Preevyet, Russian Bear, please read!

Pale · Jan 21, 2002

Zdrasvietye Rusky Med'ved! Kak vie choostvoetye sebya sevodnya? Ya izoochal roosky yazik kogda ya sloozhil v Army sem let nazad. Saychas moy roosky ochen' plokho.

And forgive the use of american characters, but we are limited by our keyboards *sigh*

Nice to see that there are Russians playing D&D. I do have a question for you: Are most of the moster names translated or are they just transliterated into Russian? When I was studying your language in the Army, I attempted to try translating some of the basics of D&D into Russian and had a very hard time coming up with equivalent monsters for Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Orcs, Ogres, etc... they all seemed to translate to the same words

Did they simply solve this by giving you the american names using Russian characters? Or are you learning from English texts with no translations? Thanks for your time.

Pale · Jan 21, 2002

Just a wee smidge of a bump.

Left-handed Hummingbird · Jan 21, 2002

menja zavud Left-handed Hummingbird. ja eto malo ... bird.

Okay, my russian is rather rusty. I admit.

Power_Munchkin · Jan 22, 2002

Being russian, I thought I could answer a few of these...

Are most of the moster names translated or are they just transliterated into Russian? When I was studying your language in the Army, I attempted to try translating some of the basics of D&D into Russian and had a very hard time coming up with equivalent monsters for Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Orcs, Ogres, etc... they all seemed to translate to the same words

Since these monsters don't exist in russian folklore, they don't have a "russian" name.

Did they simply solve this by giving you the american names using Russian characters?

Yup.

In fact a lot of other D&D terminology is simply converted into russian using russian characters. Sometimes this leads to rather comical situations like...

During one russian LARP there was this fellow running Lord Soth. At one point in the game he was approached by a very pretty female player who asked him if it were true that he could kill PCs with just one word.

"Lord Soth" replied that that was true.

The girl then asked him what was the "killer" word.

"Lord Soth" leaned in real close to her and with a smile on his face he murmored "DIE".

The girl turned bright red and slapped him across the face. She then stomped off into the woods, knocking aside a few of Lord Soth's undead minions along the way... It was then that the Soth realized that she didn't understand English...

Explanation: The word "die" in russian means "give me"... as in "give me some"...

Russian Bear · Jan 22, 2002

arg!

( all I wrote is gone! damn!

I hate this F^$$ing dialup

Power_Munchkin · Jan 22, 2002

Dude!

You live in St. Petersburg? Wow... I used to live there... About ten years ago...

Ploshyad' Mujestva, Viborski Rayon...

Pale · Jan 23, 2002

Thanks for the answers Power Munchkin and sorry about that post-loss Russian Bear.

Die.... heh-heh I had no clue that's slang for "gimme some lovin'" in Russian, that is truly funny.

You russians out there may appreciate this one. When I was studying russian at the Defense Language Institute in beautiful Monterey CA (I would suggest giving that place a visit if you can ever afford it, large russian community) we had a teacher with a vanity plate on his car that read: PYCCKU. I always thought that was rather ingenious of him.

LHHummingbird - bird = Ptits or Ptitsa, IIRC