Question to non-Anglosaxons - what language version games do you play?

[Duque de Bragança]

In France, one of the first console RPG games to be translated and released there and the first one I got was Secret of Mana. Still pretty expensive nowadays unlike Germany where more SNES RPGs got released back in the day. Only place where one can find Terranigma for a decent price (this one not even released in the US).
As for Portugal, the first games to be translated were football games such as PES or FIFA. Sony has been translating AND dubbing games for a while sometimes with good results (Little Big Planet PSP) or not so good (Uncharted). Spanish translations and dubs for games have been more and more of a plague and are generally crappy, as for movies, à la German.

So I go for the original versions most of the times, so this may mean Japanese if available, not necessarily English because sometimes it feels like cheap US anime dubs.
Sampled X-COM dubbed in French and it was mediocre "scanning" becoming "Je scanne" (what? only used for documents in this context in French). No lip-sync as well, same goes for Heavy Rain (only the English dub is lip-synced).
Lucasarts games, such as Full Throttle, were very well dubbed, cartoon-style as mentioned by Syt.

[Monoriu]

Maybe this is because of the historically poor quality of Polish game translations (and the fact that Polish is notoriously difficult to translate into, when you do not translate whole sentences but individual words, as in Polish adjectives have different feminine, masculine and neutral forms for example), but I always games in the original English language. This is why I am constantly being puzzled by e.g. complaints of people on Paradox forums, about the quality of German, French or Spanish translations of Paradox games.

So my question to people from non-English-speaking countries is - what language version do you play - English or (when available) your native language version?

English.  A lot of game companies don't bother translating their games into Chinese.  But even if the Chinese version is available, I go for the English version.  I hate reading the translated names of western characters, and I often suspect that the Chinese translation does not accurately reflect the meaning/jokes/puns of the original English version.  In addition, most online material like strategies and guides are in English.  I don't want to read a walkthrough in English but play the game in Chinese. 

Another problem is technical.  Because there are two versions of Chinese characters, traditional and simplified, there are many display issues involved.  My computer uses traditional Chinese characters.  The mainland market (which uses simplified) is much larger than the Taiwan and HK markets.  So game companies usually go for the simplified version.  I hate reading simplified Chinese letters and sometimes my computer displays similar emotion. 

I also have to admit that there is an ego issue involved.  I can play the English version just fine.  That's something that I am proud of.  Yes, it is silly and childish, but there you go 

[Josquius]

Do you ever play Japanese originals mono?
Much of it would be readable on at least a basic meaning level right?

So I go for the original versions most of the times, so this may mean Japanese if available, not necessarily English because sometimes it feels like cheap US anime dubs.
Sampled X-COM dubbed in French and it was mediocre "scanning" becoming "Je scanne" (what? documents). No lip-sync as well, same goes for Heavy Rain (only the English dub is lip-synced).
Lucasarts game such as Full Throttle, were very well dubbed, cartoon-style as mentioned by Syt.

Wait...you speak Japanese?

So tell me, how is Law and Order:UK a totally different situation?  You do realize that there is much, much, much more television in the US. So there is naturally going to be more of everything, even copies of Brit programs.

'Largely' != 'They are all'.
There are a few examples on that list of proper remakes. Generally complete failures wheras the originals did OK in the UK, I've never heard of most of them.

Isn't Law and Order the one that has franchises in a bazillion American cities? Having a UK version doesn't seem such a big deal there. Just a continuation of its own established pattern.

[Duque de Bragança]

So I go for the original versions most of the times, so this may mean Japanese if available, not necessarily English because sometimes it feels like cheap US anime dubs.
Sampled X-COM dubbed in French and it was mediocre "scanning" becoming "Je scanne" (what? documents). No lip-sync as well, same goes for Heavy Rain (only the English dub is lip-synced).
Lucasarts game such as Full Throttle, were very well dubbed, cartoon-style as mentioned by Syt.

Wait...you speak Japanese?

Nope, I just choose the Japanese dub over the US English if given the choice for Japanese stuff, with subtitles to support it.

[Razgovory]

Isn't Law and Order the one that has franchises in a bazillion American cities? Having a UK version doesn't seem such a big deal there. Just a continuation of its own established pattern.

Nope.

[Agelastus]

Isn't Law and Order the one that has franchises in a bazillion American cities? Having a UK version doesn't seem such a big deal there. Just a continuation of its own established pattern.

No, Law and Order is the one where the spin-off series utilise other departments of the New York police force/criminal justice system; CSI is the one that goes city-hopping with its' spinoffs.

Law and Order UK is the most pathetic excuse for an import I've ever seen; importing an ensemble show concept and then making only six episodes a year is a joke.

Although having just seen that there was a pilot made of an American version of Dad's Army (thanks Raz, you got me browsing both the lists) I can't say it's the most pointless transatlantic movement of television ideas I've ever seen.

[garbon]

Yea as far as I know only L&O:Los Angeles took place outside of New York and it tanked hard.

L&O:UK's first season...series was just a collection of somewhat re-worked "best of" episodes from the US.

[garbon]

Consulting wiki - CSI only had two city spinoffs - seemed like there were a million.

[Eddie Teach]

NCIS does the multiple cities bit as well.

[Monoriu]

Do you ever play Japanese originals mono?
Much of it would be readable on at least a basic meaning level right?

Yes, I've played a few games in Japanese.  It really depends on the type of game.  For KOEI strategy games, it was okish, because as you know the Japanese use a lot of kanji.  I can read most of the people's names, geographic names, a lot of commands, and I could look up the Japanese dictionary on some of the terms. 

But it is definitely not ok for RPG type games.  I could sorta hack and slash, but I had absolutely no idea about what was going on story-wise.