Do you prefer native or English voices?

[celery 8]

I'm making a campaign with not a single English speaker in the story. I'm inclined to make all of the spoken dialogue in Czech and Russian (with English subtitles) but finding Czech and Russian voice actors is very hard, at least on English forums. I'm not sure whether I should do it the easy way or the hard way because both methods have their advantages: English is understandable to a bigger audience without reading, while native speak is realistic.

What kind of approach do you prefer? If you want English, do you prefer hearing foreign accents (in my case everyone would have to do so)?

[Dynamic Echo 10]

Native is the most realistic and immersive (as long as their are English subs it's fine :D), but if it is too difficult English, preferably with an accent, is totally acceptable (but don't get people to put on accents unless there are really good at it).

[Devil Dogs SF 13]

Native would be best imo.

[SaOk 112]

I have american voices in my CDF mission and those fit in just nice if not even better since with native language you may still need to read the radio text by yourself which could make you miss information. Navite is better for mood, english is easier to follow.

Edited August 14, 2010 by SaOk

[Zipper5 74]

I say I'd prefer native voices but, as you said, it's damn hard to get voice actors for that...

I can deal with accented English, though. :p

[Wolfrug 0]

Yeah, I have this same problem really: there aren't any English speakers in the mission, but it's rather hard to find Czech speakers (thank goodness BIS decided to make "Chernarussian" a real language though instead of an entirely made up one, as they did with 'Sahranian').

Voted "preferably native", but any kind of voice overs is appreciated of course, even English 'dubs'.

Regards,

Wolfrug

[Pulverizer 1]

Like Wolf:ET "german": they would mostly speak english with a hilarious accent but have hallo, auf wiedersehn, wunderbar, sehr gut etc well-known native phrases and words to mix it up.

On the other hand, that could end really bad like in Men of War where the same guy does very unconvincing german, british and american accents.

Edited August 15, 2010 by Pulverizer

[celery 8]

(thank goodness BIS decided to make "Chernarussian" a real language though instead of an entirely made up one, as they did with 'Sahranian').

I thought they speak Portuguese on Sahrani?

[Zipper5 74]

If I recall correctly, they speak Spanish once or twice in the campaigns included in Queen's Gambit.

[Wolfrug 0]

@Celery (&Zipper5)

Tsk tsk, don't you know your Armaverse lore? Quoth, William Porter's Blog, April 20th, 2006:

"Also, since some people seemed confused, the Sahrani speak their own language, it’s just that most of them also speak a lot of other languages. Really, to those of you who are confused, I just have to assume that you’re like most of the guys in my company — amazed to discover that outside of the states people speak more than one language. The language barrier is not really so bad for them, or us, since we *do* get by. It’s just funny really, and the Sahrani Army (such as it is) doesn’t give orders in three languages like somebody said, just one. Like I said, mostly it’s just confusing to our guys who only speak English."

So there. I assumed this to be sort of the same situation as for instance that on Malta, where they have their own Maltese language, which is a mix of Arabic, Italian, Sicilian and English. So Sahranian is probably something like Portuguese/Spanish/Arabic or so, but I don't think that was ever nailed down :)

Regards,

Wolfrug

[celery 8]

Is there a situation where Sahranian is being spoken? The buildings have Portuguese(?) text and they speak English.

[Wolfrug 0]

IIRC, when you rescue the civilians in like the last or second-to-last mission, some of them will cry out to you in their own language (as well as accented English), but I'm not sure what language that might be - you're probably right in saying that it's practically Portuguese or Spanish. I used regular Spanish in my DSAI for the SLA as well, so yeah. According to this post, the signs etc. on Sahrani are a mix of Spanish and 'some other language'.

Then again, I doubt many even read William Porter's blog, or remembered that particular tidbit I quoted, so who knows: I'm almost sure BIS never officially created a 'Sahranian' language, they just added that piece of trivia to allow for weird spelling and grammar in their signage :P Maybe :D

Gotta love the Armaverse!

Regards,

Wolfrug