exec Posted November 26, 2015 Report Share Posted November 26, 2015 I don't know if anybody cares, but today I thought about something that happened to me a few years ago and I kinda felt like posting it. It's also a kind of interesting insight on how Nexon operates, and how translations are handled. Back when Mabi EU was still online and active, I was approached by a moderator of the official Mabinogi EU forum. Apparently Nexon was looking for people to translate an upcoming patch for MapleStory, who could translate it from English to their native language. This was one week before the patch was to be released, but they didn't seem to be in any hurry. My first question was about the payment and after the moderator consulted with the EU version of Sabina, I was told some numbers. The translation of the whole patch into one language would've been worth about 700€ ($975), I agreed, having nothing better to do that week. It took two more days for them to find more people, and eventually me and a hand full of others received huge Excel tables to translate, with a note that they were to be sent back 3 days later. The first problem: no information whatsoever. Nobody on the "team" (I was only in direct contact with one other translator, who I knew coincidentally) was playing MapleStory, and even if we were, this was a whole new quest line with new items, locations, NPCs, etc. We had no idea how to translate certain words and we had problems actually understanding certain dialogues without knowing the story, we had no way to discuss how to translate things so they'd be consistent throughout the whole patch, which resulted in certain things being called X in one quest and Y in the next one, because multiple people were working on one language, there wasn't even an explanation on how the markup worked, you know like when an item is displayed in a dialog, or when the text is colored, there are codes for this, inside the text that we were to translate. The only reason me and the other translator knew what we were doing in this regard was that I knew all the codes because I had worked on MapleStory pservers before! And it was the weekend, so we couldn't ask "EU Sabina" for anything. Our only contact was the Mabinogi forum moderator, who didn't have any information or contact to the other translators that he didn't recruit. At the end of the weekend I had translated about 120€ worth of lines, a little more than I had to, the other translator about 60€. Each of us had specific ranges that we were to translate (like row 1000~2000), but we were told we didn't have to get it done and we could also do more if we wanted. (For consistency? I don't know.) Monday came and they wanted the translations, to proof read and fix them up before the patch on Wednesday, and I suppose they also had to fill holes if somebody didn't translate their whole section. (However that worked.) Tuesday I received a checked version of my Excel file, with notes about a few mistakes. I wasn't supposed to fix them, I guess they just wanted to show me what I did wrong. A few spelling mistakes, but nothing serious. Then it was Wednesday... excited I downloaded the patch from the FTP, turned on my unpacker that I still had lying around, and looked at the translations. (MapleStory stores a lot on the client side, including NPC information and (quest) dialogues.) I found the things I had translated, surprisingly including all of my mistakes. Why they had somebody proof read and correct everything when they didn't plan to use that improved version is beyond me. But it was done, happily I closed everything and waited for the promised contact about the payment, laughing about the other translator who actually went and played the game for the first time, to see his translations =P One week later I hadn't heard anything yet. Neither did the other translator, nor the moderator. Slowly we started to ask when we would finally get paid, "EU Sabina" only responding "be patient", inquires via eMail being ignored completely (well, they ignore support requests, why would they answer when you want money?), and calling wouldn't get you anywhere either, because nobody felt responsible for you. We didn't have any contract or anything, mistake on our part, so we couldn't really do anything but wait and hope. About a year I wrote them every other day, "EU Sabina" stopped responding to the questions, the other translator had long given up. I didn't expect anything anymore at this point either, but I still continued, just for the heck of it. 14 months after we had finished the translation I received an answer to one of my inquires. Nexon: "Translation? What? Huh? Uhu... okay, I guess we can pay you some NX."Me: "NX... I'm only playing Mabinogi, which is going offline very soon, I don't have any use for NX, we were promised something else..."Nexon: "Sorry about that, blah blah blah, the only thing I can offer you is that money in NX, but if you don't want that..." ("that money" being the sum I had given them for one year in every mail, didn't sound like they actually had data on who translated what.)Me: "Okay then, give it to me. Not like I have a choice..." And together with the compensation for all the money I spent on Mabi EU, that we got when it went down, minus some NX that I spent on Vindictus over the years when I was really bored, a large part of that "money" is still there to this day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Venom Log Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 That's simply absurd. Quite typical for a Japanese corporation though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pikachu Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 (edited) 46 minutes ago, Venom Log said: That's simply absurd. Quite typical for a Japanese corporation though. Nexon is Korean-based and the thread is regarding the European branch. Edited November 28, 2015 by Pikachu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Venom Log Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 3 hours ago, Pikachu said: Nexon is Korean-based and the thread is regarding the European branch. My bad. But it doesn't change the fact that Nexon will always be Nexon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miro Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 2 hours ago, Venom Log said: My bad. But it doesn't change the fact that Nexon will always be Nexon. Eu nexon is 10x as horrible as na nexon though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exec Posted November 28, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 3 hours ago, Miro said: Eu nexon is 10x as horrible as na nexon though I wonder about that. It might be different now, but for the first half of Mabi EU's lifespan I was generally pleased with them. It was still Nexon of course, but it wasn't that bad. It was better than my experience with Nexon NA before that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miro Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 3 hours ago, exec said: I wonder about that. It might be different now, but for the first half of Mabi EU's lifespan I was generally pleased with them. It was still Nexon of course, but it wasn't that bad. It was better than my experience with Nexon NA before that. NA nexon has improved a lot imo, more interaction, better support, more professional websites, frequent updates/events, lots of forum events. EU nexon.. Besides hating most of the EU playerbase in any eu server spamming global chats in their own languages, the sites seemed quite old and we all know how the "update" schedule was there.. Don't know about their support system etc, but for me it just seems/seemed that nexon EU doesn't quite know what they're doing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptic Posted November 28, 2015 Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 5 hours ago, exec said: I wonder about that. It might be different now, but for the first half of Mabi EU's lifespan I was generally pleased with them. It was still Nexon of course, but it wasn't that bad. It was better than my experience with Nexon NA before that. Was there a specific experience that stood out like this one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exec Posted November 28, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 28, 2015 On 28.11.2015, 17:35:28, Cryptic said: Was there a specific experience that stood out like this one? No, just the usual Nexon problems^^ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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