not many females in this field, but that is not my debate. If emulation is to grow larger, and more world wide, we have to expand our culture, and staying with english is not the way. The advantages of having the emulation scene world wide would be nice, such as far more support for the emulation world. If people haven't noticed, the entire piracy world is far larger than us.

So I end my lecture, I hope it opens a new world for you all =).

-- Y Dienyddiwr Da

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