agaricus5
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Hello Everyone!

I was just wondering what DROD elements in a foreign language would sound like and have had an idea:

I would like to collect translations of DROD elements in as many languages as possible, and then compile them to make a new section for DROD.net.

The problem is that I speak only one language (English) and am learning only three more (French, German and Latin), which is certainly not enough to do this.

Therefore, I need your help. If you know another language and can translate the elements, provide an alternative or correct a translation, then please reply!

Just so I can see the sort of response to expect and find out how many languages are known on the forum to see if this little project will be successful, I just want translations of \"Dungeon Roach\" only.

I\'ll start the list off:

English: Dungeon Roach

French: (un) Cafard de Cachot Souterrain

I\'m not sure how to join two nouns in German, so I\'ll just make a new word up:

German: (eine) Kerkerschabe, (eine) Verliesschabe.

I\'ll ask my Latin teacher about a Latin version, and reply later.

The two translations above are probably not very good, so if anyone can come up with a better version of either, then please post it here!

Happy Translating!


[Edited by agaricus5 on 04-20-2003 at 03:00 PM GMT]

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Sokko
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Shouldn\'t be too hard with a dictionary... even services like FreeTranslation.com work fine for simple fragments like that. These are the results (and I know the Spanish one, at least, is correct):

Spanish = (una) cucaracha del calabozo
French = (un) cafard de cachot
German = schaben des verlieses
Italian = (lo) scarafaggio di prigione sotterranea
Dutch = See note #3
Portugese = (a) barata do calabouço

Note 1: In most places, I used \"Cockroach of the Dungeon\", because that\'s the way a lot of languages structure it (and it looks right).

Note 2: I don\'t know why \"souterrain\" wasn\'t added to the French; what is the literal meaning of \"cachot\", and does it require a modifier?

Note 3: It doesn\'t appear that Dutch even has a word for \"dungeon\", though the word for \"cockroach\" appears to be \"kakkerlak\".

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agaricus5
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Sokko wrote:
Shouldn\'t be too hard with a dictionary... even services like FreeTranslation.com work fine for simple fragments like that. These are the results (and I know the Spanish one, at least, is correct):

Ah, but the first thing: I only have a dictionary for French and German and a small one for Latin.

The second is that, even using a translator, I wouldn\'t know whether the translation is constructed properly, if the words do not mean what is expected, or if there is a better alternative.

The third is that I am interested in how other people would translate it and why.

That\'s why I asked.

French = (un) cafard de cachot

Err... I forgot the brackets in my post around souterrain because it is not necessary, you were right, so it should have been:

French: (un) Cafard de Cachot (Souterrain)

\"cachot\" means dungeon, but it can also mean solitary confinement, so I believe that the modifier just makes it a little clearer what you mean.

German = schaben des verlieses

That\'s in the plural. The singular is \"Schabe\".

However, I don\'t know whether \"Verlies\" should take an -es or an -s at the end of it - it ends in -es already, but has three syllables and is in the genitive. Perhaps someone who knows German better than I can help.

Note 1: In most places, I used \"Cockroach of the Dungeon\", because that\'s the way a lot of languages structure it (and it looks right).

That\'s perfectly fine.

On a similar note, see if you can use \"roach\" as well as \"cockroach\". It probably won\'t make much of a difference, but the two are different by a small amount: \"roach\" is a sort of abbreviated slang, and might give a different result. (Though be careful not to mix it up with a word that means a type of small fish)

Edited for bad punctuation!

[Edited by agaricus5 on 04-20-2003 at 03:31 PM GMT]

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zex20913
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I was taught that the German word for \"cockroaches\" was, indeed, kakkerlaken. I think this is more slang than the other word you guys had...not sure though. I\'m not sure about the singular...as for the verlieses, it should be spelled correctly. It\'s one syllable, or ending in an s that gets the es. Plus, it\'s damn hard to say verlies\'s.

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agaricus5
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zex20913 wrote:
I was taught that the German word for \"cockroaches\" was, indeed, kakkerlaken.

Yes, in my dictionary I get either Kakkerlak or Küchenschabe {Cake-roach?}for cockroach.

I think this is more slang than the other word you guys had...not sure though. I\'m not sure about the singular.

I don\'t think Kakkerlak is slang, though I know little about modern German (I\'ve only been learning it for one and a half years!), and Schabe is certainly the singular of Schaben.

I was wondering, can you stick nouns together in German to create new ones, like Verliesschabe for Dungeon Roach or are there set rules on doing this?

And finally, do you have a better translation than the ones already here?

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zex20913
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In class the other day, my professor said that scholarly writers often created nouns of their own, because their combined word works better than the separate words. You can work them out from context too, so I\'d say go for it.

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I speak Russian, so I could handle that language. Can we use Cyrillic text in this forum? Мне кажется, что можно. If you can read this, then Unicode/Cyrillic is enabled.

I also studied French in school. There\'s a French translation of the game nearly completed, and the tranlator (Patrice, I believe?) uses \"oubliette\" for dungeon. I realized that you have to know the domain you\'re talking about -- like by reading game reviews and/or instructions in French -- to know the idioms that are used to talk about gaming types of things. Otherwise, it\'s just a shot in the dark. Don\'t let that discourage anyone, though. I\'m sure that as soon as we can get things going in other languages we\'ll get a lot of help perfecting the system.

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mrimer wrote:
I speak Russian, so I could handle that language. Can we use Cyrillic text in this forum? ?, ??. If you can read this, then Unicode/Cyrillic is enabled.

I can see it here in the Message text box when replying, but on the web page itself it looks wrong. I\'ll get to work on fixing it. Oh wait.... never mind.



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mrimer
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Schik wrote:I can see it here in the Message text box when replying, but on the web page itself it looks wrong. I\'ll get to work on fixing it. Oh wait.... never mind.

Never mind what?


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Schik
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mrimer wrote:
Never mind what?

Sorry - This was a (poor) joke, referring to the fact that I did some Unicode work on DROD itself....

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trick
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I could help translate it into norwegian, though i don\'t seem to remember any good words for \"dungeon\" - the closest that springs to mind is \"fangehull\", which directly translated means \"prison cell/hole\" (usually a dark and clammy one) - is that good enough ?

\"roach\" or \"cockroach\" in norwegian is \"kakerlakk\" - so, \"dungeon roach\" would translate into \"fangehullskakerlakk\". A bit long word, maybe, but breaking it up wouldn\'t work as well.

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I could translate the game elements to Hebrew, if there\'s interest; though of course that would require adding support for right-to-left writing (which can be a real pain if you want it to be compatible with more than just IE on windows, at least in my experience).

[Edited by eytanz on 04-21-2003 at 10:32 PM GMT]

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agaricus5
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That\'s great!

Just do \"Dungeon Roach\" for now, but keep going. If there\'s enough interest in this, then I\'ll extend it to other things and set up a section for DROD.net to cater for it.

Thanks for all the contributions!

Keep Translating!

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eytanz
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There are actually several issues translating Dungeon Roach into Hebrew. First, I can\'t do it in Hebrew characters here as the board doesn\'t support them. It\'s possible to get around that by transcribing to Latin characters, but that\'s not easily readable to Hebrew speakers.

The second problem is that there\'s no word for \"dungeon\" in Hebrew. The closest translations are either \"Tzinok\", which implies somewhere small and confined rather than the huge dungeons of DROD, or \"mavokh\", which means maze (and is the word used in the title of the Hebrew versions of D&D).

The third problem is that there are too many words for roach. There\'s the proper term, \"Tikan\", which as far as I know is not really ever used by most people. There\'s a more colloquial term that\'s still accurate - \"Makak\". But most people - including myself - simply refer to roaches by the more general word for all bugs, \"djook\" (rhymes with book).

If I had to choose, I\'d label dungeon roaches as \"makak mavokhim\", which is a relatively close translation, and won\'t be confusing if at some point DROD gets other kinds of insects, and besides has a nice alliteration. But other Hebrew speakers may have different translations.

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Pig Latin - ungeonday oachray.


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agaricus5
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eytanz wrote:
There are actually several issues translating Dungeon Roach into Hebrew. First, I can\'t do it in Hebrew characters here as the board doesn\'t support them. It\'s possible to get around that by transcribing to Latin characters, but that\'s not easily readable to Hebrew speakers.

The second problem is that there\'s no word for \"dungeon\" in Hebrew. The closest translations are either \"Tzinok\", which implies somewhere small and confined rather than the huge dungeons of DROD, or \"mavokh\", which means maze (and is the word used in the title of the Hebrew versions of D&D).

The third problem is that there are too many words for roach. There\'s the proper term, \"Tikan\", which as far as I know is not really ever used by most people. There\'s a more colloquial term that\'s still accurate - \"Makak\". But most people - including myself - simply refer to roaches by the more general word for all bugs, \"djook\" (rhymes with book).

If I had to choose, I\'d label dungeon roaches as \"makak mavokhim\", which is a relatively close translation, and won\'t be confusing if at some point DROD gets other kinds of insects, and besides has a nice alliteration. But other Hebrew speakers may have different translations.

It\'s alright. Post the unicode/key code values to the thread and I\'ll make picture files containing the text because I think my computer supports most kinds of characters.


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eytanz
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How do I learn these codes?

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agaricus5
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Use Microsoft Word (Go to the symbols option ) or the Character Map to get the unicode or key values.

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eytanz
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Ok, the unicode codes for \"makak mavokhim\" are:

05DE 05E7 05E7 (space) 05DE 05D1 05D5 05D8 05D9 05D0

Remember that Hebrew words are spelt from right to left; if your software doesn\'t support this, you\'ll need to reverse the above order of symbols.

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agaricus5
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Wow! The response was much better than I anticipated; thanks to everyone for submitting translations!

We now have 11 different translations of \"Dungeon Roach\", which is great.

7 are in modern languages using the alphabet we use (Well, mostly):

English: Dungeon Roach

French: (un) Cafard de Cachot (Souterrain), ou (un) Cafard d\'Oubliette

German: (eine) Kerkerschabe

Spanish: (una) Cucaracha del Calabozo

Italian: (lo) Scarafaggio di Prigione Sotterranea

Portugese: (a) Barata do Calabouço

Norwegian: Fangehullskakerlakk {Does it have an indefinite article - a/an?}

2 are in modern languages, but which use different alphabets, Russian and Hebrew, so I need to use a picture file to show them... Watch this space.

1 is in an ancient language:

Latin: blatta carceris {No article needed}
I\'m not sure if this actually works; I\'ll ask my Latin teacher, Mrs Gould (She\'s really, really nice) if it\'s okay.

Finally, 1 is in a modern language that looks suspiciously like the English, except with the first letter moved to the end, and \"ay\" added.

Pig Latin - ungeonday oachray

What is Pig Latin anyway, Schik?

I think now that we have enough that I can start up a new section on DROD.net for this. I\'ll ask Malarame if that\'s okay, and if so, your contributions could be on the site! Just out of interest though, do you want me to write next to the translations the names of the submitters, or would you prefer anonymity?

Finally, keep going! If anybody knows how to translate \"Dungeon Roach\" into any other languages, be it modern or ancient, or have a better alternative then please post! When I have more time, I\'ll sort them out and then I\'ll add more monsters and elements to the \"To be translated list\"

As I have already said, thanks for your contributions, and keep translating!

Edited because I can\'t count at 23:30 after finishing a German role-play

[Edited by agaricus5 on 04-23-2003 at 10:35 PM GMT]

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eytanz
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agaricus5 wrote:
Norwegian: Fangehullskakerlakk {Does it have an indefinite article - a/an?}

2 are in modern languages, but which use different alphabets, Russian and Hebrew, so I need to use a picture file to show them... Watch this space.

You didn\'t ask (yet), but Hebrew has no indefinite article.

Just out of interest though, do you want me to write next to the translations the names of the submitters, or would you prefer anonymity?

I don\'t care - make me consistent with the majority.

Eytan

[Edited by eytanz on 04-24-2003 at 02:43 AM GMT]

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Schik
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agaricus5 wrote:
Finally, 1 is in a modern language that looks suspiciously like the English, except with the first letter moved to the end, and \"ay\" added.

Pig Latin - ungeonday oachray

What is Pig Latin anyway, Schik?

It\'s exactly what you described...
unless the word begins with a vowel, in which case you simply add -hay to the end, IIRC. Oh, and I\'d like to be anonymous . Or ignored, since this wasn\'t all that serious.

Now if I could just find a website that translated English to Klingon...


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Mikko
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I can translate to Swedish and Finnish (I\'m bilingual \\o/).

Unfortunately I can\'t think of any good translation of dungeon in Swedish, but cockroach is [en] kackerlacka.

The best Finnish version I can come up with is tyrmätorakka (the Finnish language doesn\'t really have any articles). It sounds a bit unnatural but is at least gramatically correct.

agaricus5
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Mikko wrote:
I can translate to Swedish and Finnish (I\'m bilingual \\o/).

Wow!

Which two languages are your main ones then, or are you even tri-lingual and can speak three languages fluently?

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trick
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Indefinite article is "en/ei/et" (m/f/i). In my dialect we don't use the female version, so i have no idea what "fangehullskakerlakk" is supposed to be.. This shouldn't be a big problem, though, just use "en":

"(En) fangehullskakerlakk"

As i said before, there's no norwegian word for "dungeon", and i don't know if this one ("fangehull" = prison cell/hole, usually dark and clammy) is the best, so here's some alternatives:

"(A) maze roach" = "(En) labyrintkakerlakk"
"(A) cellar roach" = "(En) kjellerkakerlakk"
"(A) vault roach" = "(En) hvelvkakerlakk"
"(A) cellar vault roach" = "(En) kjellerhvelvskakerlakk" (i just made this one up - there's no problems doing that, btw)


[Edited by trick on 04-26-2003 at 12:09 AM]

agaricus5
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trick wrote:
Indefinite article is "en/ei/et" (m/f/i). In my dialect we don't use the female version, so i have no idea what "fangehullskakerlakk" is supposed to be.. This shouldn't be a big problem, though, just use "en":

"(En) fangehullskakerlakk"

Thanks for that!

As i said before, there's no norwegian word for "dungeon", and i don't know if this one ("fangehull" = prison cell/hole, usually dark and clammy) is the best, so here's some alternatives:

"(A) maze roach" = "(En) labyrintkakerlakk"

This one is by far the best description of the one on Level 13 (Go find it!)

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Réchèr
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Hello everyone!

Can I bring a little of my knowledge to you as a French man?
In my opinion, "Dungeon roach" should not be translated word by word. The name "Un cafard de cachot" or "un cafard d'oubliette" is correct, but that sounds a little ridiculous. "cachot" and "oubliettes" are words that exists, but they are not used in the current language, you find them only in books. Simply translate "dungeon roach" by "un cafard". If you want to insist on the fact that it is not the usual roaches, you can say "un cafard géant" (a giant cafard). It is not the exact translation but it is more usual.

It would be the same for "evil eye". The exact translation would be something like "oeil méchant" or "oeil mauvais", but that sounds ridiculous, it would be better to say something like "oeil volant" (flying eye) or even "oeil de la mort" (death eye).

there may be no more problem for the other translation of the monster names, serpent is "un serpent", goblin is "un goblin", brain is "un cerveau".
for the tar, use the word "blob", it may be the most appropriated one though I can not find a word in French that would be use to call such a monster. But there was that old horror movie (very bad, yes!) with a monster like the tar which eated a lot of people, and it was called "le blob".

One day, if I have time, I could translate the whole site in French, but not today, sorry!

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agaricus5
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Réchèr wrote:
Hello everyone!

Can I bring a little of my knowledge to you as a French man?
In my opinion, "Dungeon roach" should not be translated word by word. The name "Un cafard de cachot" or "un cafard d'oubliette" is correct, but that sounds a little ridiculous. "cachot" and "oubliettes" are words that exists, but they are not used in the current language, you find them only in books. Simply translate "dungeon roach" by "un cafard". If you want to insist on the fact that it is not the usual roaches, you can say "un cafard géant" (a giant cafard). It is not the exact translation but it is more usual.

Hmm. Well I understand the point; I believe you are a native, or at least a better speaker of French than I, and so I cannot argue against it.

One thing I would say, though, is that you need to be careful translating something like this. Obviously it doesn't exist in the real world; it's a huge, terrifying monster lurking in giant dungeons (Of a size not to be underestimated - see this: http://www.drod.net/forum/message.php?TopicID=140) with five foot long teeth and possibly acid drool . Therefore this is why I wanted to use the word "cachot"/"oubliette" to make sure that the reader understands that it is a "Dungeon Roach" that we are talking about, and not just an ordinary, harmless cockroach.

If you still disagree, then tell me why, and I'll see what I can do.

It would be the same for "evil eye". The exact translation would be something like "oeil méchant" or "oeil mauvais", but that sounds ridiculous, it would be better to say something like "oeil volant" (flying eye) or even "oeil de la mort" (death eye).

For other monsters, please wait because I want to set up a section for this on DROD.net, and I might get confused if there are too many translations floating about here. However, keep what you've done, and when I've got this under control, then I'll ask for translations of different elements. For "oeil de la mort" I'd translate it more literally as "Eye of death" just because it sounds more stylish.

for the tar, use the word "blob", it may be the most appropriated one though I can not find a word in French that would be use to call such a monster. But there was that old horror movie (very bad, yes!) with a monster like the tar which eated a lot of people, and it was called "le blob".

I can't find "le blob" in my French dictionary - is it some sort of slang, and what does it actually mean?

One day, if I have time, I could translate the whole site in French, but not today, sorry!

Err, I don't think it was meant to go that far, but thanks for the enthusiasm. If you're serious, then consult Malarame, webmaster of DROD.net (mafinot@hotmail.com).

Anyway, thanks for the useful insight into the problem, and I hope to hear the answer from you soon.

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bdcribbs
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(This is really off-topic, but it is something that has provided tons of amusement for me in the past so...)

As an example of how the art of translation does not lend itself to being done by a computer, take any bit of text (for example Beethro's Story).

Use an online translator and translate it to some other language. Take the result, and translate it back to English. The end result is often quite comical.

(Sorry for the off-topic post, I just thought someone else might get a kick out of trying this out...)

Malarame
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bdcribbs wrote:
(This is really off-topic, but it is something that has provided tons of amusement for me in the past so...)

As an example of how the art of translation does not lend itself to being done by a computer, take any bit of text (for example Beethro's Story).

Use an online translator and translate it to some other language. Take the result, and translate it back to English. The end result is often quite comical.

(Sorry for the off-topic post, I just thought someone else might get a kick out of trying this out...)

That reminds me a game my friends and I used to play. We all happened to be in the same Computer Literacy class (it's a requirement to graduate), and we passed the time with this little game that we devised. One person would make up a funny sentance or two, translate it into another language, translate it back to English, then to a third language and back again, and do that several times. Then he'd send the final text (in English) to someone else (we'd figured out how to send text between the computers) and the person would have to figure out what the original sentance was. It may not sound like much fun, but when you're on a computer that only lets you use Microsoft Word and visit the very few websites that aren't blocked, its a riot.

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