Thoughts on translation

[AndrewGPaul]

Hey, first post!

Anyway; I've been looking through the various English-language documents online for this game, and I've noticed some interesting translation quirks; there's a few words that have been translated literally, rather than into an equivalent English term, and I was wondering what the reason was? Flavour, or just ease of translation? For example, the religious denomination of the Westerners and Saracens seems to most often be listed as Papist, Sunnite or Chiite, rather than a more conventional (Roman) Catholic, Sunni or Shi'ite. I've also seen "Sarrasin" used in English.

I'm not sure whether it bothers me or not, but it's just something I've noticed quite a lot.

Anyway, now I'm off to try to crib together a complete unit list for the Saracens and Westerners, before my first game on Saturday.

[Chrysalis]

I guess it's because those are technical religious semantics. I would never have known how to translate Chiite or Sunnite, but by looking in a good dictionnary, I think. As for Papist, my guess is that it has a particular meaning, because it's a word that's used that much in french.

[AndrewGPaul]

"Papist" could be seen as period flavour, along with "Musulman" instead of "Muslim". However, both terms are considered slightly derogatory in English (at least in the UK). Not that I'm suggesting any deliberate insult was intended; it's just that words can have unexpected connotations.

Having checked Wikipedia, in French and English, it appears that "Papism" does have a slightly different meaning, in both langauges, to "Roman Catholic".

Chrysalis, are you one of those who translated the rules?

[Corto]

It's actually a very good idea to have this thread for translation suggestions.

I agree that Sunni or Shi'ite should be used instead of the French versions in future documents.
Papist is quite logical when you put yourself in the mindset of the times (you were then with him or against him) and should probably be construed accordingly, but Roman Catholic would probably be better, being neutral.
On the other hand, I fail to see how Muslim would be derogatory in English (without making a very, very dubious statement).

[AndrewGPaul]

Ah, sorry, I was unclear. "Muslim" is the preferred term in English; other terms, of which "mussulman" is one, are apparently considered derogatory.

Another one that occurs to me is the Doppelsöldners being listed as "huguenots". I'm not sure if this is meant to refer to the historical huguenot denomination specifically, or protestants in general. After all, the Doppelsöldners are apparently German, not French.

Again, I'm not trying to belittle the efforts of the translators, just pointing out a few things which may have escaped their notice.

[Chrysalis]

Chrysalis, are you one of those who translated the rules?

No, I just translated some texts about the Lost some months ago.

[Bob]

but Roman Catholic would probably be better, being neutral.

They did NOT want to be neutral, otherwise they would have used "catholique" in French too

[Kaltesh]

seems to me that they used the terms they did to be in line with historical ways of thinking. The terms aren't political correct as that's a concept that is just to new, and not in line with the game it seems.

The whole outlook of the game isn't 'clean and nice', so why be that when refering to faiths? Papists where those that followed the pope, huguenotes the way french spoke about protestants during the 16th and 17th century, musulman comes from the Turkish, and is the teerm used in France back then (and still for a part),... and honestly, if someone is insulted by those words, it's a good indication that they'll be insulted by other stuff of it. It's a game that isn't very cautious of feelings. I mean: have you counted the amount of sexual explicit drawings in the book, the amount of jokes that might be offensive,...

so: in the end: if I'd translate it, I'd keep the old terms, even if today they aren't seen in the same light.



Kaltesh

[AndrewGPaul]

Actually, now that I look at the official translation, they did get the English terms for the Muslim denominations correct. In addition, the Christian denominations are listed as Papist, Orthodox and Protestant (presumably the official translation for Huguenot).