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BGT dictionary english german

mod translation

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#1 Roxanne

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Posted 18 November 2015 - 03:37 AM

Does anyone know whether there is some type of dictionary available somewhere for translation of Baldur Gate names,.items and locations and such

e.g.

Candlekeep = Kerzenburg

Harpers = Harfner (or Harfenspieler?)

 

Firebeard Elvenhair = He may be translated to Feuerbart Elfenhaar or not at all >>>most names stay what they are, but some maybe not

 

Espescially hard for me (because a central figure in the plot) is

Midnight (the human that became Mystra) = Mitternacht (like the time of day), however in english you can distinguish midnight (time) and Midnight (name) while in German both are the same.

 

Etc

How are consistent translations achieved.

I have no problem with translating my english mod to german, I just want to assure that those special terms are translated consistently with the rest of the game.

 

"The Throne of Bhaal is known to be a very unconfortable piece of furniture."

"Der Thron des Bhaal ist als sehr unbequemes Möbelstück bekannt."


Edited by Roxanne, 18 November 2015 - 04:12 AM.

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#2 The Imp

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Posted 18 November 2015 - 05:54 AM

You take the dialog.tlk from a German and English games and compare them. Also you probably wish to use a German player to do a spelling and read through checks. The translaters should be good at those things. And also you might wish to have someone do spelling checks on the "English" .tra files too, just to be sure. It's never a bad idea.

 

Also there's quite lot of lore that's translated, Mystra for example.


Edited by The Imp, 18 November 2015 - 06:01 AM.

Yep, Jarno Mikkola. my Mega Mod FAQ. Use of the BWS, and how to use it(scroll down that post a bit). 
OK, desert dweller, welcome to the sanity, you are free to search for the limit, it's out there, we drew it in the sand. Ouh, actually it was still snow then.. but anyways.


#3 Roxanne

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Posted 18 November 2015 - 06:03 AM

You take the dialog.tlk from a German and English games and compare them. Also you probably wish to use a German player to do a spelling and read through checks. The translaters should be good at those things. And also you might wish to have someone do spelling checks on the "English" .tra files too, just to be sure. It's never a bad idea.

This is what I do now - I was looking for some easier way. Anyway I already found that the german dialog.tlk is not consistent by itself - I assume that different translators used different approaches after all. The only stable reference are those lines from vanilla game but they cover not the complete contents (and some are pretty bad even there, they were not very sensible back then especially when translating creature names).

My issue is not a language problem but consistent use of vocabulary.

e.g. you can translate *The Stormhorns* in several ways, all correct, or leave their name as it is - (how would you find that in dialog.tlk - I think the reference will be different in each game?)


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#4 The Imp

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Posted 18 November 2015 - 06:16 AM

Well, it's also arguable that the English dialog files have errors, and the Fixpack also refines it a bit, as does it's German translation, as well as the German language package used in the German BWP installs. Like you should understand, it's actually a complex thing ... and a few mods have several translations.


Yep, Jarno Mikkola. my Mega Mod FAQ. Use of the BWS, and how to use it(scroll down that post a bit). 
OK, desert dweller, welcome to the sanity, you are free to search for the limit, it's out there, we drew it in the sand. Ouh, actually it was still snow then.. but anyways.


#5 Argent77

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Posted 18 November 2015 - 07:16 AM

You can use Near Infinity to export the dialog.tlk (or dialogf.tlk) into a simple text format. This makes it easier to look up certain keywords. You can also do simple side-by-side comparisons, if you export the english dialog.tlk as well. Many advanced text editors, such as Notepad++ allow you search for regular expressions, which is helpful if you want to search for keywords in several variations.
 



#6 Roxanne

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Posted 18 November 2015 - 07:33 AM

You can use Near Infinity to export the dialog.tlk (or dialogf.tlk) into a simple text format. This makes it easier to look up certain keywords. You can also do simple side-by-side comparisons, if you export the english dialog.tlk as well. Many advanced text editors, such as Notepad++ allow you search for regular expressions, which is helpful if you want to search for keywords in several variations.
 

I was just looking for some easy overview for some key phrases, something as useful as Leonardo's fantastic AreaCode list.

I am well aware of all the other techniques and I am using them now.

I think from your expert feedback I can deduct, that such an quick lookup repository does not exist, otherwise you guys would surely know about it.

Thanks anyway.


The Sandrah Saga

another piece of *buggy, cheesy, unbalanced junk*

 


#7 -Gast-

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Posted 19 November 2015 - 06:00 AM

Hello and hallo, Roxanne!

 

     Maybe the "Kerzenburg Forum" has some sort of lists, you are looking for? They collected several stuff for translators. Concerning Firebeard Elvenhair: the EE translators  discussed if names like this should be translated or not, I do not know what their decision was, But You are right that in the original translation some names are translated some not. Looking at Mask, he is not translated but in some strings in the game somebody translated him into "Maske", So this is not always consistent. Mikes textpatch (Kerzenburg Forum) addresses such inconsistencies,

When I translated some mods, I used a AD&D wiki (English : German) on the net to look for the translations like *The Stormhorns*.

 

ps Zitat: "The Throne of Bhaal is known to be a very unconfortable piece of furniture." = "Der Thron des Bhaal ist als sehr unbequemes Möbelstück bekannt."

Your translation is correct but sometimes the translation depends on the speaker. My friend "Jan Jansen" would not use these words in German maybe Minsk aka Minsc would, if Boo has whispered  them into his ear. 



#8 Roxanne

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Posted 19 November 2015 - 06:27 AM

Hello and hallo, Roxanne!

 

     Maybe the "Kerzenburg Forum" has some sort of lists, you are looking for? They collected several stuff for translators. Concerning Firebeard Elvenhair: the EE translators  discussed if names like this should be translated or not, I do not know what their decision was, But You are right that in the original translation some names are translated some not. Looking at Mask, he is not translated but in some strings in the game somebody translated him into "Maske", So this is not always consistent. Mikes textpatch (Kerzenburg Forum) addresses such inconsistencies,

When I translated some mods, I used a AD&D wiki (English : German) on the net to look for the translations like *The Stormhorns*.

 

ps Zitat: "The Throne of Bhaal is known to be a very unconfortable piece of furniture." = "Der Thron des Bhaal ist als sehr unbequemes Möbelstück bekannt."

Your translation is correct but sometimes the translation depends on the speaker. My friend "Jan Jansen" would not use these words in German maybe Minsk aka Minsc would, if Boo has whispered  them into his ear. 

Thank you for those hints, those at Kerzenburg would know.

And that quote, ves this is how Sandrah herself would have phrased it (but not Imoen)


The Sandrah Saga

another piece of *buggy, cheesy, unbalanced junk*

 


#9 Roxanne

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Posted 19 November 2015 - 08:38 AM

Hello and hallo, Roxanne!

 

     Maybe the "Kerzenburg Forum" has some sort of lists, you are looking for? They collected several stuff for translators. Concerning Firebeard Elvenhair: the EE translators  discussed if names like this should be translated or not, I do not know what their decision was, But You are right that in the original translation some names are translated some not. Looking at Mask, he is not translated but in some strings in the game somebody translated him into "Maske", So this is not always consistent. Mikes textpatch (Kerzenburg Forum) addresses such inconsistencies,

When I translated some mods, I used a AD&D wiki (English : German) on the net to look for the translations like *The Stormhorns*.

 

ps Zitat: "The Throne of Bhaal is known to be a very unconfortable piece of furniture." = "Der Thron des Bhaal ist als sehr unbequemes Möbelstück bekannt."

Your translation is correct but sometimes the translation depends on the speaker. My friend "Jan Jansen" would not use these words in German maybe Minsk aka Minsc would, if Boo has whispered  them into his ear. 

Thank you for those hints, those at Kerzenburg would know.

And that quote, ves this is how Sandrah herself would have phrased it (but not Imoen)

Thanks for the help I found this very helpful link (for all searching similar sources)

 

Hier gibt es eine Auflistung der deutschen Ortsbezeichnungen.
Hier gibt es eine Auflistung der deutschen Klassen-/Zauber-/Fähigkeitenbezeichnungen.
Hier gibt es eine Auflistung der Zauberbeschreibungen.
Hier gibt es eine Auflistung der Waffen-/Rüstungsbeschreibungen.
Hier gibt es eine Auflistung der Kreaturen-Namen.

 

I will also take a look at some tool TREP mentioned in that context.


Edited by Roxanne, 19 November 2015 - 08:42 AM.

The Sandrah Saga

another piece of *buggy, cheesy, unbalanced junk*

 


#10 Roxanne

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 01:35 AM

I need some input for this issue

 

The *Time(s) of Trouble(s)" , even if a quite important period for the game is not consistently named even in the english version.

Several translations are in my original BG1 dialog.tlk, all of them however seem odd to me and done probably from the wording rather than from the game contents

Zeit der Unruhen

Zeit der Schatten

Jahr der...

Both english and german versions of the game use those phrases in any variation, for me an indication that some of the game was done hastily and not a hinderance to improve it.

Even worse, sometimes it is referred to as *year* rather than a time period.

 

Personally, I would use 

Zeit der Sorgen

 

which is also the phrase used in the german Faerunpedia and which matches best to the events of that period seen from the perspective of a creature of the Prime.


Edited by Roxanne, 20 November 2015 - 01:36 AM.

The Sandrah Saga

another piece of *buggy, cheesy, unbalanced junk*

 


#11 -Gast-

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 06:22 AM

     I do not know Sandrah but I get a Picture. So this is fine. Thank You and all others for their hard work.

 

     The Time of Trouble Problem I have had too. It is used in Lavas Elistraee's Song for example. I can not remember my source but at least I used "Zeit der Sorgen". In one of Yoea's books I used "die Ankunft", "der Götterkrieg" and "die Avatarenkrise" as Lava forced things like this to describe the different nameings from different cultures "all over Toril". I wont wonder if I used Faerûnpedia back then or I might used the original translation in this case?

 

      I think that it is not unusual having more than one expression for one and the same thing.  I hope that "Zeit der Sorgen" is a good use. I say:" Use it!", but this is only me. And harpers=Harfner I forgot. You can meet "geisterhafte Harfenspieler" creatures on Xzars quest in BG2 this might be confusing.

 



#12 Roxanne

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 07:19 AM

     I do not know Sandrah but I get a Picture. So this is fine. Thank You and all others for their hard work.

 

     The Time of Trouble Problem I have had too. It is used in Lavas Elistraee's Song for example. I can not remember my source but at least I used "Zeit der Sorgen". In one of Yoea's books I used "die Ankunft", "der Götterkrieg" and "die Avatarenkrise" as Lava forced things like this to describe the different nameings from different cultures "all over Toril". I wont wonder if I used Faerûnpedia back then or I might used the original translation in this case?

 

      I think that it is not unusual having more than one expression for one and the same thing.  I hope that "Zeit der Sorgen" is a good use. I say:" Use it!", but this is only me. And harpers=Harfner I forgot. You can meet "geisterhafte Harfenspieler" creatures on Xzars quest in BG2 this might be confusing.

Thank you for this feedback and I think it may be right that different people or races use different name as maybe some time period may be referred to based on the emphasis and viewpoint you try to express, like generally it is Zeit der Sorgen but talking about some specific aspect you use Götterkrieg.

And yes,Harfner is that organisation and its members in general while (geisterhafte) Harfenspieler are just those three specific creatures in the one plot.


Edited by Roxanne, 22 November 2015 - 07:21 AM.

The Sandrah Saga

another piece of *buggy, cheesy, unbalanced junk*