Foreign Language D&D Books?

[questing gm]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

Chinese is coming soon. We have a new company managing the translations.

Interesting! I wonder what will the translation look like.

[haakon1]

I have a friend who learned German by reading Lord of the Rings in German.

He ended up doing a PhD thesis in history of science about an early Modern German scientist, so I guess it worked!

Somehow, I could never convince him to play D&D, but maybe I'll try again someday.

[Jan van Leyden]

Originally Posted by Jhaelen

Well, it's a slightly different situation, but as someone who basically learned English by reading the AD&D (1st.ed.) rulebooks, I think they can be a good starting point. It was really a great motivation to learn the language!

Yes, the situation is very different as you were using an original, untranslated text, as exotic as it may have been. The vocabulary growth induced by perusing Old Gygaxian sources as teaching materials remains nay unsurpassed.

Originally Posted by Haakon1;

I have a friend who learned German by reading Lord of the Rings in German.

He ended up doing a PhD thesis in history of science about an early Modern German scientist, so I guess it worked!

Just browse some similar threads on these and other forums and you'll see lots of complaints about the quality of German translations of D&D. Your friend would have had some more problems with his professor if he'd used those as the foundation of his German expertise.