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

[seebs]

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?

 

[jodyjohnson]

When it says literal translation that is just saying that it won't fill you in on double entendres, innuendos, codes, or cant. Which is exactly what the second paragraph says.

Comprehend Languages would translate the plain meaning or intention so I believe it would handle metaphor (unlike Drax).

If you said, "What is the airspeed velocity of a coconut-laden swallow?" you would understand that it was about a bird carrying a coconut at a certain speed but utterly fail to grasp the reference because that would be a code.

"Let's go spank the monkey" would refer to beating Demogorgon in Out of the Abyss if that were the primary meaning, however, the listener might not see reason for the snickering.

I've only had 2 semesters of Chinese so I'm not aware of the 'no' issue. We didn't cover basic 'no' until the second week. 'No' has multiple usages in English, which usage are you referring to?

 

[rollingForInit]

I think it translates the text as close to literally as possible, without understanding of any cultural references or connotations. I'd rule that the characters wouldn't understand complex metaphors or idioms either.

So if a text says: "I am feeling under the weather", the character would read it as the writer feeling literally below the weather. Which wouldn't really make a lot of sense, but it is the literal translation.

If the text says: "Khaalindaan is a skinny Wizard", they might understand that Khaalindaan is thin, but miss out on "skinny" implying too thin.

 

[MarkB]

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?

So out of curiosity, I fired up Google Translate and converted the above to Chinese (Traditional) and back into English. This was the result:

Proficient in the language and the "text" means
Began to think: what is to understand the language to do if you do not know the literal meaning can be a direct expression of the language?

As an example of a real world, nothing can be said in Chinese, English, "not" the correct translation. You really can not call this. So imagine, the only one who speaks Chinese caster cast familiar language, and someone who speaks English to say "no" around them. Tell them how you say what you mean?​

I'd tend to imagine Comprehend Languages as delivering a translation on a similar level to that, maybe with better grammatical fidelity. The basic meaning is there, but a certain amount is lost in translation.

EDIT: Interesting note - the phrase "Comprehend Language" appeared three times in that text, and each appearance was given a different, yet valid, translation. Maybe Google Translate does a better job with context than the spell would.

 

[Saeviomagy]

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.

 

[crashtestdummy]

But the phrase is 'literal meaning', not 'meaning'. I think it would be DM judgement as to whether you got the cultural meaning for 'I'm under the weather' (not feel well) or the literal translation (I'm under a meteorological condition).

Personally, I'd go with the literal translation. If the spell description didn't include the word 'literal' I could go with it interpreting cultural references, but the word 'literal' to me means that it's not doing that. It's translating what is written/said without context.

And just to complicate things further, how would the spell handling something like the phrase 'ladykiller'? Is that someone who kills ladies, a lady who kills, or possibly something else?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

You think that's bad? Sometimes Bronze-Age characters cast the spell on a mysterious inscription and get:

We have broken the unbreakable bond, and what is left is a pestilent thing. Seeking to protect ourselves and our world, we have locked the pestilence away in this place until a hundred thousand years have passed. Know, O you who would open the vault before its time, that you would face a deadly peril, invisible to all eyes, and unlike anything you have ever known. Go hence, and leave this place untouched!

when the original text begins more like:

Our process of nuclear fission creates a dangerous byproduct in the form of radioactive waste...

 

[bid]

I would oppose literal to cultural. Idioms are part of the language but no footnote to explain that "7" actually means "many", that's an Arcana check or something.

Of course, "Temba, his arms wide" is untranslatable because it is purely cultural.

 

[Andor]

Translation is always tricky, and many things translate poorly.

But for a simple example: Latin has 6 temporal tenses, English has 5, Japanese has 2. Which means not only that when translating something time related from Latin to Japanese will details be lost, but also that when translating from Japanese to Latin the translator has to pick a more precise tense than actually exists in the original and will thus be adding details that aren't there, because they have no choice.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In a recent one-off adventure I DMed, the party played rulers of giants. Their armies fought a massive battle against a horde of dragons at a place of magical power I called a "Well of Creation." Chief Bern of the Hill Folk (the name they used for hill giants) was one of them. The giant population (as well as the dragons) took a major hit during that phase of their endless war. I decided (without their knowledge) that after the adventure ended Chief Bern did a lot to help the hill giants recover, maintained his good relationship with the other "Peoples" (the term the giants used for themselves--since they *were* the people in that age), and eventually died fighting some powerful dragon.

I had three of the same players participate in my next one-off adventure, set about 60k to 80k years afterwards. They found a giant (in both senses) tomb inscription, written in an old dialect. While they didn't use comprehend languages the one who knew giant found the ancient dialect difficult. This is the best they could do with the translation (?_? indicate words they were particularly uncertain about):

HERE ENSHRINED THE REMAINS OF BERN, LEADER THE HILL ?KIN?, HE ONE FIGHTING THE WYRMS AT ?SPRING-MAKING?, HE ONE REPLENISHED THE MOUNDS, HE ONE FELL AGAINST ?THE FANGED ONE?, FRIEND OF ALL MANKIND, HATED BY ?FEAR-WINGED?