Crisis in the Steam Translation Server (STS)

Greetings, dear ghosts and surprised former readers who now realize they forgot to remove this blog from their RSS feeds. Today I bring something of importance I'd like to share about videogame localization and, more precisely, the STS.

Those of you who follow or used to follow my blog Las Chancletas de Hermes, written in Spanish, may remember about the Steam Translation Server, a crowdsourcing tool by Valve Software for fans to translate their games for them. I once was a member, although my opinion on it has changed A LOT over time (heh, overtime).

With good reason, too. Today I read about the terrible situation that the Spanish group of the STS is currently going through. You can read all about it following the link below. Even though I haven't translated for the STS for years, Ï found it quite relevant, since the translation of the entire Steam website depends on this.


https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44yl24/how_a_whole_language_of_the_steam_translation/

I now very few people still visit this blog, and even fewer will read this. Anyway, here's a quick copypasted TL;DR by the author of the Reddit post:

TL;DR: There has been a huge mess involving Valve’s employee Torsten Zabka and the Spanish team of Steam Translation Server that has resulted a strike from the whole team, and 2 valuable colleagues being expelled, one of them being a Valve employee that also got fired. We want to share the story to reach Valve’s attention and show the community that not everything around is pretty.

Thanks to @fjgaldo, former mod of the Spanish STS, for telling me about this.

George W. Bush

Today is the 4th of July, the Independence Day in the US. I don't usually bother about it nor celebrate it but, casually, this week I've been working on some old videos of mine. One of them is the recording of a presentation I did two years ago in class, along with my pals Oroszlán and El gato agrio.

We turned a boring presentation into a somewhat fun stage act. It's about the former POTUS George W. Bush. I uploaded the video inmediately as private, but I haven't released it until now.

This week, as I said, I've been working on subtitles for this video, just to keep practising now that lectures are over, so I'm making it public on this 4th of July, NOW WITH SUBTITLES!!

Note: Subtitles are available in Spanish and English, translated by me. Don't be too harsh.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Level up!

Avast, my dear readers! I would like to have written this post two months ago but I couldn't do earlier. You know, between exams and holidays you end up forgetting everything. Better late than never at all, as we say in Spain. Welcome back to Dungeons & Chimneys.



Levelling up from level 1 to level 2 is probably the best gift a DM can give to the party. Every class has its pros and cons but, honestly, all of them suck at level 1. Especially clerics.

But level 2, on the other hand, is so cool. Everybody gets their skills improved. They start being good at something specific and are able to use their skills more often or more efficiently. Level 2 is a very well deserved reward for having suffered so much trouble at level 1. Level 3 is cool as well (new feats!) but we didn't go that far on our little campaign.

Dungeons & Chimneys: DM Tricks (or Treats)

Greetings, everyone!

Yesterday I spoke with Minna, my DM when I played D&D in Guildford.

It had been a while since our last conversation and she seemed happy that I was doing ok in my game. I asked about hers but it seems it's been paused for a couple of weeks because of exams and stuff like that. Exams start next week for me, which is something I'm not looking forward to, actually.

Anyway, Minna and I had a pleasant chat about the best and worst things about DMing. We shared some DM tricks — and cheats.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Noobz & Prohs, Or The Other Way Round

New players are just great.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not being sarcastic. Honestly, players with absolutely no experience in RPGs are the best role-players at the end of the day, because they lack everything that regular videogamers expect of an RPG. Experienced players often forget how to think as their characters and tend to commit meta-gaming — which is not very convenient in a D&D game.

Let me show you a couple examples.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Investigation Vs. Combat

Greetings, adventurers! Enjoying your Easter holidays? I've been quite busy lately — it seems that the more days I have free, the more troble comes to me. But, fortunately, it seems I found some time to write about Dungeons & Chimneys.



We played again last Monday. Although one of my players wasn't able to come, it was ok. I avoided combat situations for the moment, because I want all the group to be there when they come, so we started the actual plot of the Freeport campaign.

Dungeons & Chimneys: Ahoy, mateys! Welcome to Freeport!

It's on! IT'S ON!!



My D&D campaign started yesterday. Finally. After almost a month of problems and a thousand of postponed plans, we have finally started. We weren't as prepared as I would have wanted, and there was some trouble during the session, but in the end everything was OK.