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I'm interested in making an Elf character for PFS PbPing sometime soon, but I can't find any language or script that I could use as Elvish. I looked up some Sindarin and Tengwar script translators, but they don't seem to be compatible at all with BBCode; the text just shows up as a bunch of random numbers and symbols.
Does anybody know of any LOTR Elvish script translators that would work here on the messageboards? And if not, what's the language that people typically use here as a substitute for Elvish?
मैं आपसे बात करने की कोशिश कर रहा हूँ
Hindi seems to work.
Estonian is what I'd pick based on sound, but it doesn't have fancy characters. For looks Greek would probably be my choice (or Hindi, as Crystal suggests).
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Well, there's a few different ways to do it. Using the LOTR script would require people to have that font installed (which is probably why you're seeing gibberish), so you're stuck with other options. You could do Google translate, use spoiler tabs, or <"Put brackets around 'Elvish' text like this"> to show that it's different. It's up to you, really.
Would using the Sindarin (Elvish) vocabulary that Tolkien provided to manually write the text in Elvish using English lettering work, and or would that be too much of a hassle? And would it be alright to improvise Sindarin translations for words that aren't a part of it's vocabulary, or would that be confusing?
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That's a pain to manage, honestly.
For my Kingmaker game I'm using Bengali; I actually have a mapped list of things in the game so far at the header.
If it's direct speech, we use the Latin-alphabet phonetic translation: "Ē'i āmi ki balachē karachi; ē'i hala kibhābē āmi ēṭā balachi. Aśarīrī." If it's telepathic, mental, something like that, we use the language's own script: "এই আমি কি বলছে করছি; এই হল কিভাবে আমি এটা বলছি. অশরীরী." A translation always gets provided in a spoiler tag. "This is what I'm saying; this is how I'm saying it. Elvish."
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I use Google Translate and various actual languages, and then put the English text behind a Spoiler tag.
Toklein was a linguist. He based Sindarin heavily on Finnish, which is what I use for Elvish.
The elf looks you up and down, and mutters, "Mitäs täällä? Ulkopuolisille!"
Elvish:"What have we here? Outsiders!"
Honestly, I just do this:
"Is it really murder if they are going to die in a few short decades anyways?"
I tend to switch between Haladir's method and laziness (writing the text and saying "so and so said in Elvish."). A lot of it depends on whether the PCs have the language or not -- if not, I'm much more likely to use the Google Translate method.
However, I have often thought the boards should come to some consensus on what alphabet should be used for what languages (not that there'd be any binding quality to said list) as I tend to forget what real-world languages I've mapped to what fantasy languages. (At the very least, I should make a list up for myself, but again: lazy.)
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I agree Motteditor, and have been compiling a list from various sources.
This is by no means a consensus as, obviously, lots of folks will disagree. But it's a start.
Abyssal = Gujarati
Aklo = Bengali
Auran = Sinhala
Azlanti = Latin
Celestial = Armenian
Draconic = Chinese
Drow = Tamil
Dwarven = Russian
Elven = Finnish
Giant = Icelandic
Gnome = Yoruba
Goblin = Hmong
Halfling = Dutch
Hallit = Mongolian
Infernal = Tajik
Kelish = Persian
Orc = Klingon
Osiriani = Arabic
Polyglot = Swahili
Shoanti = Maori
Skald = Danish
Terran = Welsh
Thassilonian = Greek
Tien = Japanese
Undercommon = Khmer
Varisian = Romanian
Vudrani = Hindi
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Here's what I've used in my games (via Google Translate)...
Azlanti = Latin
Celestial = Hindi
Draconic = Chinese
Dwarven = German
Elvish = Finnish
Goblin = nonsense gobbledygook (with many repeating rhyming syllables)
Kellish = Arabic
Minkaian = Japanese
Orcish = Mongolian
Skald = Russian
Sylvan = Irish Gaelic
Thassilonian = Greek
Varisian = Romanian
I use Klingon for Draconic. Bing translator does Klingon. Sadly the font is not standard.