The Vicar’s Draught
Are vicars allowed to drink?
Let’s talk about Legion and localization.
Maybe it’s the I Can’t Even blog that has tuned me to these mistakes or I have a lot of time on my hands playing Legion. Whatever the case may be, I notice more errors than ever. First Arcanist [첫 번째 비전술사], First Blade [첫 번째 칼날], Prince Farondis [파론디스 왕자], etc have been pointed out many times and dealt with in this post. But there are a couple more things that are very worrying. Not that the errors themselves are so egregious, but what they represent in the whole scheme of things.
One is Vicar Eliza. She’s the greater troops recruiter in the Priest order hall. She’s wearing the Mage set from SoO, but whatever. In the Korean client, her name reads [비카르 엘리자], which is a phonetic reading of Vicar Eliza. (I would contest even that) This is a problem, because it treats “vicar,” not as a noun denoting rank in a church hierarchy, but as a proper noun, as if “vicar” was her first name and “Eliza” her last. All other ranks have been translated properly: i.e. the lesser troops recruiter Grand Anchorite Gesslar [대수도사 게슬라르].
The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that no one knows about the existence of vicars or no one bothered to check. Blizzard has an internal localization QA team, and no one there caught the mistake before it went live in September 2016; we are six months in and I see no complaint or change at all.
More importantly, not knowing “vicar” implies a shallow understanding of the English language. A deeper and wider experience of English would have afforded the QA team the opportunity to learn what, or who a vicar was. A vicar is technically a deputy; but in everyday usage refers to a priesthood in the Anglican church. Therefore, it’s not a proper noun but a rank; and should be translated as such. [목사 엘리자]
The other is Draught of Souls. It’s a trinket drop from Gul’dan, the last boss in the Nighthold. It’s popular with all melee classes, but especially dear to the hearts of warriors. I’ve always heard them talking about [외풍=draft of wind] only, so when I was looking up trinket rankings for a ret, I had no idea what Draught of Souls even was. I had to ask what the icon for [외풍] looked like so I could play Match the Picture on Wowhead.
Draught/draft means many things, including a draft of wind [외풍] and a drink poured out — which is clearly the latter, in this case. Draught is chiefly a British spelling of the word draft. But when it is used as the British spelling in an American context, draught is most likely to mean a potion. The icon is a jug of ominous purple liquid. Your drink from the jug to “enter a fel-crazed rage.” In any case, I checked the French version — Breuvage des âmes. Drink of Souls.
This all could have been avoided, again, if someone at Blizzard QA had bothered to check the icon for this item. Or had a wider understanding of English rather than the narrow, shallow experience you get as a Korean student.
Blizzard Korea has been trying to hire an Assistant Localization Manager for some time now. Hopefully they fill the role with someone very competent, or these problems will surely continue into the future.
