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Merely its literal meaning.
It doesn't convey idioms, though another skill check, such as Knowledge (history) in your example, or Sense Motive if the speaker's intention is something other than his literal words suggest, might.
It would be no use at all with the door of Moria, since the reader wouldn't get the elven syllables, only their meaning.
A homonym or a word whose meaning has changed over time would be correctly translated as the author wrote it, with no sense of anything unusual about its sound (though some might argue the magic would instead give an ambiguous sense of both possible meanings). Puns would not be apparent.
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You do realize that you're getting into very deep philosophical and linguistic issues, right?
There is no such thing as a perfect translation of any significant work from one language to another. Some information is nearly ALWAYS lost. There is a reason that real scholars of works like the Bible go back to the oldest texts that they can find.
I think that the spells are assumed to be as good as a professional translator would be. Good enough for most practical purposes.
How they'd work on what is essentially a riddle in the "Speak friend and enter" is up to GM interpretation. Personally, I'd probably handle that as a linguistics check with a bonus if you spoke the language.
Yeah the Moria riddle would only get you the literal translation of the elvish, "Speak/Say friend and enter". Both are correct, and sense this is a made up language it's hard to know which is more correct.
Regardless, there's totally room for Comprehend Language to only give you the literal meaning of something and provide no useful context.
A great example I can think of is the Chinese jia you (加油). The literal meaning is "add fuel" or more specifically to "fill a car with gasoline". But the general usage of the phrase is actually encouragement, meaning something along the lines of "You can do it!".
Or for simplicity, you could say "no language in game has homonyms or idioms that the characters can't figure out once someone has access to the language." There's really no reason to hamstring the adventure by playing that every language is roughly equivalent to English in its [not "it's"] use of confusing homonyms too [not "to" or "two"]. Of course, if you want to make every conversation require not only a language spell, but also some Linguistics check, feel free.
Technically, I am treating the characters [with the language, whether via race, Linguistics, or magic] as if they had the Skill Unlock for Linguistics, 10 Ranks, made a DC 40 check, and that spoken and written uses of the skill function the same.
"10 Ranks: If you succeed at a Linguistics check by at least 10 when examining writing, you can learn the precise meaning rather than general content, and you never draw false conclusions on a failed check. A successful DC 30 Linguistics check reveals the general meaning of speech, a successful DC 35 check reveals 1d4 pieces of specific information, and a successful DC 40 check reveals exact meaning."
But they do. That's what Comprehend Languages is telling you. That it only conveys the literal meaning and that without context or greater understanding it wont make sense.
Going back to my previous example, "Add fuel" in Chinese. Without proper context it makes no sense to someone who doesn't speak Chinese. In the same way that something like the phrase "Just chillin" doesn't make sense. Basically all languages work this way, and ignoring this facet of language is kind of disingenuous. It's also somethign that anyone with a reasonable linguistics skill should be able to deduce in a lot of cases.
Now, if you want to simplify the game yes you could largely ignore the linguistics checks that should probably be required when you Comprehend Languages. But as someone who doesn't like magic to be as much of a solution as it already is, I tend to enforce things that make magic not an automatic answer.
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But they do. That's what Comprehend Languages is telling you. That it only conveys the literal meaning
As an almost perfect example of what I'm talking about, the description of Comprehend Language is itself unclear
"You can understand the spoken words ... merely its literal meaning."Those two bits actually contradict themselves. To understand words is NOT the same as to understand their literal meaning. Context matters. Idioms matter.
Obviously, its up to you how you run things in your games. But is THIS really the area where you want to focus your attention in a game like Pathfinder? It certainly isn't for me. As a GM, I present information that I WANT the characters and/or players to know. I'm HAPPY to quickly and easily eliminate the language barrier as it is just NOT fun.
First off, Comprehend Languages and Tongues are different spells. The former is pretty clearly just literal translation, not dissimilar to just looking up each of the words in a X-to-Y dictionary. The later is considerably more complete, and since it even includes 'regional dialects' I would expect that meaning, as well as literal words is understood.
All that being said, for most of us it isn't practical to be able to come up with cultural idioms and such for every language out there. I wouldn't have even close to the skills for even just human languages, let alone also trying to deal with multiple 'alien' languages. And only doing it when we want to try and hide key information smacks of GM against the players. Usually it isn't worth it, doesn't add fun and doesn't even add realism unless we have the time and skills to apply it consistently across the board. So I would almost always let these spells work to provide proper translations equivalent of what a fluent speaker of the language would understand.
But they do. That's what Comprehend Languages is telling you. That it only conveys the literal meaning
As an almost perfect example of what I'm talking about, the description of Comprehend Language is itself unclear
"You can understand the spoken words ... merely its literal meaning."Those two bits actually contradict themselves. To understand words is NOT the same as to understand their literal meaning. Context matters. Idioms matter.
Obviously, its up to you how you run things in your games. But is THIS really the area where you want to focus your attention in a game like Pathfinder? It certainly isn't for me. As a GM, I present information that I WANT the characters and/or players to know. I'm HAPPY to quickly and easily eliminate the language barrier as it is just NOT fun.
I'm not saying the way you run it is wrong, but at least on the surface value of the rules you only get "literal meanings" and not context. I agree that running it that way means that it can be difficult to keep the flow of a game going, but it can also create a interesting plot point as characters must find someone who speaks the language or can help them figure out the true meaning of text/words.
Exactly! But if this is such a common phrase that it literally in the minds of Chinese speakers (which language, btw?) it means 'you can do it' and they don't think of the literal meanings of the composite words, then isn't the meaning of the phrase 'you can do it', rather than 'to fill with gasoline'?
A great example I can think of is the Chinese jia you (加油). The literal meaning is "add fuel" or more specifically to "fill a car with gasoline". But the general usage of the phrase is actually encouragement, meaning something along the lines of "You can do it!".
Chinese means Mandarin, the official language of China. I recognize that there are many dialects, but when people say Chinese and don't specify a dialect they're talking about Mandarin. Even if I meant Cantonese, I would say that and not "Chinese". That said, you can still use the phrase for it's literally meaning and not the arguably more common usage now. As to philosophical question about the true meaning of words/phrases....it's philosophical. To me it's not worth questioning here because it doesn't further anything. The character 加 means to add something (roughly) and the character 油 means oil. Together those characters have taken on a different meaning from the literal.
Much like "What's up?" isn't a question about what is physical above you in space, but a question about what you're up to/if anything interesting has happened recently.
Language is tricky.
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I know. I speak more than one language and have a smattering of a couple more. I have studied philology and etymology and semantics, that's why I made this thread.
I apologize. I had misinterpreted your reason for starting this thread in the first place.
Personally, I think that this is an area where you either
1) Totally arm wave it (as is done by just about everybody in my experience). The translations are perfect, almost as if the Elven/whatever was translated from English :-)
2) Come up with some simple mechanics (eg, even with Comprehend Languages you need to make a linguistics check)
3) Try and imitate reality. Which is going to take a HUGE amount of work and you're going to end up with a very complicated sub system which will probably be of little to no interest to anybody but a very select few.
I fall firmly into choosing option 1. For me, its just not an interesting part of the game to add detail to. And, it IS a game.
I usually fall into the 1st camp, but will employ the 2nd camp if it's a particularly important plot point that can provide for some interest role play bits if the party needs to find an interpreter/historian/context.
But only if I feel like it adds something to the game.
Add additional layers of complexity to find out that on the note the phrase that was translated as "What's up?" wasn't some esoteric question about what was above the writer, or a philosophical discussion on the nature of direction, but the writer asking the intended recipient how they are. That doesn't add anything to the game.
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I think with the spells you can understand the languages like a native.
But you can know that a native with not knowledges could know.
You can know things like Munchen means Munich. But you maybe dont know its a city just a name. (Knowledge geography)
You can know a local sentence meaning, but not where is the origin (knowledge history)
You can read a riddle, but the spell dont solve it