Not exactly a bad translation, but I remember someone writing about DDO, talking about how the game has a new race - the warfrogs.
Oh yeah! That last war had the poor people of Eberron walking on the skin of their teeth. They ran out of humans. They ran out of halflings. They ran out of magical robots. They ran out even of attack dogs. So they trained frogs. :)
(...)
I convert in metric system, because Imperial system is awkward and unpratical for many people. (Anglo saxons may disagree)(...)
I wish more anglo-saxon games would use the "yard" as a the basic measurement unit. Since the yard is 3 inches (at a bit) short of a meter, the conversion to metric would have been close enough to be hand-waved...
As for long distance, use the league. Again, a league is about 3 miles or about 5 kilometers, making conversion easy in either ways.
As for the game, I used to play in French but my current group are primarily English and German speakers (and contrary to Kee Yoss, my Saarlännisch is limited to a handful of words, never-mind sentences).
I grew-up with the French terms, so they didn't bother me that much. Besides, 2E AD&D wasn't badly translated. And then came 3rd edition. I don't own any french book from 3.x era, but it must have been a nightmare to translate with all its portmanteau words and special abilities...
Spanglish and baturringlis most of the time.
I'm from Belgium, and we play mostly using Dutch, but key words are in english, such as initiative, saving throw... Most game mechanics, really. Also, when some of us get really deep into character, they tend to start speaking English as well.
And you never had to read of the Great WORM Catyrpelius on the Dragonlance Chronicles (Great Wyrm translated as 'Grande VERME', which is the Italian for... worm ).
Or the wizard Midnight from the Forgotten Realms novels, which is sometimes translated as 'Mezzanotte' - the LITERAL Italian translation of 'midnight'... I mean, come on, it's her personal name !
(both were translated by the same publishing house mentioned above, Armenia)** spoiler omitted **...
Saw Star Wars yesterday.
It's always fun to hear they translated DARTH VADER as LORD FENER.(WTF????)
Saw Star Wars yesterday.
It's always fun to hear they translated DARTH VADER as LORD FENER.(WTF????)
You are referring to "Revenge of the sith" i take. For what i've heard when the first Star Wars came out "A new hope" they changed Vader to Fener because of the resemblance the word had with another much more commonly used english word in Italy ( water....enough said ) and now that i think of it, Vader should be a swedish word.
Not a native German speaker, so it might sound HORRIBLE to someone who grew up speaking German, but as an Anglophone I am rather partial to "Hexenmeister". :P
I WILL NEVER USE 'VARISIANER' for Varisians.What are the alternatives? Variner? Varisiani? Varisier? Varesen? Vargeuner? Varisen? Varisians and Varisianer is not too far from each other. It may have connotations to Martians in German, but there are no Martians in Golarion, as there are no beholders etc.
We have a (now weekly) conference call to discuss translated glossary terms (fluff and rules content) for future publications (i.e. class features for the APG atm).
Varisier would be be 'natural' translation IMO.
Also, why is the Sorcerer 'Hexer'? And how will you translate the APG witch?
I'm just saying that this rush job probably has put a lot of people off German PF.
I'm not sure if that's even noticeable next to the fact that you can get the original books for half to 2/3 of the price of the translated version, thanks to the stupidity that is 'Buchpreisbindung' legislation.... germans... *sigh* ;)
Same as with 4E - why wait for a translated version when the original version is cheaper, you don't have to wait, and (possibly) you've been burned by translation of D&D rulesets before...
Magic missile - Magische Rakete (magic rocket). Wrong translation for missile
Lich - Lurch (amphibian). What. It does look similar, but that's as far as I can get before I start bleeding out of every orifice in my head.
Lich - Leichnam (corpse). While technically correct, the word lich quite old and has been out of common use for a long time. Leichnam instead of Leiche, on the other hand, are both still used. Whenever a GM is telling me of a "Leichnam" in the room, I have those few seconds where I sit there and think "Okay, there's a stiff in there, so what?"
Blackguard - Finsterer Streiter (gloomy combatant). It might technically be a valid translation, but it sounds like a cartoon villain from one of the funny shows. Good idea for the Turtles, bad for guys whose favourite drink is the blood of nations.
Feats - Talente (talents). Might make sense in a vacuum, but there have been so many things that used talent in the game, that you end up confusing people. Rogue talents, psionic talents, and so on.
Charge and overrun - I think those are Sturmangriff and Ansturm. While the English descriptions fit, the German ones are more or less the same. Not easy to tell them apart.
Torch - Taschenlampe (flashlight). Sure, you can translate those battery operated light sticks as torch in English, but when we're talking about fantasy, we probably mean those things you make out of wood, straw and pitch (or something), and the word you use in German for that is Fackel. Though for this I'm not sure it was used in D&D.
Elemental - Urwesen (primordial being). Just call the damn thing an Elementar.
Bane (the LE bod of Tyranny and so on from the Forgotten Realms) - Tyrannus....
Wow, thanks Kae-Yoss, these are amazingly funny!
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I wish more anglo-saxon games would use the "yard" as a the basic measurement unit. Since the yard is 3 inches (at a bit) short of a meter, the conversion to metric would have been close enough to be hand-waved...
I agree for the Yard. I remember the Inquisitor board game from Games Workshop which used the yard as unit for range/speed.
As for long distance, use the league. Again, a league is about 3 miles or about 5 kilometers, making conversion easy in either ways.
Not a problem, since a lieu is a known medieval distance unique.
But well, metric system is also convenient for weight, volume and surface.And then came 3rd edition. I don't own any french book from 3.x era, but it must have been a nightmare to translate with all its portmanteau words and special abilities...
The translation was indeed nightmarish to read and certainly to do.
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The Sorcerer has been translated as "Hexenmeister". It was a decision that we use the same term in PF, because of the backwards compatibility to 3.5.
The witch will be "die Hexe", the Summoner "der Paktmagier", the chavalier "der Ritter", the oracle will be "der Mystiker" and the alchemist will not get a new name.
Which one did I miss? Inquisitor, see Alchemist.
The Sorcerer has been translated as "Hexenmeister". It was a decision that we use the same term in PF, because of the backwards compatibility to 3.5.
The witch will be "die Hexe", the Summoner "der Paktmagier", the chavalier "der Ritter", the oracle will be "der Mystiker" and the alchemist will not get a new name.
Which one did I miss? Inquisitor, see Alchemist.
Thanks for the info. Still...Paktmagier for the summoner seems a weird choice. Why not 'Beschwörer'?
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Anyone thinking of running a bilingual pbp? I'd love to play in a PbP that allowed a mix of English and French (to improve my French while having fun).I once suggested using role-playing games as a language learning tool... unfortunately none of the students were role-players in English either!
Unfortunately while my spoken French is up to the task of running a table game, I do not write it fluently enough to run a pbp game :(
Okay. We've got two players then ...
;-)
Anyone thinking of running a bilingual pbp? I'd love to play in a PbP that allowed a mix of English and French (to improve my French while having fun).I once suggested using role-playing games as a language learning tool... unfortunately none of the students were role-players in English either!
Unfortunately while my spoken French is up to the task of running a table game, I do not write it fluently enough to run a pbp game :(
Okay. We've got two players then ...
;-)
Tarren and Megan,
Your proposition got me thinking today. I'm a native French speaker but I've always used the English version of D&D 3+ and pathfinder rules. I'm also involved in a few PbPs here on the boards.
I could see myself running a bilingual PbP here but that will not be before November, as I have some other commitments both at work and here.
My idea would be to start with a short scenario with a limited number of layers. As this would be both for having fun and practising French, I would prefer some non French natives. We would use French for in game description and dialogues and English for OOC and any rules.
Would you or other people be interested by that ?
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Anyone thinking of running a bilingual pbp? I'd love to play in a PbP that allowed a mix of English and French (to improve my French while having fun).I once suggested using role-playing games as a language learning tool... unfortunately none of the students were role-players in English either!
Unfortunately while my spoken French is up to the task of running a table game, I do not write it fluently enough to run a pbp game :(
Okay. We've got two players then ...
;-)
Tarren and Megan,
Your proposition got me thinking today. I'm a native French speaker but I've always used the English version of D&D 3+ and pathfinder rules. I'm also involved in a few PbPs here on the boards.
I could see myself running a bilingual PbP here but that will not be before November, as I have some other commitments both at work and here.
My idea would be to start with a short scenario with a limited number of layers. As this would be both for having fun and practising French, I would prefer some non French natives. We would use French for in game description and dialogues and English for OOC and any rules.
Would you or other people be interested by that ?
I would. I work on my French on a daily basis but have mostly built reading and listening skills. That set up sounds like a good way of moving forward. I'll keep an eye out for this if you come back to it.