Buying RPG books in other languages?

[Driddle]

I'm interested in buying a French version of the standard D&D game books as a learning aid to picking up a second language (soon to be studied formally in college classes). But where do you buy such a book? And how can you be sure you're getting what you want when you can't read the language yet to confirm the order?

 

[Turanil]

Amazon.fr has no more D&D 3.0 in french available. Maybe it's still available in the LGS, but it would still be very expensive: at least 40$ + 10$ of shipping for the PHB. Do you still want to give it a try?

Alternately, you may get a look on ebay.fr and get one used for much cheaper (but still with a 10$ shipping cost).

 

[Gez]

I'm interested in buying a French version of the standard D&D game books as a learning aid to picking up a second language (soon to be studied formally in college classes). But where do you buy such a book? And how can you be sure you're getting what you want when you can't read the language yet to confirm the order?

If you're in the USA, order them from a Canadian shop (Le Valet is rather famous, for example). That way you won't have oversea shipping.

Although personally, I'd rather use some French comics as a learning aid. It'll avoid you some lousy bad translations that abound in the D&D books. (For a start, opportunité does not mean opportunity... The translators tend to look for the closest-looking word, and do not bother with the actual meaning.)

I can list those that I think are the best, if you want.

 

[Shemeska]

I've actually been sorely tempted to learn German just so I can read some of the Shadowrun sourcebooks and modules released in Germany, in German, but not here in the states in english.

As it is, broken spanish and once fluent russian isn't doing me much good.

 

[Guillaume]

If you're in the USA, order them from a Canadian shop (Le Valet is rather famous, for example). That way you won't have oversea shipping.

The shop that Gez mentionned is Le Valet d'Coeur, one (if not the best) FLGS in Montreal. You will find their home page at this address : www.levalet.com.

To order the three core rule books, you can do so online by following these steps :

1. Go to the the French D&D section.
2. Select the books you want to order. Here are the translation of the titles with the catalog numbers so you can understand what you are ordering :

• DF/17524 Manuel des joueurs version 3.5 = Player's Handbook 3.5 edition
• DF/17752 Guide du Maître version 3.5 = Dungeon Master Guide 3.5 edition
• DF/Manuel des monstres version 3.5 = Monster Manuel 3.5 edition.

1. Click on the cash register (À la caisse) in the upper left corner. Then under the title, you should find a link to get the order form in English.

If you live in the US, you can also order by phone (they have English speaking clerks) by calling :
1-888-499-5389 (Canada & US only).

To see their opening hours and other telephone numbers.



Their competitor in Montreal, la Librairie Donjon, used to have an online store at www.cyberdungeon.com. Unfortunately, they are closing down their online operations to concentrate on their FLGS business.

You can also try the website of la boutique L'Imaginaire in Québec City. For some reason tonight, however, their site was incredibly slow. I wasn't able to get you the links to the D&D books.


Remember that all prices are in Canadian Dollar, so that comes up to about : 1 $CDN = 0.77 $US.


I would like to mention that the original translations (3.0) were done in house by WoTC France, IIRC. Since then, Spellbooks, which is owned by Asmodee, the French gaming publisher has been doing the translation work.

They have also translated the SRD (or DRS in French for Document de référence du système). It is available for free on their website. The DRS is divided into four zipped files. If you fuse the four zipped files, you will get the same file structure as the WoTC SRD.

Personnages, will get you everything relating to caracter creation.
Aventure, will get you rules of combat and adventuring.
Magie, is everything about magic and spells.
Monstres, is everything about monsters.

About Gez's comment on the translation, it is true that some of the terminology chosen is wonky sometimes. However, it's not as if it is using it's own syntax and grammar and most of the wording is appropriate. It is mostly with technical terms that it can get weird. Keeping that in mind, if this helps you learn our language, great !

Good luck,

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Beside a single series of FR novels (the Dark Elf Trilogy) and one or two games (Baldur's Gate), all my D&D material is English rather than German, for the German tranlations take forever to be released and are rather crappy (and a lof of stuff never gets a German version). Until recently, I didn't buy the stuff out of principle, because I really hated the company who was responsible for the translations, but luckily they got the boot, and the new German translators are the same who also translate World of Darkness material, and hopefully they make a better job. So now I don't buy the stuff, but only because I'm such an impatient person.

Other than that, I can advice you to watch movies in the language in question, and read books in that (since I read english novels, like FR stuff and Tolkien's works, my English has improved a lot. Not that I was bad at English in school before I started reading stuff, but now my English is far mor than it would be if I relied on my school knowledge alone). At first, you may need the dictionary a lot, but sooner or later, you will be able to guess the meaning of words by context.