What exactly is a D&D Warlock?

[Klaus]

What you (english speakers) understand on both cases? Here is what I think (again, on the D&D world):
- Slayer, someone that kill with violence and gore, I think about sword cutting heads and bodies in half, maces breaking skulls etc.
My current choice is 'Matador' (simply "killer"), it works, but I don't think it conveys the whole meaning. Here is my other option: Massacrador (someone who kill cruelly, causes massacre, butcher)

Slayer could also be "exterminador" (terminator) or "aniquilador" (annihilator). Massacrador is a very unwieldy word, and carries a more negative connotation than simply "slayer".

Compare "dragonslayer" as "exterminador de dragões" or "aniquilador de dragões", or "Buffy, aniquiladora de vampiros".

Smite, for me, would be better as "castigar". It carries a "correctional" connotation that is implied in the English word's religious meaning.

 

[zhouluyi]

"exterminador/aniquilador" I think that is as negative as "massacrador" but it doesn't give the idea of gore or physical damage (as in a melee attack), in essence it just means someone that get rids of some pest, being it with poison, magic, extraplanar teleportation, etc. Remember the normally we call a dragon slayer, "matador de dragões". I don't think "matador" is wrong here, is just too simple, that why I hinted at Massacrador, other option in the same line would be "devatador" (devastator). I trying to avoid words that have direct translations and might appear somewhere else (like exterminator, anihilator, destructor, etc).

About the Smite, following the same line of 'castigar' (which I don't particulary like), what do you think of 'flagelar' (scourge, chastise, flagelatte)? The problem here is the possible confusion between the act of scourging and the instrument scourge (which can be translated as 'açoite'). Examples: flagelar o mal, flagelar morto-vivo, flagelo sagrado, flagelo penetrante.

EDIT: Other synonyms for flagelo/castigo that might work: tormentar/tormento and afligir/aflição.

 

[Klaus]

"exterminador/aniquilador" I think that is as negative as "massacrador" but it doesn't give the idea of gore or physical damage (as in a melee attack), in essence it just means someone that get rids of some pest, being it with poison, magic, extraplanar teleportation, etc. Remember the normally we call a dragon slayer, "matador de dragões". I don't think "matador" is wrong here, is just too simple, that why I hinted at Massacrador, other option in the same line would be "devatador" (devastator). I trying to avoid words that have direct translations and might appear somewhere else (like exterminator, anihilator, destructor, etc).

About the Smite, following the same line of 'castigar' (which I don't particulary like), what do you think of 'flagelar' (scourge, chastise, flagelatte)? The problem here is the possible confusion between the act of scourging and the instrument scourge (which can be translated as 'açoite'). Examples: flagelar o mal, flagelar morto-vivo, flagelo sagrado, flagelo penetrante.

EDIT: Other synonyms for flagelo/castigo that might work: tormentar/tormento and afligir/aflição.

I'm more partial to Aniquilador than massacrador, actually. In fact, I prefer matador to massacrador.

Flagelo has a negative connotation, being used for plagues and diseases. Same for tormento and aflição. I prefer castigar. The word has to be neutral enough to allow for the Good aspect of it.

 

[zhouluyi]

[MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION], thank very much for you input. I agree with you on both 'matador' and 'castigar'. 'Matador' was my first choice, but I thought some external input would be helpful. 'Castigar' was a hard one, it too was my first choice, until I see the power Divine Castigation and decided to reserve 'castigo' to it, looking at it now, it could just as easily use 'Repreensão Divina' or 'Reprimenda Divina'.

BTW: Since you are a designer at WotC and live in Brazil, can you tell me something? How close do the Devir translators work with WotC designers? I seriously disapprove many translations choices made my them. Lots of things really got totally lost in translation.

 

[Klaus]

[MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION], thank very much for you input. I agree with you on both 'matador' and 'castigar'. 'Matador' was my first choice, but I thought some external input would be helpful. 'Castigar' was a hard one, it too was my first choice, until I see the power Divine Castigation and decided to reserve 'castigo' to it, looking at it now, it could just as easily use 'Repreensão Divina' or 'Reprimenda Divina'.

BTW: Since you are a designer at WotC and live in Brazil, can you tell me something? How close do the Devir translators work with WotC designers? I seriously disapprove many translations choices made my them. Lots of things really got totally lost in translation.

First, I'm a designer *for* WotC (as in "freelancer").

Second, I don't know how much influence WotC has on the translation of terms, or if these are all up to Devir. I agree with you that some of the translations are a bit... iffy. There are some they get very right, like Draconato, but others leave me scratching my head.

But then again, I'm all for adopting foreign terms. For instance, "elfo" was an imported term. In Portugal, "elf" is usually translated as "duende", to the point where Tanis Half-Elven was "Tanis Semiduende" in the Portuguese edition of the Dragonlance Chronicles. So I prefer to import terms whenever possible, and maybe even applying accents to them (like, say, "góblin"). I think that enriches the language.

 

[zhouluyi]

The following is in portuguese because it is directed at Klaus:
Dois brasileiros trocando mensagens em inglês sobre tradução é o cúmulo, não? rs. Então como eu disse antes, eu gosto de termos estrangeiros ou nomes próprios (tanto que não traduzi Berserker, Fallcrest, Troll, Kobold, etc). Só traduzo nomes próprios em casos muito importantes (como nomes de planos, Selvagem Feérico, Desolado Sombrio, Escuro Profundo, Mar Astral, Nove Infernos, etc).

No caso de nomes sem tradução direta, eu costumo manter no original, só evito se tiver problemas de pronúncia, ex: Warlock eu já vi pessoas chamando "varlôc". Berserker é meio chato de falar, mas mesmo que a pessoa fale errado, ainda fica parecido, seja falando berzerker, ber-ser-ker, etc. Skald é um exemplo que dá para manter no original, não muda nada na pronúncia e é nome próprio.

As raças eu fiquei tentado em traduzir todas pq tendo nomes em português é mais fácil fazer a associação do que é o que, e raças tem um papel importante durante o jogo, diferente das classes e builds que nem precisam ser mencionadas (você não precisa saber que um NPC é um druida, mas você consegue ver que ele é um elfo). Minha lista atualmente está assim: anão, elfo, eladrin, pequenino, humano, draconato, drow, meio-orc, meio-elfo, diabolizado, ressurgido, tenebroso e vryloka.

O revenant é derivado do francês revenir, mas em português nós temos o verbo revenir que vêm do mesmo lugar, possibilitando o uso de "revenido". O problema é que aqui revenir quer dizer "dar têmpera ao aço". Pesquisei no Houaiss agora a pouco e a achei na etimologia o sentido 'trazer de volta', mas este foi o único dicionário que tinha esta acepção, e o primeiro termo ainda era relacionado à metalurgia. Então usando revenido nó teríamos uma palavra que na nossa língua não quer dizer nada ou que poderia gerar confusão (será que essa raça fica mais resistente como se tivesse sofrido têmpera?). Por isso tendo para o uso de "ressurgido", é claro, direto, descreve perfeitamente a raça e é usado em linguagem corrente (cristãos dizem que jesus ressurgiu dos mortos). Outra opção seria ressurgente, mas isso implicaria em alguém que vive retornando dos mortos, e não é bem assim.

Quando tiver a oportunidade de comprar o Heroes of the Feywild aí vou pensar na tradução para as raças dele, mas Hamadríade e Sátiro já existem, então está fácil, resta a Pixie, que embora seja pronunciada corretamente me português fica meia perdida como o único termo que não é nome próprio e que não foi traduzido. Pensei em usar Fadinha, e deixar Fada reservado para Fairy.

BTW: Não tive a chance de falar antes, mas suas ilustrações são muito legais, parabéns.

 

[Klaus]

In Portuguese:

[sblock]
Eu não vejo problemas em alguém pronuciar "warlock" como "varlôc". Acho que isso é até comum entre pessoas de países eslavos em que o "w" tem so de "v".

Quanto ao Shadowfell, eu uso Penumbra como uma contração de "Penosa Umbra" (porque "fell" é algo penoso, terrível). Feywild eu mantenho como Feéria, utilizando o nome Faerie que é até mencionado em FR (eu evito nomes duplos o máximo possível).

Quanto ao revenant, acho que niguém vai associar "revenido" a metalurgia, e é até uma boa chance de recuperar o termo. Caso contrário, eu manteria até a grafia em francês "révenant" (assim como prefiro "rapiére" a "rapieira").

Pixie eu manteria assim. E manteria o nome de outras raças feéricas, como sprites, brownies, buckawns e leprechauns. A menos que o texto fale de "fairy", eu evitaria o termo "fada", dando preferência a "duende". É um termo em português sem equivalente imediato em inglês.

[/sblock]

Back to your regularly schedule thread! I don't have a problem discussing stuff in English with another Brazilian. It's a courtesy to the other members of the board.

 

[zhouluyi]

[MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION], I just made my last in portuguese because I was discussing pronunciation and meanings specific to portuguese. Saying all that in english would be exaustive and counter-productive since non-speaker of portuguese wouldn't "get it".

About the mispronunciations, I don't know how it is in Rio, but here, when I go to a RPG store with people playing (mostly card games) and I hear terms like "rúgui" (rogue), "varlôk" (warlock), "raidi" (raid), "ríla" (heal as a verb, OMFG), and the like I think it would be better to be deaf. I like new words, I don't have any problem with "estrangeirismos" (importing words), but I like my language to be spoken correctly, and I like to extend the courtesy to other languages. Sometimes I have to ask a person to literally spell the word so I can understand what the they are talking about...

That's why I will try to avoid hard to pronounce words like the plague.

I like double names, if they are needed, why not use them? English can easily join words to construct new words, german does that too, but the romanic languages are not good at it. Feywild, is made of too words, they just happen to be together. If you would like to know, this is the discussion I had before I decided on my translation for the 3 main realms, and the reasons I had for it.

After the end of this discussion, I decided to remove the hyphen, capitalize both words (keeping them separated), and invert the order of them (they both work as noun and adjective so I can do that). The reason for those changes is merely aesthetics, after some texts and seeing other combinations (like Feydark = Escuro Feérico) that I translated they just looked better that way. Also, I like to think that the order of the words doesn't matter (Selvagem Feérico works the same way as Feérico Selvagem).

PS: I agree with you on keeping the umbrela of fairy related races untranslated, they would never have a good counterpart in portuguese and most of the can be pronounce without many problems: pixie, sprite (thanks to the soda), gnome, goblin, kobold, troll, etc. Fairy is a bit hard to translated as duende, I made a pool some days ago (when I saw some news about the Heroes of Feywild) to many players (mostly child between 10 and 15) what they think when they heard of a 'Duende', all of them thought about garden dwarfs with a few of the citing smurfs....

EDIT: Just checking some dictionaries now, actually sprite is usually translated as Duende...

 

[Klaus]

I've heard some ear-splitting mispronounciations in my time. But the folks I play with (when I play... it's so rare these days) are all old hands and tend to pronounce stuff correctly.

As for sprite, it comes from the French "esprit" and from the Latin that gave us "espírito", and technically can be used for elves and goblins. Most of these fairy-folk names are interchangeable, except when it comes to RPGs.

And btw: how awesome is dictionary.com ? It's a shame we don't have a free resource like that for Portuguese!

 

[zhouluyi]

Just made a pool with my imediate players (my daughter and my nephew, both 10) and they decided for keeping Tiefling and Halfling (although they really like diabolizado, they disliked pequenino). About Revenant/Ressurgido, there was a tie, but since I'm keeping Tiefling/Halfling, I will also keep Revenant.

What I use online (since it is faster than consulting books) is Aulete, Michaelis (for translations and portuguese definination), bab.la and linguee for translations, AudioEnglish, Dictionary and TheFreeDictionary for english definitions, also google translate. When I really need to look-up some difficult to translate word I use Houaiss (very good for synonyms), and many english dictionaries that I have at home.

BTW: Since you were involved with Heroes of Shadow, how would you translated Nethermancy? I thought about Inferomancia (infero- exists as a preffix), but I also considered Nedermancia (neder do happens as nederlando, mas its very rare, the more common is neerlando).