One of my projects for the year was to arrange translations of Date Ariane in at least 4 other languages: French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, and I am happy to say all 4 should be available by the end of the month.

Date Ariane Español

Spanish is widely spoken throughout the America’s and I kind of sort of speak it. Once upon a time I was actually fluent.  The problem was that there really hasn’t been a demand for a Spanish translation, so not a lot of volunteers to help translate it. But I needed to do one translation to figure out what I was doing, so I basically “Machine” translated the game with Google Translate.

If you ever tried to translate anything in Google Translate, you know how inaccurate it is. I used my limited Spanish skills to fix as much as possible, but still the results are according to one native Spanish speaker who tried it, “A little creepy”.

I’m hoping soon that the game will go viral in a native Spanish country, so I can get some volunteers to correct the translation, until then, you’re stuck with “a little creepy”.

Seduire Ariane Français

Date Ariane has caught on in both France and Quebec so much so that there are guides written in french for “Seduire Ariane”, which I know literally means seduce Ariane, but I’ll roll with the common translation.  Part of the popularity is due to http://sharks-lagoon.fr/ an French/English website dedicated to games like mine.  I posted a notice for translation help and got quite a few volunteers.

The French version is 100% human translated, and even I a non-french speaker can tell the difference.  The funny thing is that just a week before the French version was ready for a beta release, the game went viral in France thanks to a popular vlogger name Squeezie who posted a video on March 7th that got over a million views:

 

The result was that my site crashed, first time that happened since I removed the online version.  Anyways, I have been posting links to the french beta around french websites that link to my english game.

I’d like to thank Mathieu Martineau, who got the ball rolling, Pseudo555 (one of the guys from Shark’s Lagoon) who did the bulk of the translation work, and OL, who came in near the end and did a ton of grammar and spelling corrections, including the download page. Other helpers: Dipsode, maniusz, Ramses212, Thedevilsadvocate, and Ticamus.

The Spanish version has gotten around 1,000 downloads in the month it has been available, the French version has gotten 6,000 downloads in the week it has been available.

Odd version trivia: Only version with a translated title.

Date Ariane Deutsch

Just released.  Since the beginning of 2016, Germany is the #1 source of visitors to ArianeB.com, and I have reason to believe it may be due to another vlogger name Pandorya, who posted a series of “Let’s Play” videos in German. This was the first of what looks to be 9 videos:

 

Anyways the German line translation was 97% complete when I realized I need to do the scripting and testing ASAP.  I’m getting it down to a science and I finished it over the weekend, just as the final items in the German translation were being done.

Thanks to Thomas Kiehl who has done 70% of the work, Bardo did another big chunk, and Daff, Airjoe, ebenezum, Nico, Kurai, Terrorbait, Crowd, and crayon all pitched in.

I should warn you that Thomas has a wicked sense of humor:

Kind of wish I knew German, who knows how many odd jokes are in his German translation.

Odd version trivia: The board game Pachisi has been renamed “Mensch ärgere dich nicht” or “Dude, don’t get angry”, which is a version of pachisi popular in Germany going back to World War 1.

Date Ariane Português

This is now released.

Date Ariane has a huge fan base in Brazil. Two years ago while I was making the graphic updated version, a link to my page on a Brazilian based “hot links” tracker spent most of the year in the top 40.  Also my Facebook page has so many Brazilian visitors, that Facebook apparently thinks I’m based in Brazil.

So yes, I wanted a version of the game that Brazilians can enjoy. My two primary translators are Henrique Riffel who speaks Portugal Portuguese did most of the pre-dinner and dinner texts, while Danilo Bini who speaks Brazilian Portuguese did most of the post dinner scenes. Hopefully the sudden change in accent isn’t too jarring to native speakers.

Odd version trivia: This version substitutes “Country” music with “Samba”. There is such a thing as country music in Brazil called Sertanejo, but it is slow melodic music that is difficult to “fast dance” to.

Update 5/12: Date Ariane has gone viral again in Brazil thanks to yet another popular video blogger. I find it charming that there are crazy video bloggers in every country and language.

 

Other languages?

I have had inquiries about the possibility of other languages. The lesson I learned from the Spanish version is that there needs to be a decent amount of interest in a language to make it worth while, so if you can organize a group of translators and I can see interest via web traffic, I may entertain other languages in the future.

As for “Something’s In The Air”, its popularity is significantly lower than Date Ariane and it has nearly 4 times as much dialogue, so for both of those reasons it will remain English only.

Date Ariane English

Since its release in July of last year, the renpy version of Date Ariane has been downloaded over 1 million times! That’s a huge milestone for an independent game!