#not commenting on “Vacuo/Hueco Cristalino” will default to “Vacuo”

[endormiscat]

The Spanish translation of Outer Wilds

...is a weird case. On some parts, the translation is solid and sounds natural. On some places the word choice is specially tasteful. But on others it suffers from glaring issues, as if machine-translating or doing a blind replacement from a bilingual dictionary, or even, some untranslated lines here and there. This is specially heartbreaking because, as I later found out, there’s a lovely article from Mobius about how they approached the translation to other languages very carefully (this being a game so text-heavy and all), and described one example from each target language of the challenges they found when translating the game... But interestingly, there is no mention of any challenge with Spanish, even though most of the challenges described for other languages apply to Spanish as well.

So, now that I have finished the main game, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. (Also, since I’m not being paid for this, unlike the poor schmuck at Lionbridge who seemed to be crunched tf out of their ass, I can take some liberties, like including emerging gender neutral pronouns like the developers truly intended.)

Making a cut here for spoilers since I’ll be discussing names and their narrative meaning.

Since I actually did the whole playthrough with a friend watching me through Discord, we’ve been extensively discussing about potential changes to some names, and the hardest one to agree on was a possible new localization for Brittle Hollow’s name.

This is not a word that evokes “empty on the inside.” Specifically, this is the word used for “the opposite of a hill”, which, yes, it’s also called a hollow in English, but I think it’s clear from context that this is not the meaning in the planet’s name.

So at first I took inspiration from KH’s Hollow Bastion, localized as “Bastión Hueco”, which always sounded very impactful (positive) for me, despite (or because of) its simplicity. On the other hand, “Hueco Frágil” didn’t sound euphonic to me, so I tried to evoke “brittleness” through the visuals of crystal or glass, and went for “Hueco Vítreo.” I also initially thought (wrongly) that the name couldn’t possibly refer to the fact that the planet was breaking down, since it only started doing so “recently” (from the Protagonist’s point of view), that the Nomai couldn’t have been calling it that, and it was just a wordplay from the devs; but I later realized that the name was probably given by the Hearthians and that the Nomai translations localize the name into Hearthian as such.

Then my friend suggested “Vacuo Frágil”, swapping Hollow with Void. Which goes hard af not gonna lie

There’s also the possibility of mixing both ideas and getting “Vacuo Vítreo” (it even alliterates! But that could create the expectation of making all nouns alliterate and I don’t think I can fulfill that), or a fourth secret option in “Hueco Cristalino” or “Vacuo Cristalino.”

So, poll time!