going east?

[Midnight_Carnival]

This is not meant as a political discussion.
I've just noticed a lot of people on the forum seem to come from eastern europe these days. Wesnoth is enjoyed by people around the world, but I was wondering if/how different cultures contributing could make the game more interesting.

completely abstract question: do you think Wesnoth 'translates' the same in Polish, Chinese and Arabic?

Comment: very glad that nobody tried to make the game more appealing to a certain culture or region but we find it all over the world.

[Xara]

Not in Chinese. Simply speaking, the poetic aspect is filtered out. The beauties of the words and sentences don't pass through.

European Languages and Chinese were developed in completely different circumstances, and each evolved to describe their own specific circumstances. It is often a surprising fact that we Chinese are better at English when talking about Western things than when about things in China. Because we lack the phrases, and it takes a way greater inventiveness for you to articulate yourself when you can hardly find any cliche to aid you.

As a result, when translating, we're often faced with an impossible demand to translate plainly, precisely and elegantly at the same time. So we have to give up something, in most cases the elegance. So the difference between Wesnoth writings and their Chinese translation is like the difference between Lingua Latina and "Contemporary Scientific Writing". Both are saying the same thing, but the latter has to introduce a redundancy of words to ensure that it doesn't drop information.

Thanks to the works of generations of translators, we developed a Chinese vocabulary for the classical high fantasy. So the Chinese words of Knights, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings can surely elicit a sense of coolness. But things become awkward when you Westerners try to create something on the shoulders of the old-school stuffs. We accepts a word literally meaning "Raging Warrior" as a specific denotion of Berserker. But then you invent Ulfserker . Oh man, how are we supposed to let our compatriots know that the name was created because "Ulf" means wolf as a variation of the bear meaning "Ber". Maybe we can call him "Wolf Warrior", but then the users would anticipate some Werewolf Warrior. In the end, the translator called him "Two-handed Axe Warrior". Similarly, we translate Drakes as "Dragon Man" and just called Chocobone "Skeleton Knight". And even Lich names' prefix "Mal-" give us troubles, making the phonetic translations cumbersome.

As for the contributions to the games, I would be really glad to see more Oriental themed factions. Currently there are two Japanese themed factions, Yokai and Emperor's Guards. But I really hope to see more. The problem is that it's too hard to find appropriates arts other than the European Themed ones and JRPG styled ones.

[GunChleoc]

We don't even have to look East to see how difficult translation can get. E.g. the Berserker/Ulfserker thing doesn't work in Scottish Gaelic either. Luckily, we have 2 different words for "rage" which I used to translate them both as "Rage dwarf"

[tekelili]

I have always thought English is a very cool language to give names: very short words and easy to make sustantives work as adjectives or verbs. I am Spanish, and in general all fantasy stuff translated from English to my language sounds embarrassing bad, artificial and long. I would even say English is also good for game guides, I always used English ones avoiding translations to my language because I found the concepts more precise explained.

I prefer my language over English for lot of things, but when "less is more" I find English superior.

[GunChleoc]

easy to make sustantives work as adjectives or verbs.

The most FAQ by localizers to developers while translating short strings: It is a noun or a verb?

[Aldarisvet]

If we in Russia cant translate, then just transliterate it.
There is common word 'berserker' in Russian, so we can easely understand that ulfserker is something like under-berserker.
But there is no word 'draug' in Russian, I cant find it even in vocablulary. So it was transliterated but without any sense for most users, except some fantasy readers.
'Revenant' was translated using russian word that means 'reborned'. This look strange for me.
Actually there are possibly more funny and stupid things in translation, but I myself playing all games only on English versions. But my son playing russian verison of Wesnoth so sometimes we cant understand each other when we talking about wesnoth units

[iceiceice]

But there is no word 'draug' in Russian, I cant find it even in vocablulary.

Actually I didn't even know it was a real word in English, I thought it was just some ominous sounding nonsense word. Maybe even like, a soldier tried to describe it before it killed him, but only managed to make this guttural sound :p

'Revenant' was translated using russian world that means 'reborned'. This look strange for me.

I guess that a Revenant is basically a ghost that haunts something? I agree that "reborn" doesn't sound totally appropriate.

This reminds me of a pretty funny Dota 2 cast I watched, where some caster had misread / got confused about "Razor, the Lightning Revenant" and basically thought it was "the Lightning Reverend."

[Velensk]

Draug are from Norse Legends. A kind of malevant undead sailor/warrior.

[Aldarisvet]

2 iceiceice

I deliberately and seriously examined russian versions of unit names, actually I did it first time, and I can say, they really looks strange from the point of russian who before played only english version.
Just one example.

Assassin were translated literally as 'murderer', whereas there is russian word assassin. Actually this word have arabian origins. For me there is much difference between common murderer and assassin.
Rogue translated as 'swindler'. There is really a problem to translate word 'rogue' to Russian.
Thief translated correctly.

So, if it is about russian translation, 'thief' advances to 'swindler' and then advances to 'murderer'.
This really looks weird, because cheating is obviosly less serious crime then thieving, and jumping from cheating to murdering is really a hard step.
I cant say that translators did bad work, cause there are problems that may be hard to solve, but for me is obvious that there could be more literary adaptation, instead of literally translation.

To say truth, we in Russia have such problems with all translated games. So there are two group of players - largest one that are eating [censored] from our domestic localizers, or others, old players, who play original games in English.

Also I really pissed off that Lancer translated in Russian as 'Uhlan'. Why not mounted pikeman or something like that?

[taptap]

When I was downloading the new version Brazil was listed as the country downloading the game most to my surprise.

Translation is hard. At least ulans were lancers, there is even precedence for renaming ulans into lancers etc. so it is certainly not the worst translation. Or is there sth. else making this especially bad in Russian?

[Aldarisvet]

When I was downloading the new version Brazil was listed as the country downloading the game most to my surprise.

Translation is hard. At least ulans were lancers, there is even precedence for renaming ulans into lancers etc. so it is certainly not the worst translation. Or is there sth. else making this especially bad in Russian?

First of all, I dont want to hurt someones feelings, because the work was done. But any work could be improved.
Yes, there are obvious arguments, why in russian you cant translate lancer to ulan.

Cause if you read russian wikipedia, you will find that ulan - "kind of lightly armed , the new European cavalry, armed with lances, sabres and pistols. External distinguishing attribute of their form was tall, rectangular headdress (Oulanka or Confederate)". It its an army unit not from medieval period, but from 19th century. In Russian culture the wold Ulan strictly associated with war versus Napoleon invasion. And it was (the war) praised in poetry of our greatest poets Pushkin and Lermontov.

So it is really strange when horseman advances either to medieval 'knight' or to modern 'ulan'.
So I could suggest that the tree for this unit would be
Mounted spearman (Конный копейщик) -> Mounted pikeman (Конный пикинер) || Knight (Рыцарь).

But the problem does not ends there because, there is other mounted unit line, and translators used words Dragoon and Hussar there (using word Hussar for high armoured 3rd level unit especially wrong). Which are too modern light units, and they too strictly associated with war agaisnt Napoleon.

I thought about a hour how to solve this line (during my road to work) and could suggest this:

Cavalryman (Кавалерист) -> Heavy Cavalryman ( Тяжелый Кавалерист) -> Сuirassier (Кирасир)

Сuirassier is really medieval unit, moreover, the sprite of unit looks like cuirassier, so I really wonder why In English version you use word 'dragoon'. Сuirassiers really existed at the same time as knights were, however, they have lasted much longer, till the modern period of dragoons and other. But in Russian this word would mean just the mounted unit in cuirass, without wrong associations.

[Aldarisvet]

You can read Russian poem Borodino by Lermontov here, translated to English

http://www.stihi.ru/2012/04/02/5110

Here is a fragment from it
________________________
Well there was a day! Through a smoke flying
Frenchmen goes moved, as a clouds,
And all on our redoubt.
The uhlans with the motley badges,
The dragoons with the horse tails,
All have flown before us,
All have visited here.
________________________

Any Russian should know this.

[GunChleoc]

The first thing I did when translating Wesnoth was to list all the unit names in a table and then do lots of research on Wikipedia. So, I had them all prepared as consistently as possible before I started the actual translation. Same thing for abilities, weapon types etc. It took me many hours to do this. English is really good at taking words from other languages and just using them, and this isn't as easy for other languages to do. Also, some of the fantasy names are based on local English mythology, which won't exist in other cultures.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Ok, Draug are undead sailor warriors, I suppose, but they are generally speaking "unforgiven dead" - those who died in a place where 'salvation' could not reach them (ie the sea) or those who's crimes or sins were so bad that they could not be forgiven and move on to whichever afterlife. I've read about how they came about as a result of the spread of Christianity, hence the Draug were the embodiment of the older Pagan beliefs and the fear/guilt of the old ways or the old gods returning.

I'd go for "cursed dead", "unforgiven dead", "walking damned" - perhpas those would translate?

In Russian, are Woses Leshii? I know that Leshii can be green men and may be more like spirits than flesh and blood (wood and sap?) beings, but in popular fiction I've encountered Leshi as "Ents" from Tolkein, so...?

Also, a revenant is a corpse reanimated by the dead person's soul, it can have all the memories and emotions of the living human but is cursed to live in a rotting or skeletal body - poor guy! Revenant can be used metaphorically in the sense of something everyone wanted to keep 'buried' which comes back - kind of like it died but won't go away and stinks the place up. (a number or threads on this very forum come to mind )

Xara: I'm not sure if I should be complementing you or the Chinese education system! I don't mean to seem patronising, I've studied applied linguistics and done my TEFL degree, I also had friends in university who studied Mandarin and know how totally differnt it is from English. For those of you who don't know, it is a tonal languange, meaning saying something in a different tone comepletely changes the meaning or something(?) Basically, my friends told me that if you hear a Chinese person telling you something and repeat it exactly, you usually hear that it is wrong and that you've said something else! Anyway, your english is so good that I would never have guessed that you were anything but a native speaker. A long way from the steriotypical "Engrish" westeners expect from the Chinese.
I'm not detracting from our Russian, Polish etc... friends who use really good english every day and don't get any recognition for it.

I also live in a country where both Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic (as well and hybrid!) languages/dialects are spoken.

Question: in your various respective cultures, is there something which roughly equates to western fantasy? I mean fiction based losely on traditional myths and folk-stories created purely for the sake of entertainment. I know that in Japan there definately is, we see a lot of it in anime Are there a whole lot of 'fantasy' creatures/races who could feature in Wesnoth mods or campaigns? I'm not against the western fantasy genre, I just works like cooking, make what your guests eat, as long as its tasty and intersting nobody cares where the spices came from.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Oh man, how are we supposed to let our compatriots know that the name was created because "Ulf" means wolf as a variation of the bear meaning "Ber". Maybe we can call him "Wolf Warrior", but then the users would anticipate some Werewolf Warrior. In the end, the translator called him "Two-handed Axe Warrior". Similarly, we translate Drakes as "Dragon Man" and just called Chocobone "Skeleton Knight". And even Lich names' prefix "Mal-" give us troubles, making the phonetic translations cumbersome.

There is common word 'berserker' in Russian, so we can easely understand that ulfserker is something like under-berserker.
But there is no word 'draug' in Russian, I cant find it even in vocablulary. So it was transliterated but without any sense for most users, except some fantasy readers.
'Revenant' was translated using russian world that means 'reborned'. This look strange for me.

And now, my two cents from the Italian translation (not an Eastern language, I know, but this demonstrates that every translation team faces more or less the same issues).
Until now, the Ghost line was translated as Fantasma -> Spettro Guardiano -> Spettro, which translated back becomes Ghost -> Warden Spectre -> Spectre. You can easily understand why it was a bad choice: it gave the impression that the L2 was more powerful than the L3.
The problem, here, is that in Italian we don't have many synonyms for "ghost". So, we checked how this issue was handled by other similar languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese) and found out that all of them translated the Wraith as "apparition". So, now "Spettro Guardiano" is known as "Apparizione" in Italian as well.