D&D 5E Comprehend Languages and "literal" meaning

[bid]

Translation is always tricky, and many things translate poorly.

Comprehend language does not use the word "translate" in its definition. The caster understands the meaning as well as a native speaker. The "lost in translation" bits occur when the caster tells the others what it means.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I, as the DM, would tell the players the literal meaning of the text, as though I understood both languages and was trying to translate it as accurately as possible.

In the case of a single word that doesn't have a direct translation, I would explain the most obvious interpretation.

Example: The priest falls to his knees screams "NOOO!!!!"
Comprehend Languages says: "It's a word that has no direct translation--he's expressing denial, frustration, anger. It's as though something just happened that he really didn't want to happen."

In the case of idioms, it really depends on what I'm going for. I'd either tell the players the idiom and let them try to figure out what it means, or just tell them what it means. I wouldn't try to mislead them by literally translating the idiom.

Example: "I'm feeling under the weather."
Comprehend Languages says: "He's feeling ill."

Example: An orc uses a colorful expression.
Comprehend Languages says: "He says he has to go 'disturb the mongoose,' whatever that means."

 

[crashtestdummy]

But how far do you take that? To allow the spell to do more than a literal translation implies it's a mind-reading spell because you can't get the 'literal meaning' if you don't know what the person intends to say, or what the original author of a document intended?

I'm happy with the spell giving an overall impression ('it appears to be text on the ancient art of calligraphy', 'he's expression regret that he has to eat you, but you know how these things are. When in Transylvannia...') but anything more precise than that implies the spell reads minds (possibly across time). How else can it translate idioms?

If a statement is ambiguous (and let's face, lots of statements are ambiguous -- look at how many arguments there are on the Internet because people have different interpretations of the same words), then how is the spell supposed to pick between them? If it's able to give the meaning, then it's close to telepathy...

Hmm...using Comprehend Languages on the PHB: wouldn't that solve lots of problems?

 

[Li Shenron]

Got to thinking: What does comprehend languages do if you don't know a language in which the literal meaning can be directly expressed?

As a real-world example, there's nothing you can say in Chinese that is a correct translation of the English "no". You can't really translate that. So imagine that a caster who speaks only Chinese casts Comprehend Languages, and someone who speaks English says "no" near them. What do you tell them the statement meant?

I don't think the spell "translates" into your own language, but rather lets you understand the meaning directly.

So that caster would precisely understand the English meaning of "no", even if there's no such thing in her own language.

 

[Saeviomagy]

But how far do you take that? To allow the spell to do more than a literal translation implies it's a mind-reading spell because you can't get the 'literal meaning' if you don't know what the person intends to say, or what the original author of a document intended?

I'm happy with the spell giving an overall impression ('it appears to be text on the ancient art of calligraphy', 'he's expression regret that he has to eat you, but you know how these things are. When in Transylvannia...') but anything more precise than that implies the spell reads minds (possibly across time). How else can it translate idioms?

If a statement is ambiguous (and let's face, lots of statements are ambiguous -- look at how many arguments there are on the Internet because people have different interpretations of the same words), then how is the spell supposed to pick between them? If it's able to give the meaning, then it's close to telepathy...

Telepathy is in the same school of magic and is only one level higher. So yes, it's close to telepathy, and reading minds, even across time, is within it's remit. This isn't a magical computer program that just listens to spoken words and looks up a translation. It's the same level as a spell which can take any man like creature and make them your friend, a spell that gives you a permanent companion and allows you to experience the world through their senses, and a spell that creates matter out of thin air.

I'd say it would translate tamarian, which would require each sentence to either be a cluster of vague concepts or extremely long descriptions of the myths being referred to.

 

[Minigiant]

If the elven mayor's daughter ran out to you scared, saying "Oh heavens. That vampire was the worst. When he came into the ballroom, I like literally died." in Elven.

You natural reaction should be to scream "DIE VAMPIRIC HELLSPAWN!!!" and stab her with a heart with a broken wooden spoon.

 

[rollingForInit]

Note that the spell doesn't say "literally translates each individual word". It says that you "understand the literal meaning of what you hear".

A literal translation of "I'm under the weather" might be "A meteorological phenomenon is above me", but that is not the literal meaning of the phrase. The literal meaning is "I feel bad".

So the answer to the original question is that you would get the appropriate mandarin version of no for the question that was asked/the place in the sentence that the no was used.

My own view of comprehend languages would be that the results are as if reported to you by an extremely professional human translator who is trying to keep the emotional content neutral, and is also speaking to you as if you are an idiot. If someone says "no" in an exaggerated sarcastic manner, it would get reported as "yes". If someone says "oh, duh" it gets reported as "yes". If someone says "you'd best be on your way", it gets reported as "go away or you will be harmed".

In short: I don't think that you're going to get any hilarious mistranslations out of this spell. If you intend to build a game on language, you'd be best off either removing the spell or rewriting it to give literal word meanings, along with changing a lot of the rest of the game to rebalance investment in social skills and the like.

I still think Comprehend Languages should have those kinds of barriers, because of the difference between it and Tongues. Tongues simply specifies that you understand any language that you hear. It doesn't bother with the whole "literal meaning". Why would Comprehend Languages have that extra "literal meaning" whereas Tongues does not?

 

[jodyjohnson]

It is fully within the dungeon master's purview to screw with the utility of spells.

Or google translated from English to Chinese to Spanish and back to English:
"It is totally screw range and utility spells Dungeon Master."

Which obviously means, as a wizard, both your ranged and utility spells should suck.

 

[Mercule]

Got to thinking: What does comprehend languages do if you don't know a language in which the literal meaning can be directly expressed?

As a real-world example, there's nothing you can say in Chinese that is a correct translation of the English "no". You can't really translate that. So imagine that a caster who speaks only Chinese casts Comprehend Languages, and someone who speaks English says "no" near them. What do you tell them the statement meant?

I was going to say that it gives you the basic inter-language dictionary meaning or, say, Google Translate.

Not having heard of the issue you mentioned (and being completely clueless in Chinese), I decided to use Bing Translate (because I can). It auto-detected "no" as Spanish and gave me a single character back. I noticed the auto-detect and set the input to English, which gave me a different, two character answer. Using Google Translate, both English and Spanish convert to the two-character answer. You can mock Bing all you want, but there has to be some rationale for such a simple translation. I'd love to know what it is. Translating back, the one character version translates to "do not", FWIW.

Anyway, my original thought stands, I'd think. Comprehend Languages is the D&D equivalent of a computer translator, probably at the level we currently possess. Subtle references and idioms will be missed, but the dictionary values will be there.

 

[MarkB]

If the elven mayor's daughter ran out to you scared, saying "Oh heavens. That vampire was the worst. When he came into the ballroom, I like literally died." in Elven.

You natural reaction should be to scream "DIE VAMPIRIC HELLSPAWN!!!" and stab her with a heart with a broken wooden spoon.

Well, yes. But I try to restrain myself and remember that not everybody takes the proper use of adverbs as seriously as I do.