[native english] Translations - Fantasy Language

[Chacal]

I use english words in RPG because I usually don't wait for the translations. I don't find that particularly cool, though.
It can be a little bit difficult for some of my players so I progressively try to switch to french. (Having them buy me the DMG in french helped, too )

For some reason, I cannot bring myself to use some of the french words (tyranneuil, roublard and ensorceleur come to mind)


Chacal

 

[Darkness]

Drow instead of Dark Elf. Of course then you get in the whole Drow = cow or Drow= row.

I like this pronunciation:

Drow is pronounced "drih-st clohn munch-kin".

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, that's definitely how it's used in contemporary English. In earlier stages of the language, there wasn't a gender-based warlock/witch dichotomy, but it's clearly established now. From time to time, neo-Pagans will assert something to the contrary (and maybe spell it "warlocke" or something), but one coven in Minnesota doesn't trump a half billion native speakers.

Of course, depending on the time period your looking at, there's no difference between any of the words used to describe "someone who uses (black, Satanic) magic" with the exception of gender anyway. Wizard, sorcerer/sorceress, warlock, witch; they were all synonomous.

Just to make a slightly amusing point about neologisms, I should add that in Old English, the male/female witch dichotomy was expressed by wicca (m) and wicce (f), pronounced roughly "wicka" and "witcheh." The "weak" declension in OE has "-a" for masculine and "-e" for feminine, so if you take the root "wicc-" and stick the feminine inflection on it, the sound of the preceding consonant is mutated from "k" to "ch". There are other similar M/F pairs in OE, bicca and bicce for example, and you can probably guess the modern equivalent of the latter.

So you should pull a Tolkien manuever, pretend the male form of that word didn't go out of common usage, triangulate what it would be spelled/pronounced like today if it still existed and call your magic user class something like wick?

 

[tarchon]

So you should pull a Tolkien manuever, pretend the male form of that word didn't go out of common usage, triangulate what it would be spelled/pronounced like today if it still existed and call your magic user class something like wick?

The wick isn't half as scary as his girlfriend the warlich.

 

[Thanee]

BTW, the question actually came up in WoW (I have the UK version and for the life of me do not want the german one), but I think it relates to D&D equally well.

Bye
Thanee

 

[fusangite]

I'm glad modern English sounds magical and mysterious to someone. It certainly doesn't sound that way to me. As for words favoured by D&D authors, they're all over the map. Some sound mysterious. Some sound archaic. Some sound silly.

There are, however, some advantages to the English language as a gaming language. Thanks, largely, to the continuing popularity of Shakespeare's plays and the King James version of the Bible, early modern English sounds cool and archaic to people but, at the same time, because of the currency of these two sets of works, people remain sufficiently conversant with the English of 500 years ago to be able to understand it.

I'm guessing that because of the Koran, Arabic is probably an even better language for people being able to work in an archaic and holy-sounding version of their language. But I just don't know enough about most European languages to discern whether people's ability to speak a half milennium old version and fairly different sounding version of their language is universal or fairly unique to English.

 

[shadow]

Actually, in English warlock is the masculine form of witch, believe it or not.

In modern English warlock has come to mean a male witch or sorcerer. However, interestingly, Warlock comes from an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) word meaning "oath-breaker". (wær meaning "oath" or "covenant" +loga meaning "liar".)

 

[tarchon]

BTW, the question actually came up in WoW (I have the UK version and for the life of me do not want the german one), but I think it relates to D&D equally well.

I had a "night elf" character during the WoW beta (I live like 1/2 mile from Blizzard's codeshop) who was called "Rimeswitbow" - it might be difficult to translate the silliness of that.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

A few English words are cool (like "dweomer") and some others are used out of habit (because the translations were, to say it politely, really not good),

I'd say the same for the German stuff.

English words always sounds silly.

Especially because using them does not make you sound like an erudite using terms of old lore, but like a financial journalist trying to cover up the fact he has no idea what he's speaking about, so he's just stitching marketing buzzwords together to look in the know.

In that regard, I am a bit of a paradox: In day-to-day life, I hate it when people use English words even when a perfectly good German word for it is available, just to sound cool, or when the Ads use English words instead of German as the proverbial gold paint for the wooden crown.

Even when it comes to computers, I try to use the German works when they're at least half-decent, even though that whole sector is dominated by English.

I don't do that because I hate english - it's quite the opposite, I like the language. But either you should speak one language or the other, not mix them up.

When it comes to D&D, though, I use a lot of english words instead of the translations. One reason is that I have a profound dislike of the company who until recently translated D&D stuff. They did a lousy job, and kept people waiting for ages. So instead of finding my own translations - and confusing people who expect to be talking about a "Talent", I say the english word instead (Feat in that case). I do limit this to the words I really don't like in the translation - I don't say Fighter, or Fireball, or Wizard, I say Kämpfer, Feuerball and Magier.

Of course, the fact that I don't own a single German rulebook for d20 (When it comes to RPG-Stuff, I only have the Toreador Clanbook in German), since I'm far too impatient to wait for them to translate the stuff (if they translate it) means that often I don't ever see the translation. When you read about a "Feat" every other sentence, the word sticks.



One of my pet peeves is the translation for lich. I know that lich is in fact an English word and nothing they made up for D&D or anything. But it's a really old word AFAIK, and I doubt that many non-D&D-players know the word, and almost noone uses it for a dead body. The German translation, "Leichnam", on the other hand, is still used along with "Leiche". So whenever a DM speaks of a Leichnam being in the chamber, my first reaction is not to flee or roll initiative (depending on level), but instead I wonder who killed the poor guy.

 

[Qlippoth]

"It wasn't just lady witches--there was men-witches too!"
"Warlocks."
"It's true, I tell you!"