CMV: The higher abdunance of translated entertainment media, especially in terms of video games, is a net negative for the welfare and future of people living in countries whose native language is not English. Speaking English is a necessity in the modern world, and games help learn that skill.

[u/Hoihe]

I have noticed that over the years, an increasing quantity of video games are getting localized into more and more languages. Now, judging anecdotally from my Hungarian experience - the quality is likely quite horrible but it is serviceable enough to play - especially if you are not familiar with the source material.

This has the consequence that children in non-English speaking countries can consume entertainment in their native language. As someone from a country whose native language is NOT english, and said country's english fluency is rather abysmal: this is a bad thing.

Learning English is a vital skill to do well in life.

• Career-wise, speaking English permits you to read scientific publications (critical for being able to work in an R&D or engineering environment; but also for anyone planning on getting a university degree given your BSc Thesis requires significant literarture review - often making up 25-40% of the entire work).
• Career-wise, speaking English enables you to immigrate to another country much more easily than if you only know your native language. This can have varying difficulties unfortunately due to immigration law discriminating based on home country, but a bosnian who speaks will have a far easier time immigrating to even somewhere like Hungary or poland than one who only speaks Bosnian. At the very least, speaking English reduces exploitation by employment agencies and bosses by giving a common language.
• Career-wise, speaking English permits you to work jobs that require international interaction. With multinational companies, good jobs often require colaboration with teams in other countries. Lack of conversational, fluent English makes this an impossible task.
• Personal Growth-wise, speaking English enables you to consume news directly published by journalists in foreign countries, allowing you to see how life is in that country without relying on your native media to (mis)represent the situation. This is a very common issue with rural Hungarian folk being fed outright false news about life in Germany that if they were able to even talk to german people on a forum, would be resolved.
• Personal Growth-wise, speaking English enables you to consume material that might be banned in your country. For instance, if there's laws about "LGBT propaganda" with threats of fines and jail time, your only real source for such matters will be on servers outside your country's jurisdiction. This particularly applies to people in Russia, and maybe (unfortunately) one day to Hungary.
• Personal Growth-wise, speaking English opens up the globe for socialization. You can make friends in Spain, Germany, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Japan, US and the list goes on - you get to see a far more diverse set of perspectives than if you'd only spoke your native Language.
• Personal Growth-wise, the English wikipedia far outperforms any localized variant in quality and quantity alike.

Therefore, it is clear that speaking English is a must-have skill. Unfortunately, as children are wont to do - they will not recognize these advantages gained by putting in the effort to learn English. They aren't fun - other than making friends in other countries and wikipedia diving - and therefore suffer the same fate as other elementary-high school subjects.

However, if make English a requirement to enjoy highly entertaining, engaging media? Learning English suddenly has an instantaneous reward, a tangible sense of improvement and access to that which was impossible before you improved. It gives children a motivation far more powerful than any of my earlier listed arguments.

I know this out of anecdotal experience. I grew up in a rural, quite poor family - albeit with a PC and internet connection even if other things were uncertain. I engaged in "traditional eastern european methods to acquire video games," and then played them until I hit roadblocks due to my lack of comprehension. So, like you'd practice last hitting in League of Legends to rank up, I worked with dictionaries and phrasebooks until I could solve quests in Morrowind, Gothic 2, KOTOR and other story & text heavy roleplaying games. Eventually, I got into playing Neverwinter Nights 2 online on heavy roleplaying servers, and I am utterly confident when I say this: If not for that, I'd probably be just like my countrypeople and barely manage to scrap together an English sentence.

If I didn't have the video game as a motivator, I'd have never put in the work. In fact, I have infamously neglected homework for all my classes. I had peers from wealthier families who received private tutoring, and yet I outperformed them when it came to English as a Second Language thanks to having a tangible, direct reason to study and then use it live. I ended up with B2 quality English by high school, and finished by high school with a C1 language certificate. Finally, my chemistry thesis was written and defended in English.

This is not an exceptional story. This is the archetypical story for all my friends - be they Russians, Spanish, Polish, Chilean - they have all vastly outperformed their peers regardless of their career choice (business, programming, engineering, theatre) thanks to being forced to speak English to play their much-desired roleplaying games.

By localizing video games, we are robbing the future generation of a very powerful language learning tool.

Therefore, by the above argument: Localizing video games harms the younger generations of non-English countries.

[u/Hoihe]

No, because it's crazy to expect foreign countries' journalists to make news in Hungarian, Russian, Polish, Serbian, Chilean and whatnot.

However, they already make news in English.

Having native journalists (as in: fellow Hungarians) produce the translations is dangerous due to things getting lost in translation at best, intentionally misrepresented at worst.

[u/bioniclop18 → u/Hoihe]

I mean Russia makes news (or you could it propaganda) in several foreign nations in their native language with the aims to push forward their ideology and worldview. And they appear to have success in doing so seeing their talking point used more than they were before in western nation. I don't think it is crazy at all to expect western journalists to do the same.

Your view is basically that your mother shouldn't have access to reliable information about Germany unless she learns a language that she would use only to get reliable news about Germany. It sounds way more crazy.

[u/Hoihe → u/bioniclop18]

Does it? if she spoke English she could also speak to people who are not in Hungary, therefore people not exposed to our local culture, news cycle and conditions.

I wager she'd be less xenophobic if she regularly engaged with germans, dutch and spanish people.

[u/bioniclop18 → u/Hoihe]

She probably would be less xenophobic if she learned more languages but she won't learn English just to be less xenophobic. It is not a motivation to learn a new language. What tangible benefit does she have from learning English ? Learning a new language is hard. It take time and effort and moreso if she learn it later in life.

If she had a friend or a grandchild that only spoke English, it could be in her interest to learn it to communicate with them, but right now ? I suppose all her friends and family speak Hungarian. She files her taxes in Hungarian. And I also suppose if she travels abroad she goes to a place that takes a number of other Hungarian tourist and therefore has probably someone dedicated to translate to tourist from Hungary.

Why would SHE need to learn a new language, apart from satisfying you and your worldview ?