Nico Nico Douga goes global (almost)


The once Japanese-only and super-successful video platform Nico Nico Douga goes international. They announced Friday on the company blog that they developed a German and Spanish version of their service (comments and tags are separated from Japanese videos).

German version

Spanish version
The international versions are already online. Nico Nico for people living in Taiwan was launched as early as October 2007.
This is great news for otaku and people interested in Japanese pop culture in Spanish and German speaking countries. Nico Nico didn’t release an English version, however. They didn’t state reasons but Nico Nico available in English would most probably spike up traffic significantly, generating higher server costs.
As a German, I must say the translation into my mother tongue is far from perfect and not professional at all. I hope the Spanish version is better.

4 comments

  1. would it be possible for you to help them fix their German translation? They will surely be very keen to know what is wrong with their translation… Thank you !

  2. I cannot see how those translations are wrong :-), but if they didn’t hire a native proofreader, that shows how much weigh they are putting on those localized versions.
    I know Serkan loves Niconico Douga but localization consultant working voluntarily is not a good idea. Let’s hope they will get feedbacks from German speaking fans.

  3. Well, their Spanish is good enough, just the same thing of using sentences longer than needed for not being sure of the language I think (like me in english lol).

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