Have you played D&D in a foreign language?

Trainz · Feb 12, 2004

I play in french, but use books in english and terms in english.

"Mon fighter viens de monter de niveau. Il monte sa Dex, alors son AC est rendu à 23. Pour son feat il va prendre improved init, car il attaque toujours en dernier avec sa sword."

Snapdragyn · Feb 12, 2004

We've had some difficulties with translating certain terms to Croatian (for example, there are no separate words for wizard and sorcerer in Croatian, both are covered by the word čarobnjak).

Perhaps coin a phrase like 'book-carobnjak' (sorry my keyboard lacks the proper c character) for wizard, & maybe 'blood-carobnjak' for sorcerer -- although that makes it sound a bit like a necromancer or something.

Perun · Feb 13, 2004

Snapdragyn said:
Perhaps coin a phrase like 'book-carobnjak' (sorry my keyboard lacks the proper c character) for wizard, & maybe 'blood-carobnjak' for sorcerer -- although that makes it sound a bit like a necromancer or something.

I reintroduced 'mage' (or mag) into the game. That seemed like the easiest solution. However, since the word 'wizard' is much more common than 'sorcerer' (in everyday use, anyway), people automatically translate wizard as 'carobnjak'. But, I had to twist it about a bit, because 'mag' (or mage) sort of implies a learned person, while carobnjak is a bit more neutral in that respect. So, 'mag' is now wizard, and sorcerer is 'carobnjak'.

OTOH, Croatian has a number of words for a witch (vjestica,striga, coprnica, and their male counterparts vjestac, strigun, coprnjak).

Sammael · Feb 13, 2004

What do you mean by "foreign language?"

I started playing during my stay in the U.S., so, naturally, our gaming sessions were in English. Once I returned to Serbia, I got a bunch of my friends hooked on RPGs, and we play on a regular basis. In Serbian, of course. As Perun mentioned, a number of terms are quite difficult to translate (try "saving throw," for example), and we generally keep them in their original form (as most of my players speak very good English).

SeRiAlExPeRiMeNtS · Feb 13, 2004

I´m Brazilian and we play in portugese, but we use the books and most of the game terms in english, some things are hard to translate (and the portugese version of the books are very badly translated..)

Gez · Feb 13, 2004

I never played D&D in a foreign language. Always in my mothertongue (French).

I could play in English in a PbP.

DanielSchenstrom · Feb 13, 2004

I started out with the Swedish translation of the basic D&D game and went on to the English AD&D 2 years later. I've tried to keep it all in swedish but sometimes english terms are used (most notably spell names), usually every term that was translated in the Basic and Expert sets use the swedish word and anything that came after use the english word.

retan · Feb 13, 2004

I have always played in norwegian (my native language) but with english or swedish books depending on which system we are playing. We tend to translate weapon and monster names into norwegian (at least when they have norwegian equivalents), but use many game terms from english (such as "hit points" or "feats").

Additionally, we have had to learn some of the imperial measurements (feet, inches, miles, pounds) in order to understand the distances and scales. However, I still do not use the weather system from the DMG when I DM, mainly because I have no idea how hot or cold "100 degrees Fahrenheit" (for instance) is.

-- retan