Warzone 2's Iraqi Al Mazrah Map Criticised For Childish Arabic Mistakes
The Call of Duty franchise, specifically the Modern Warfare sub-series, hasn't historically fared well with international representations. Players will always remember 'No Russian' as the major dehumanising of a region, but other storylines have been equally misleading and offensive.
The title has often been criticised for promoting American propaganda when portraying real-life conflict, rather than serving as an accurate documentary.
Instead, the littered inaccuracies have only insulted the global player base, and Warzone 2 has already proven the devs aren't striving to implement a multicultural environment.
Warzone 2 Arabic Translations Criticised
Despite being appreciative of the Mexican and Hispanic regions through the Modern Warfare 2 beta map "Mercado Las Almas", Warzone 2's Al Mazrah isn't quite as factual. In fact, one Arabic Call of Duty fan has slammed "Infinity Ward's complete bastardisation of the Arabic language".
A social media alias named Dance Inferno took to a platform named Restera to detail their displeasure at Infinity Ward, pointing out that a range of billboards are incorrect.
Click to enlargeThe writer called for the developers to actually hire Arabic-speaking actors to help with this development if they are insistent on developing the Middle East region in Call of Duty. Dance Inferno called out that advertisements such as "0% APR" are nonexistent in Iraq, yet appear in Warzone, adding, "This mistake could have been avoided by simply sending someone to the Middle East for a day".
Warzone 2's 'Halal Shisha Bar' Billboard Slammed By Arabic Speakers
One of the more eyebrow-raising mistakes is the "Halal Hookah Bar" sign in Taraq Village, which is complete Americanism. The term "Hookah" is supposed to refer to Shisha - a popular form of flavoured smoking through waterpipes - although this is not the Iraqi Arabic translation; Al Mazrah is based loosely based on a town in Iraq.
It is also impossible to get "halal" tobacco, given that the term is specific to meat, making the halal shisha bar quite a humourous invention. The social media also explains that all meat in Iraq is halal, so you would also never see this expression on an advertisement board in the country.
According to Dance Inferno, there are many accounts of these poor translations and made-up billboards across the Warzone 2 map, which only highlights that the efforts to depict the Middle-Eastern culture are feeble at best.
"I doubt IW thought it was important to authentically represent this part of the world since, you know, we're all just here to kill anyway, right? Who has time to read?" they concluded.
