Non-English speakers: what language do you game in?

Piratecat · Jan 20, 2002

We have a ton of Scandinavians here on the boards, along with a good number of other Europeans, French-Canadians, South Americans, and Asians. (No Africans yet that I know of.) When reading in another post that Bondetamp plays "Adventure!", I started to wonder... when you're fluent in multiple languages and the game rules are in English, how many people actually play in English? And how many people (the majority, I suspect) play in their own language?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Berandor · Jan 20, 2002

We play in German; but as most rules and other names (Gods, etc.) aren't translated yet, we find it easier to say "The Overlord" instead of always translating it into some equivalent word.

Berandor

Frostmarrow · Jan 20, 2002

Naturally we play in Swedish. However, we use a sort of Swenglish language when it comes to the game terms. You know the code one uses when trying to accomplish something in the game. "I've got four ranks of jump and a speed of 40'" would turn into something pretty horrible in Swedish. It works, though.

We discussed this earlier and one French fellow said they sometimes translated names and sometimes not. Waterdeep would become L'Eauprofonde and Shadowdale would become Val D'Ombre. Very pretty in my opinion. However, in Sweden we never translate names (for they are names).

Russian Bear · Jan 20, 2002

We gamed in a really mad mix of Russian and DnD

Now our DM started to fight with metagaming and most DnD words are metagame so now we game in more Russian than mix

but anyway we can't find correct words for most spells.

The biggest problem for me as a DM is a translation of boxed text because I have to parafrase it and I'm not good at it.

The Cardinal · Jan 20, 2002

Berandor said:
We play in German; but as most rules and other names (Gods, etc.) aren't translated yet, we find it easier to say "The Overlord" instead of always translating it into some equivalent word.

Berandor

ditto

Frostmarrow · Jan 20, 2002

Russian Bear said:
The biggest problem for me as a DM is a translation of boxed text because I have to parafrase it and I'm not good at it.

My friends read those boxes aloud in English. I usually paraphrase. It works fine although "false-friends" are a hassle, often-times. For example the word "carve" can be used in Swedish but only when something is very amateurishly "carved". This can get silly.

Holy Bovine · Jan 20, 2002

Well my main language is English - so not only shouldn't I vote - I most definately shouldn't be posting too! I'm mean what could I possibly add to this discussion? What a complete moron for posting such a meaningless, purile piece of drivel. I should be banned for this

PS - Please, Please, PLEASE PLEASE don't Ban me! I'll be a good cow from now on! I promise!!

Storminator · Jan 20, 2002

One of my Gms is Austrian, and in one session he had a friend from home over. So most of the party were playing in English, and Harry and Christian were playing in German (Harry barely speaks any English), and trying to figure out what we were REALLY doing was quite fun.

We had a scene were misunderstandings between the characters cause a bar fight, and of course the players were having parallel misunderstandings...

And once Christian explained something to Harry and then turned to the rest of us and kept on speaking German...

PS

Dream · Jan 20, 2002

About 80% of the vocabulary we use is Spanish but some words shouldn´t be translated into Spanish (or at least not badly translated) ,so we use Spanish words,English words and many Spanglish words which are used by most people here.
For instance a Fireball is a Firebola (bola=ball,balloon)
,charmear (we just added the -ar ending which is very common among Spanish verbs) , Rogue=Rogue(the official translation means literally mischievous , Lady Pain (the translation makes it sound like and old town famous Virgin , Esnikear (= to make an Sneak Attack on Someone) and many more....

Viking Bastard · Jan 20, 2002

I speak Icelanglish when gaming.

"Þá fór Vecna og threw the spear í Gruumsh sem screamed 'Andskotinn!' "

It's a funny mix of Icelandic and English, no non-gamers understand us, which suits us fine.

Non-English speakers: what language do you game in?

Do you game in English, even though it's not your primary language?

We game in our normal language, translating the rules.

We game in a mixture of English and our normal language.

We game in English all the time, even though it isn't our primary tongue.

English is my main language, so I shouldn't even be answering this poll!

Piratecat

Sesquipedalian

Berandor

lunatic

Frostmarrow

First Post

Russian Bear

First Post

The Cardinal

First Post

Frostmarrow

First Post

Holy Bovine

First Post

Storminator

First Post

Dream

First Post

Attachments

Viking Bastard

Adventurer

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