At D&D Beyond, we believe in seeing our product through our customers' eyes. That's why we play and watch a ton of D&D every week; using our tools all the time. As we start to think more about offering translated books in languages other than English, we realized that most of us in the office speak English exclusively. This makes it very difficult for us to truly understand how difficult it is to use D&D Beyond tools and books for users that don't speak English or users that don't have English as their native language.
So, this is an open invitation for insights into what it's like to use D&D Beyond for those that don't speak English or English is not their native language. Please, tell us your stories, offer us a new perspective, tell us about your troubles and problems, and let us know your thoughts and feelings about offering translations in general.
Also, take the survey. This will help us quantify and prioritize features around offering translations on D&D Beyond.
Swedish is my native language. When we play we obviously speak swedish, but it's interspersed with D&D keywords here and there. This is mostly not a problem, once in a while a keyword might have to be explained partly because of someone being unfamiliar with the English word, or unfamiliar with the rule in question. Having defined it in swedish the English term can be used going forward. No big deal. We're all pretty fluent in English.
I find that as a DM, the biggest challenge is translating flavour text on the fly. It might be boxed text or the more general information. My brain processed the text in English, but it doesn't "spit out swedish" unless i make it. It's hard to explain, but it's either in English mode or swedish mode and it's a bit sluggish in jumping between them.
What i usually do is translating boxed text (and most other information, albeit into bullet points) into swedish, when prepping for a session. This keeps my swedish more fluent and i don't keep "tripping" on English words.
I don't have a problem understanding English, but I play with my kids and my youngest one doesn't understand everything. We are French Canadians. I'm studying in professional translation at the moment, so if you need something translated from English to French, let me know.
Hey! I'm a spanish-speaker from Mexico. I have no trouble understanding English and I grew up playing the game in English, making an effort to know the terms and eventually growing to feel familiar with them. D&D was actually one of the reasons I learned English in the first place.
On a personal level, I don't need the translations and prefer to play the game in English because that is what I'm familiar with. However, I also have family and friends that I'd like to introduce the game to, but that don't have a good grasp of the language. So, say that I decide to translate on the fly, which I have tried. The problem with that is consistency--As a TTRPG, D&D uses language and terms to refer to specific mechanics that everyone can recognize, things like Saving Throw, or the names of spells. If I translate the name of a spell one way, and then later my brother wants to refer to the same thing but uses a different word (because things can be translated different ways) it creates dissonance, because I might not recognize what he's referring to and ends up dragging the game down. This also brings the problem of trying to refer to something as its translated name, and then having trouble referencing it in the book. If a player says to me "I want to cast *translated name of spell*" I have to mentally try to reverse-translate to look for it in the English book, and, again, things can be translated a ton of different ways. Just having a single point of reference at hand that we can all agree on would go a long way.
Now, I'd also like to speak on a community level, since this is something that I have some experience with (I'm a broadcaster with a spanish-speaking audience). I literally get asked this every day: where do I get the books in Spanish? How do I play this in Spanish? Why do you guys use English terms for the game? And the answer to all of those is sadly that the Spanish-language books are pretty inaccessible for Latin-Americans. You have to get them imported from Spain, because that is the only country that is allowed to sell them (as of now). Each one of the core books ends up being like $80, plus shipping. It's kind of insane. So far my answer has been: Just try to get the English books and learn with us. I'd LOVE to have an option like DDB to point them to. Something SUPER accessible where it's just like... go here! Here's where you get Spanish D&D!
Anyway, sorry for the rant. It's been a problem for a few years now, and I'm super stoked you guys are working on it!
I'm from Germany. I don't have any trouble using your product in english, which is totally understandable for me.
But thinking to use dndbeyond for my table group at home, which is of course in our native language German or even playing online with friends is quite challenging if you need to translate everything beforehand for yourself.
I'm from Brazil. Growing up, I played DnD throughout high school and college. I have returned to playing and been enjoying it very much. My friends and I are all fluent and can do just fine with the books in English. However, it does feel like something is missing, since we all learned and played the game for so long with the reference material in our native language. Not to mention that with DnD becoming more and more popular, reaching a wider audience in the county means making the material available for those who either cannot take advantage of it in the source language, or simply are more comfortable with it in Portuguese.
I look forward to the release of the physical books coming up on 30 Sep 2019. Especially when it means we're finally going to have an official standardized nomenclature for the terms we have been either using in English or guessing how they should be called.
Now that I have moved to playing my regular games via the internet, DnDBeyond has become increasingly more important to my group, and having it in our own language would make our games very smooth, since we have 20+ years of "muscle memory" when it comes to the game terminology.
Furthermore, as an expat, reading material in Portuguese, both for me and my kids is hard to come by, so I would ask that the translation for the site is not region-locked. I am already rattling my brain to figure out how to get a copy of the PHB where I live, since it is not sold outside of Brazil, as far as I can tell.
PS: I would love to help in any way possible with the Brazilian Portuguese localization testing.
PSS: Please add the option to switch the values on the site to meters/kilos/liters for us metricly inclined. :)
I'm german and while I myself don't have a problem using D&D Beyond - and D&D books in general - in English, my friends aren't as fluent as I am. And even if they were, we would still speak German when we play. This went so far that three years ago when I introduced them to D&D and there was no translated version of the books, I would help them create their characters and then translate all relevant class abilities for them. I would even create little spell cards with the translated spell descriptions - and we had both a cleric and a druid, so that was a lot of writing.
Recently, I started a one-on-one-campaign with a friend for which we're using D&D Beyond; and it's really annoying for both of us that we speak German most of the time, but then his character sheet and all my DM resources are in English.
It would help me a lot if I could get my material in German, and I would appreciate it if I could get a discount on the products if I already got the english version.
EDIT: forgot to write this: upon the release of Dragon Heist, I bought the book(English, cause German took many more months) with the plan to run it for my friends, but I gave up on it because translating it was just too much work for me to be worth it
French DM here. I'm a professional translator, so I don't personally have a problem with everything being in English, but the biggest hurdle is character creation. Some of my players know enough English to get by, but those who don't are extremely limited in their choices. They're forced to pick from the published translated books, and thus can only choose races and classes from the PHB or XGTE. Granted, it's still a lot, but it's less than half of what the English-speaking players can choose, and it gets worse every time a new book with player options comes out.
Of course, I get that this is more a problem of the timing of published translations, rather than a failure of the D&D Beyond character creator, but I really think this is the feature that should be available to everyone before anything else. I'm sure my players would rather have an interactive character sheet they can understand rather than the newest adventures.
I'm form Mexico, born in the USA so I understand English perfectly, but my friends don't and I'm having a hard time getting them into the game. D&D can be intimidating on it's own, but in a different language it's even worse. I want to start playing but being from a small City means there are no game stores, adventures league or anyone who knows the game. So I'm trying to get my friends to play and having at least the source materials ( rules, spells, weapons, monsters etc), character creater and character sheet translated would be so helpful. You might not find many people who are active users who need DnD Beyond translated, but you will find a ton who have friends that are having a hard time getting in.
I'm from Brazil and I've been really into D&D for a while and your website is just so great at helping managing campaigns and stuff, but the fact that it's only in English kind of bothers my experience a bit. I have a lot of friends (that speak Spanish and Portuguese) that don't speak English, like, nothing at all. So, in the middle of combat, the fact that i have to stop and translate a whole spell for them, or describing it in another language (since my English is not PERFECT neither) breaks a little bit of the immersion. Add the main languages in America (Esp and Pt-Br) would be great for many people! It would really help me and my friends and many others. I could even help translating some stuff if people is what you need, but adding more languages (even if there are some mistakes) helps a lot!
I'm a french canadian and I personally don't have too much problems with D&D beyond tools that I use as a DM.
The problems come from my players. We play in French and since most of them are not very good in english, it's almost impossible for them to use D&D Beyond tools. Another problem is that the translated books are publish by Black Book Editions and are sold for more then twice the price of the english version.
I think what would be the most helpful is a translated version of the spells with an easy way to cross reference with the original english version.
I wish one day it will be possible for my players to use Dnd Beyond.
I'm a french canadian and I personally don't have too much problems with D&D beyond tools that I use as a DM.
The problems come from my players. We play in French and since most of them are not very good in english, it's almost impossible for them to use D&D Beyond tools. Another problem is that the translated books are publish by Black Book Editions and are sold for more then twice the price of the english version.
I think what would be the most helpful is a translated version of the spells with an easy way to cross reference with the original english version.
I wish one day it will be possible for my players to use Dnd Beyond.
^ I'm in the same boat. Most of my players are fluent in English but never all of them, and we play in French 100% of the time.
As I grew up with basically everything I like in English, I personally prefer it over my native language (apart from the imperial system), but I have 3 players in my campaign that aren't very proficient and would love to have the website, books and listings in their native tongue (Portuguese and Japanese).
One of them even wants to start his very first campaign as a DM but feels like the language barrier hinders him too much to be able to use a pre-made adventure, for example.
I have no issues personally... it for my Spanish players it would be great to have, boxed texts, monster and location names, spells (and their descriptions) and abilities
I'm from Brazil and I personally don't have any issue with using DND Beyond in English, but on the group that I DM, there's 6 players and only 2 of them have a good understanding of English to be able to use the tools provided here. If only the sources and the character sheet were translated, it would already make me and my players buy a lot of the material here and start using it on the table instead of the physical books.
I am a Brazilian player and I do speak english fluently. My group, however, does not understand a word in english. So here I am, using this powerful tool that is D&D Beyond and they are using paper sheets and always asking me all sorts of questions that the app gives all the answers to.
E.g.:
"What does my spell do, again, for the 1000th time?"
"What are my bonus actions?"
"Can I use X skill how many times per day?"
"How much damage is that new weapon I got?"
"How much health do I regain from this particular potion?"
And don't get me started on leveling up. Jeeeeeeesus. There are so many variables to take into consideration, what you gain with each level and all the recalculations involved when you gain a +1 to proficiency or add something to a skill, and updating weapon attacks when you add those points.
D&D Beyond helps A LOT with those issues. It makes the game much faster and don't bore players with endless readings of the source material and doubts if they got it right or not (specially if I'm the only one in the table with a book, and it's, you guessed it, in english).
Please do translate this tool as soon as possible. It's a shame it's only available in english.
Thank you very much.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
At D&D Beyond, we believe in seeing our product through our customers' eyes. That's why we play and watch a ton of D&D every week; using our tools all the time. As we start to think more about offering translated books in languages other than English, we realized that most of us in the office speak English exclusively. This makes it very difficult for us to truly understand how difficult it is to use D&D Beyond tools and books for users that don't speak English or users that don't have English as their native language.
So, this is an open invitation for insights into what it's like to use D&D Beyond for those that don't speak English or English is not their native language. Please, tell us your stories, offer us a new perspective, tell us about your troubles and problems, and let us know your thoughts and feelings about offering translations in general.
Also, take the survey. This will help us quantify and prioritize features around offering translations on D&D Beyond.
You all are awesome. Thank you for your help!
Did not have permission to view the survey.
Sorry. Fixed.
Swedish is my native language. When we play we obviously speak swedish, but it's interspersed with D&D keywords here and there. This is mostly not a problem, once in a while a keyword might have to be explained partly because of someone being unfamiliar with the English word, or unfamiliar with the rule in question. Having defined it in swedish the English term can be used going forward. No big deal. We're all pretty fluent in English.
I find that as a DM, the biggest challenge is translating flavour text on the fly. It might be boxed text or the more general information. My brain processed the text in English, but it doesn't "spit out swedish" unless i make it. It's hard to explain, but it's either in English mode or swedish mode and it's a bit sluggish in jumping between them.
What i usually do is translating boxed text (and most other information, albeit into bullet points) into swedish, when prepping for a session. This keeps my swedish more fluent and i don't keep "tripping" on English words.
Page Reference: Core Rules to DDB
Page Reference: DDB to PHB
Page Reference: DDB to DMG
Page Reference: DDB to MM
I don't have a problem understanding English, but I play with my kids and my youngest one doesn't understand everything. We are French Canadians. I'm studying in professional translation at the moment, so if you need something translated from English to French, let me know.
I'm french. I don't really have a problem using DndBeyond as I have no problem reading in English (talking or writing is far more difficult).
The only problem I have is cross referencing my sources in french (the translated books) with my dndBeyond sources sometimes.
Nothingvery difficult to overcome but a little cumbersome sometimes.
Hey! I'm a spanish-speaker from Mexico. I have no trouble understanding English and I grew up playing the game in English, making an effort to know the terms and eventually growing to feel familiar with them. D&D was actually one of the reasons I learned English in the first place.
On a personal level, I don't need the translations and prefer to play the game in English because that is what I'm familiar with. However, I also have family and friends that I'd like to introduce the game to, but that don't have a good grasp of the language. So, say that I decide to translate on the fly, which I have tried. The problem with that is consistency--As a TTRPG, D&D uses language and terms to refer to specific mechanics that everyone can recognize, things like Saving Throw, or the names of spells. If I translate the name of a spell one way, and then later my brother wants to refer to the same thing but uses a different word (because things can be translated different ways) it creates dissonance, because I might not recognize what he's referring to and ends up dragging the game down. This also brings the problem of trying to refer to something as its translated name, and then having trouble referencing it in the book. If a player says to me "I want to cast *translated name of spell*" I have to mentally try to reverse-translate to look for it in the English book, and, again, things can be translated a ton of different ways. Just having a single point of reference at hand that we can all agree on would go a long way.
Now, I'd also like to speak on a community level, since this is something that I have some experience with (I'm a broadcaster with a spanish-speaking audience). I literally get asked this every day: where do I get the books in Spanish? How do I play this in Spanish? Why do you guys use English terms for the game? And the answer to all of those is sadly that the Spanish-language books are pretty inaccessible for Latin-Americans. You have to get them imported from Spain, because that is the only country that is allowed to sell them (as of now). Each one of the core books ends up being like $80, plus shipping. It's kind of insane. So far my answer has been: Just try to get the English books and learn with us. I'd LOVE to have an option like DDB to point them to. Something SUPER accessible where it's just like... go here! Here's where you get Spanish D&D!
Anyway, sorry for the rant. It's been a problem for a few years now, and I'm super stoked you guys are working on it!
I'm from Germany. I don't have any trouble using your product in english, which is totally understandable for me.
But thinking to use dndbeyond for my table group at home, which is of course in our native language German or even playing online with friends is quite challenging if you need to translate everything beforehand for yourself.
I'm from Brazil. Growing up, I played DnD throughout high school and college. I have returned to playing and been enjoying it very much. My friends and I are all fluent and can do just fine with the books in English. However, it does feel like something is missing, since we all learned and played the game for so long with the reference material in our native language. Not to mention that with DnD becoming more and more popular, reaching a wider audience in the county means making the material available for those who either cannot take advantage of it in the source language, or simply are more comfortable with it in Portuguese.
I look forward to the release of the physical books coming up on 30 Sep 2019. Especially when it means we're finally going to have an official standardized nomenclature for the terms we have been either using in English or guessing how they should be called.
Now that I have moved to playing my regular games via the internet, DnDBeyond has become increasingly more important to my group, and having it in our own language would make our games very smooth, since we have 20+ years of "muscle memory" when it comes to the game terminology.
Furthermore, as an expat, reading material in Portuguese, both for me and my kids is hard to come by, so I would ask that the translation for the site is not region-locked. I am already rattling my brain to figure out how to get a copy of the PHB where I live, since it is not sold outside of Brazil, as far as I can tell.
PS: I would love to help in any way possible with the Brazilian Portuguese localization testing.
PSS: Please add the option to switch the values on the site to meters/kilos/liters for us metricly inclined. :)
I'm german and while I myself don't have a problem using D&D Beyond - and D&D books in general - in English, my friends aren't as fluent as I am. And even if they were, we would still speak German when we play. This went so far that three years ago when I introduced them to D&D and there was no translated version of the books, I would help them create their characters and then translate all relevant class abilities for them. I would even create little spell cards with the translated spell descriptions - and we had both a cleric and a druid, so that was a lot of writing.
Recently, I started a one-on-one-campaign with a friend for which we're using D&D Beyond; and it's really annoying for both of us that we speak German most of the time, but then his character sheet and all my DM resources are in English.
It would help me a lot if I could get my material in German, and I would appreciate it if I could get a discount on the products if I already got the english version.
EDIT: forgot to write this: upon the release of Dragon Heist, I bought the book(English, cause German took many more months) with the plan to run it for my friends, but I gave up on it because translating it was just too much work for me to be worth it
French DM here. I'm a professional translator, so I don't personally have a problem with everything being in English, but the biggest hurdle is character creation. Some of my players know enough English to get by, but those who don't are extremely limited in their choices. They're forced to pick from the published translated books, and thus can only choose races and classes from the PHB or XGTE. Granted, it's still a lot, but it's less than half of what the English-speaking players can choose, and it gets worse every time a new book with player options comes out.
Of course, I get that this is more a problem of the timing of published translations, rather than a failure of the D&D Beyond character creator, but I really think this is the feature that should be available to everyone before anything else. I'm sure my players would rather have an interactive character sheet they can understand rather than the newest adventures.
I'm form Mexico, born in the USA so I understand English perfectly, but my friends don't and I'm having a hard time getting them into the game. D&D can be intimidating on it's own, but in a different language it's even worse. I want to start playing but being from a small City means there are no game stores, adventures league or anyone who knows the game. So I'm trying to get my friends to play and having at least the source materials ( rules, spells, weapons, monsters etc), character creater and character sheet translated would be so helpful. You might not find many people who are active users who need DnD Beyond translated, but you will find a ton who have friends that are having a hard time getting in.
I'm from Brazil and I've been really into D&D for a while and your website is just so great at helping managing campaigns and stuff, but the fact that it's only in English kind of bothers my experience a bit. I have a lot of friends (that speak Spanish and Portuguese) that don't speak English, like, nothing at all. So, in the middle of combat, the fact that i have to stop and translate a whole spell for them, or describing it in another language (since my English is not PERFECT neither) breaks a little bit of the immersion. Add the main languages in America (Esp and Pt-Br) would be great for many people! It would really help me and my friends and many others. I could even help translating some stuff if people is what you need, but adding more languages (even if there are some mistakes) helps a lot!
I'm a french canadian and I personally don't have too much problems with D&D beyond tools that I use as a DM.
The problems come from my players. We play in French and since most of them are not very good in english, it's almost impossible for them to use D&D Beyond tools. Another problem is that the translated books are publish by Black Book Editions and are sold for more then twice the price of the english version.
I think what would be the most helpful is a translated version of the spells with an easy way to cross reference with the original english version.
I wish one day it will be possible for my players to use Dnd Beyond.
^ I'm in the same boat. Most of my players are fluent in English but never all of them, and we play in French 100% of the time.
As I grew up with basically everything I like in English, I personally prefer it over my native language (apart from the imperial system), but I have 3 players in my campaign that aren't very proficient and would love to have the website, books and listings in their native tongue (Portuguese and Japanese).
One of them even wants to start his very first campaign as a DM but feels like the language barrier hinders him too much to be able to use a pre-made adventure, for example.
I'm passing this on to them.
I have no issues personally... it for my Spanish players it would be great to have, boxed texts, monster and location names, spells (and their descriptions) and abilities
I'm from Brazil and I personally don't have any issue with using DND Beyond in English, but on the group that I DM, there's 6 players and only 2 of them have a good understanding of English to be able to use the tools provided here. If only the sources and the character sheet were translated, it would already make me and my players buy a lot of the material here and start using it on the table instead of the physical books.
Could be a good idea, translate for any language, as portuguese and if be possible. Put some varieties of currencies that could be paid.
I am a Brazilian player and I do speak english fluently. My group, however, does not understand a word in english. So here I am, using this powerful tool that is D&D Beyond and they are using paper sheets and always asking me all sorts of questions that the app gives all the answers to.
E.g.:
And don't get me started on leveling up. Jeeeeeeesus. There are so many variables to take into consideration, what you gain with each level and all the recalculations involved when you gain a +1 to proficiency or add something to a skill, and updating weapon attacks when you add those points.
D&D Beyond helps A LOT with those issues. It makes the game much faster and don't bore players with endless readings of the source material and doubts if they got it right or not (specially if I'm the only one in the table with a book, and it's, you guessed it, in english).
Please do translate this tool as soon as possible. It's a shame it's only available in english.
Thank you very much.