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Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 2:28 pm
by DeeCeptor
Hi there. I'll be releasing my classical murder mystery visual novel on Steam soon, and was wondering what languages are popular for VN's? The obvious ones are Japanese and English. We were thinking of having our novel be released in English, Japanese, French and Spanish. Anyone have experience/sales numbers of language regions when selling visual novels?

I've had suggestions from others saying Chinese and Russian is also popular. Thoughts?

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 9:28 pm
by Zelan
Seconding Russian. I don't speak it myself, but there are a fair few Russian speakers on this forum. Furthermore, Soviet Games is based in Russia, and they recently completed a successful Kickstarter for their VN Love, Money, Rock'n'Roll. That one's being released in Russian and in English and I think a good chunk of their backers were Russian speakers.

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 5:47 am
by Mammon
I do think the languages you've got right now are the best ones to go with, maybe keep German in mind? Aside from the Germans themselves a lot of East-Europeans speak this language as well aside from their own.

I don't think I really need to say this, but I'll do it anyway: Dutch won't be neccesary. Almost everyone who speaks Dutch also speaks English or German so the amount of people who'll absolutely need it to read your story can probably be counted on one hand. I'm Dutch and I've seen a few Dutch translations or games made by Dutch people, but usually I find out about that after playing their English version. I actually sent a mail last month to VisualNovels.nl which specialised on Dutch VN translations, asking how much people are using their services, and I still haven't gotten a reply so that site is probably dead. So a Dutch translation will take more time for the translator to make it than the accumulated playtime of all the people who'll read it will be.

Also thirdting (?) Russian, I've browsed through the Everlasting Summer forums on Steam and there's a ton of fanfic mods and topics in Russian, the Russian community greatly outweights the English one with that game.

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 9:53 am
by guzy
Nobody never speaks about PT-BR (Brazilian portuguese)

Like, if you guys could only have a glimpse of how big are the visual novel's fanbase here... Unfortunately tons of players don't speak english so they have to keep playing the small share of translated visual novels.

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 9:57 am
by Mammon
With PT-BR you mean Portugese-Brazillian right? (Don't assume everyone to get an abbreviation like that :? ) I think a lot of people don't even know that there are countries in Latin America that don't speak Spanish, geography classes don't really favour your country. Despite it being so large and influential many consider it to be just part of Mexico's Mexico I'm afraid. But yes, Portugese would be a good candidate too.

Edit to below: Wait whut? *Googles it* Well I be damned, there is a Dutch speaking country in Latin America. And here I thought Suriname had its own language or at least a Dutch derivative language like the South Africans have.

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 10:49 am
by guzy
Mammon wrote:With PT-BR you mean Portugese-Brazillian right? (Don't assume everyone to get an abbreviation like that :? ) I think a lot of people don't even know that there are countries in Latin America that don't speak Spanish, geography classes don't really favour your country. Despite it being so large and influential many consider it to be just part of Mexico's Mexico I'm afraid. But yes, Portugese would be a good candidate too.
Yeah, you're right. My bad

I already knew that most of people thinks that we speak spanish. Actually, here in Latin America there's even french and dutch as main languagues in some countrys.

Brazil have a population of 200 milion and probably it's one of the countrys that more spend money with games. It's a shame most of the western developers don't pay attention to that. Most of the korean games always have PT-BR translations.

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 8:32 pm
by DeeCeptor
Other people I've talked to have said that their stuff gets unsolicited fanmade Russian translations (which is great!). I'll have to look into getting Russian done.

Dutch wasn't really on my radar, as when I visited Europe many Europeans spoke very good English (though this is definitely biased selection). I believe most western European countries teach English as a second language.

Portugese is a suggestion I haven't heard before. Is Brazilian Portugese very different from regular Portugese?

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 8:53 pm
by Zelan
DeeCeptor wrote:Portugese is a suggestion I haven't heard before. Is Brazilian Portugese very different from regular Portugese?
I'm wondering about this, too. I knew that there were different dialects, but I wasn't aware that they were so different that they might actually have radically different translations.

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 12:06 am
by guzy
Yes, it is different, veeeery diferent, commom words in PT-PT are swear words in PT-BR

Like, box in PT-PT means pussy in PT-BR, and line in PT-PT means fag in PT-BR, just to mention some simple swear words... when it come to slangs things get worse

Not to mention that a regular conversation in PT-PT looks like a shakespeare book to a brazillian. Although we totally undestand each other, for a brazillian, PT-PT it's kind of very boring and hard to follow

Well, Brazill has 200 million people and portugal has 10 millions, so I don't see pt-pt as a viable option

Re: Popular Languages for VNs

Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 6:57 pm
by Zelan
...Wow. I had no idea. Thank you for explaining it to me. ^_^ (The Shakespeare comparison was very clever, that really helps me to understand the difference.)