I've recently moved to Malaysia, where there's a small but passionate DnD community. The basis of the groups seems to be people like me – expats who moved here – but there seems to be interest from people in learning how to play DnD, many of whom come from non-native-English backgrounds.
I wouldn't expect WotC to put out a Bahasa Malay version of their materials at scale, but I feel the TTRPG opportunity in Kuala Lumpur is pretty solid. I'm coordinating with a local bookstore to see if we can do a pilot and gauge interest. We'll be using English materials, and English is widely spoken here, but it got me thinking about how I haven't seen WotC materials in Chinese, which is also widely spoken here (if not by locals, by the many Chinese students and expats).
Have I missed these materials? Or are they made but by third-parties?
I’m pretty sure they don’t publish in any other languages. There had been plans to release translations in some European languages, but I don’t think those have happened yet. I also think I remember something about a Japanese translation, but I don’t think that happened, either.
I have wondered about this over the years. Of course, back in the day D&D was only available in physical books, and translations had to be done word by word by living people. So there was no way that could have made financial sense for a game that was still just a hobby on the fringes of society. But today we've got translation software, we've got the ability to buy purely digital copies of the books rather than paper, and D&D has moved from the fringes of society to be a real mainstream juggernaut.
And sure, it would take a big effort to translate the massive volume to D&D materials into other languages. And we would need native speakers from each of those regions to review everything so we don't end up with some funny/wrong/embarrassing translation errors. But it might be worth it. Making D&D available in Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Standard Arabic, French, and Japanese would add almost 3.2 BILLION potential customers to D&D's bottom line.
I've recently moved to Malaysia, where there's a small but passionate DnD community. The basis of the groups seems to be people like me – expats who moved here – but there seems to be interest from people in learning how to play DnD, many of whom come from non-native-English backgrounds.
I wouldn't expect WotC to put out a Bahasa Malay version of their materials at scale, but I feel the TTRPG opportunity in Kuala Lumpur is pretty solid. I'm coordinating with a local bookstore to see if we can do a pilot and gauge interest. We'll be using English materials, and English is widely spoken here, but it got me thinking about how I haven't seen WotC materials in Chinese, which is also widely spoken here (if not by locals, by the many Chinese students and expats).
Have I missed these materials? Or are they made but by third-parties?
I’m pretty sure they don’t publish in any other languages. There had been plans to release translations in some European languages, but I don’t think those have happened yet. I also think I remember something about a Japanese translation, but I don’t think that happened, either.
I have wondered about this over the years. Of course, back in the day D&D was only available in physical books, and translations had to be done word by word by living people. So there was no way that could have made financial sense for a game that was still just a hobby on the fringes of society. But today we've got translation software, we've got the ability to buy purely digital copies of the books rather than paper, and D&D has moved from the fringes of society to be a real mainstream juggernaut.
And sure, it would take a big effort to translate the massive volume to D&D materials into other languages. And we would need native speakers from each of those regions to review everything so we don't end up with some funny/wrong/embarrassing translation errors. But it might be worth it. Making D&D available in Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Standard Arabic, French, and Japanese would add almost 3.2 BILLION potential customers to D&D's bottom line.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.