Untranslated with subtitles, translated with accents, subtitles only — we’ve seen a few ways of handling NPCs speaking different languages in games. With the in-development Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED is tossing around a neat idea of handling the problem: translator implants.
Lead story designer Sebastian Stepien mentioned the idea in a chat with Polish gaming site dubscore.pl. The conversation is in Polish, but “darcler”, a user on the official Cyberpunk 2077 forums, was kind enough to translate the relevant part of the interview:
As of yet no decisions have been made, but we’re thinking about a system that could tell the world’s story. The idea is to record everything in original languages … if we’ll meet Mexicans in the game, they’ll be talking — Mexican slang even, portrayed by Mexican actors. The player would be able to buy a translator implant, and depending on how advanced it is, he’ll get better or worse translation.
You can’t reliably recreate street slang of Los Angeles or some other American city, you can’t simply dub it and reproduce those emotions, rhythm of speech, mannerisms. Everything has to be cohesive. Otherwise we’d simply hear that Polish actors are trying to imitate Americans. That won’t work.
It’s important to note that these are not definite plans, just an idea the developer is playing with and from what I understand, the voices wouldn’t be translated into your native tongue, you’d just get subtitles instead.
Personally, it sounds like a great way to up the immersion, make what would normally be a less-than-useful implant fun (but not essential) and save on localisation costs (in terms of voice actors).
CDPR about languages in the game [Cyberpunk 2077 forums, via Reddit]
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