A conversation to talk about the translations of the games from LucasFilm Games/LucasArts.
There is a very good and recent Italian fan translation, that you can install over the GOG release of the FM-Towns version. You can find it here:
http://www.oldgamesitalia.net/traduzioni/zak-mckracken-and-alien-mindbenders-vga
I played it and it’s good. Compared to the older one (please ask @ZakPhoenixMcKracken for that one) the errors in translation are corrected.
I always found the dialect they gave The King in the german version to be odd. Of course they use the typical Elvis southern inflections in the original, but what the heck was the german version all about?
Except that I always found it funny that the dumb caponian says “Jau” all the time, which is a rather rare version to say yes.
I´m glad none of the last names where changed which is actually quite untypical for the time.
That is all I can think of at the moment.
I wonder in which languages was the game originally translated, soon after it was shipped in the US.
Anyway it is pretty clear that translations back then were handled by external people, like in Europe, then there was not a direction of the translation process by the original developers, like in Thimbleweed Park, for example.
At first none I guess. And it was a rarity even for germany to have full translations for games.
“Mit deutschen Bildschirmtexten!” was a big marketing sentence on german boxes especially for role playing games way into the 90s.
Haha, it means that the game itself “on the screen” was translated too, not only the manual?
Yes, screen texts in german. The packaging was translated first and it was a huge thing when the on screen text was translated, too.
The first Zelda game to have german text on screen was A Link To The Past in 1992. The first two games for the NES never had german text, only english.
That’s quite similar to what happened in Italy. Among all the games I played on the Amiga500, the only ones I can remember with an Italian translation were the adventure games! Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Secret of Monkey Island. I can’t remember if Lure of the Temptress was translated too.
Well it makes sense because that makes a game more unplayable to someone who doesn´t speak the language than most games that just inuitivly throw you into the action.
Jumping over the barrels that Donkey Kong throws at Jumpman works in every language. 
No. 
It’s very common in some parts of Germany … 
Depending on dialect and also a bit on current trends I suppose.
Jau! …
The German translator (Boris Schneider-Johne) talked about the translations of the old games in this TWP podcast:
https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/podcast64
(I hope it’s the right one. )
@Sushi In your various translations, did you do Sam & Max? Specifically “Pleasantly understated credit sequence”?
I was thinking something like “Aangenaam ingehouden aftiteling”.
No, not yet - plus the utter Americaness of Sam&Max may prove to be very hard to translate.
After MI2, I’ll move back to Indy3 and go chronologically from there.
Anyway, I’d rather go for “Verrassend sobere aftiteling” - not sure what the context was (probably Max commenting on it)
Or if there is a reply from Max:
Sam: “Dat was een sobere aftiteling. Verrassend genoeg.”
Max: “Oooh, mag ik hem verassen, Sam? Mag het?”
[translation:
Max: “That was a surprisingly understated undercooked credit sequence”
Sam: “Oooh, can I incinerate it, Sam? Can I?”
]
For the non-Dutch speakers: there is only one letter difference between a surprise and an incineration.
Which people get wrong all of the time:
https://www.mijnwoordenboek.no/vertaal/NL/EN/verassen
Never look at a crowd sourced dictionary for the correct spelling… only for a good laugh.
According to @Guga:
Pleasantly understated credit sequence (NOTE: this is a quote from Sam in Sam&Max Hit The Road, the very first sentence after the title sequence)
After the “Friends?” cutscene and the credits sequence, Sam and Max enter their office and Sam comments “what a pleasantly understated credit sequence”.
In Italian, it has been translated as “what an impressive display of important names” 
So, are you translating Sam&Max, then?