T2K Lingua

[General Pain]

InT2K based games we (players) meet lots of npcs from various contries speaking various languages. This means GMs and players for that sake could use help in adding flavour to a campaign by using proper language.

I know people could use online translators like:
http://www.worldlingo.com/en/product...ranslator.html
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
http://translation2.paralink.com/

and loads others...

But the proplem with these , is that they usually translates gramatically wrong.

So what I hoped was that my fellow board members could help eachother with translation questions.

For example:

How would a russian say:

"Oh my god don't press that button"

Other use for this thread could be dialect questions and local slang.

I hope this could prove usefull. So if anyone has a sentence they would have translated into norweigian , post it here.

[pmulcahy11b]

Dale Brown's books have a lot of grammatically-correct and properly-spelled words and phrases that occur in the various parts of the world his characters are operating. And there are also quite a few cultural bits -- his books are why I learned, before I even joined the Army, why throwing your shoes at someone and calling him a dog is so insulting in the Arabic world.

Of course, that will only give you the words and phrases -- figuring out how to pronounce them is much more difficult. I was lucky to have a GM who spoke Polish as my first GM and a Croatian mother, so I can pronounce some of the thornier words -- but the place names on the maps get mangled pretty easily.

(BTW, my mother speaks five languages. She says English was the hardest language to learn!)

[weswood]

I've used an online translator for some phrases in Rae's PbP game and have ran into that problem. It just wouldn't translate "I like the way your butt wiggles when you walk" from English to Polish.

I've also ran into the pronunciation difficulties Paul was talking about. I was taking an English class at a local college and the intsrtuctor asked if anybody knew what a certain word meant. Blank looks until she wrote it one the board-omniscient. "Oh, I know what that is, I've just never heard it spoken" I paid her back though, I threw in the word laager in an assignement, she had to look it up in a dictionary.

[JimmyRay73]

I picked up some useful bits from Tom Clancy books and other "Cold War" era spy novels, and from the T2K 2nd Ed book. It also helped that i often tried to learn the important bits of any language from anyone I found who could speak it (i.e. how to order a beer, ask where the bathroom is, and insult someone badly).

Remember, it's a bad idea to say "Yob t'voyu maht!" to any Russian you don't intend to fight, but "una cerveza por favor" and "donde esta el bano" are damned useful things to know in Spanish. Just hope the guy that replies to the last one points at the door, so you don't need to know how to say "second door on the left" in Spanish...

[Marc]

Originally Posted by JimmyRay73

I picked up some useful bits from Tom Clancy books and other "Cold War" era spy novels, and from the T2K 2nd Ed book. It also helped that i often tried to learn the important bits of any language from anyone I found who could speak it (i.e. how to order a beer, ask where the bathroom is, and insult someone badly).

Remember, it's a bad idea to say "Yob t'voyu maht!" to any Russian you don't intend to fight, but "una cerveza por favor" and "donde esta el bano" are damned useful things to know in Spanish. Just hope the guy that replies to the last one points at the door, so you don't need to know how to say "second door on the left" in Spanish...

"Segunda puerta a la izquierda"

Yesterday night we ran a short (3hr) role playing session. The character assaulted by surprise a fortified house occupied by polish militiamen. As always I threw myself enthusiastically to interpret my poor NPCs crying for help in my particular and totally imaginary version of polish.

All the non-native English speakers have a natural ability, developed since childhood, to sing the songs in English of their favourite groups "by ear" without knowing anything about English and without any idea about the meaning of the lyrics. I have extended this ability (with my lack of sense of shame) to manage a fluid roleplaying Polish, Germany, Russian, French or whatever language needed. Of course this powerful ability is fed by Hollywood influence. For example, my Germans always say sentences that must have words like "Raus! Raus!", "Alarm" and, of course "Panzer!". Always shouting...

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Marc

"Segunda puerta a la izquierda"

Yesterday night we ran a short (3hr) role playing session. The character assaulted by surprise a fortified house occupied by polish militiamen. As always I threw myself enthusiastically to interpret my poor NPCs crying for help in my particular and totally imaginary version of polish.

All the non-native English speakers have a natural ability, developed since childhood, to sing the songs in English of their favourite groups "by ear" without knowing anything about English and without any idea about the meaning of the lyrics. I have extended this ability (with my lack of sense of shame) to manage a fluid roleplaying Polish, Germany, Russian, French or whatever language needed. Of course this powerful ability is fed by Hollywood influence. For example, my Germans always say sentences that must have words like "Raus! Raus!", "Alarm" and, of course "Panzer!". Always shouting...

Slavic languages :
Russian for stop! or I will shot : "Stoj! ili ya Istrajano!"
SERB:Stani ili ya putsam!

Serb/Russian/slavic for GOD : Bog
hands up : Ruki u vies!
weapon : oruzje
west : zapad