Meaning clarifications

res7less

Jumpkin
I hope it's okay to create a thread here, but I really felt like a thread such as this should exist for the translators. While translating, now and then, I run into dialogues where I'm not entirely sure, how an NPC's statement is to be interpreted and I don't think I'm the only one. It happens very rarely, but it does and I wouldn't want to misinterpret something, thus translating it wrongly. At some points there are notes, where things are clarified, but not always. So, people should be able to ask about certain meanings, if they aren't 100% sure.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
I currently don't have an exact case, but one that is slightly different.

Dialogue Tool
Region: FlyingTemple
LocalID: Screen01
Line 1 of 3

It says "The Master Collector has finally gone mad." In russian, I would need to know the gender of the master collector, to pick the correct suffix to translate "has gone". Was The Master Collector male or female?
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
If the pictures in the collectors hall are anything to go by, she's female, but I'm not sure if that's the correct person or just some random collector.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
If the pictures in the collectors hall are anything to go by, she's female, but I'm not sure if that's the correct person or just some random collector.

I continued to translate the screen messages and I'm now quite confident that he's male, but a confirmation would be nice since he has a very weird name that could be both genders.

Apparently the Master Collector's name is Fahrmamera and he developed into some powerful being by consuming human souls and caused the Cataclysm. Also, Phaseman's message spells his name differently on activation - he says "ALLEGIENCE: Farmahmera" instead of Fahrmamera used by Professor Pine in his log.
 
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Teddy

Developer
Staff member
He is male! (and we're going to change is name soon to confuse our existing players, but hopefully have newer players get less confused :D)
 

GarlicJelly

Friendly Moderator (Formerly known as GoodStuff)
You can't confuse someone if you warn him beforehand, that you're going to confuse him! :p Also, thanks for clarifying.
Maybe it's a distraction to make us even more confused? What if they change the name to something like Kim Kardashian and tell us the Master is a male? Maybe they change it just to prepare us for yet another change right before the launch? What if all this is a conspiracy towards the players? OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
 

TsReaper

Boar
Nice post! I have problems in my translation too.
1) The name of the research center in Mt. Bloom is Bouncing Ray Research Facility. Does "bouncing" here means active/energetic and "ray" means something like radiation?
2) Does "trick phase" in Mt. Bloom means "phase shift with high skill"?
3) What does the description of phaseman "Phaseman is phased by no man" means?
Thanks!
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
Nice post! I have problems in my translation too.
1) The name of the research center in Mt. Bloom is Bouncing Ray Research Facility. Does "bouncing" here means active/energetic and "ray" means something like radiation?
2) Does "trick phase" in Mt. Bloom means "phase shift with high skill"?
3) What does the description of phaseman "Phaseman is phased by no man" means?
Thanks!


1) Bouncing as in bouncing from one object to another (like a ball bounced against a wall, or light rays bouncing on a mirror)

Ray in this context refers to "light", as in a ray of sunlight. According to the lore, Phase Shifting turns the player into a ball of light that is capable of bouncing on mirrors!

2) Correct!

3) This is a bad pun which means that Phaseman is not scared or intimidated by any human! It's not that funny in other languages, I imagine, so you don't need to stick to the script on that one - describe him how you wish :p
 

GarlicJelly

Friendly Moderator (Formerly known as GoodStuff)
3) This is a bad pun which means that Phaseman is not scared or intimidated by any human! It's not that funny in other languages, I imagine, so you don't need to stick to the script on that one - describe him how you wish :p
How would you even translate it to Swedish? "Fasmannen känner ingen fasa inför ett möte med en människa?" It sounds weird. Speaking of, I wonder how many other puns get lost in the translations. I hope everyone translating the game add in a few puns to make the game as funny as it is in the original. :p
 

Teddy

Developer
Staff member
How would you even translate it to Swedish? "Fasmannen känner ingen fasa inför ett möte med en människa?" It sounds weird. Speaking of, I wonder how many other puns get lost in the translations. I hope everyone translating the game add in a few puns to make the game as funny as it is in the original. :p

I might've dropped the pun in Swedish as well, even though it almost works. And yeah, I imagine a lot of puns do get lost in the translation, but luckily they aren't integral to the story :D

I definitely encourage people to depart from the original text if they feel it's required or just would make the text better.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Phaseman is phased by no man"

Ohhhh, I remember that one. Didn't take me long to realize it wouldn't work in russian, so instead I had the glorious idea to make a tongue twister out of it... spent like 45 minutes to assemble two friggin' sentences... but in the end they made sense, had enough different words that sound similar to Phaseman and had a good tongue-twister-rhythm to them. My brain had the consistency of a slime afterwards, but...quality!
 

TsReaper

Boar
And two graves in the Pumpking woods.

1)
"Went for Jumpkins, hoping to get fed.
Took on too much - and now he's dead."
...I don't quite understand what happened to this man. Was he stuffed to death?

2)
"Oh Grindea, thou art a wicked mistress!
Now I serve thee in Second Life."
Does "wicked" here means bad/evil? I suspect not.
 

GarlicJelly

Friendly Moderator (Formerly known as GoodStuff)
And two graves in the Pumpking woods.

1)
"Went for Jumpkins, hoping to get fed.
Took on too much - and now he's dead."
...I don't quite understand what happened to this man. Was he stuffed to death?

2)
"Oh Grindea, thou art a wicked mistress!
Now I serve thee in Second Life."
Does "wicked" here means bad/evil? I suspect not.
1. I think the story is about a man going to the woods, hoping to get some pumpkin that he could eat. But the woods are now dangerous with monsters living there so he ends up getting killed by the Jumpkins.

2. Wicked in this context is refering to cruel. My interpertation is that the text is talking about Grindea as a god, seeing over everything and controlling everything. My guess is that this person is saying this with respect for the god, telling her it was cruel to take his/her life but he/she accepts their fate and wishes to stay by their god's side in the next life.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Oh Grindea, thou art a wicked mistress!
I believe this is a quote from some Shakespearean play, though I'm not sure from which one. In the play it is referred to fate, or life or irony as far as I know, having the mixed meaning of cruel, unfair and also cunning when referred to people. In russian I couldn't find a proper word that would match "wicked" in all its senses, but maybe in your language you might find a good equivalent, that better matches the adjectives mentioned.

Edit: What I would like to know actually, is whether or not the second part is supposed to be some reference to the game Second Life. I have never played it so I wouldn't get such a reference, but Second Life is written in capital letters, so it has to have some meaning?
 
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Vilya

Developer
Staff member
Edit: What I would like to know actually, is whether or not the second part is supposed to be some reference to the game Second Life. I have never played it so I wouldn't get such a reference, but Second Life is written in capital letters, so it has to have some meaning?
Yes, that was the intention - Second Life was/is a quite popular online chat (I really wouldn't call it a mmorpg though it's similar in some ways). It's just a reference in name, though, the text is mainly referring to living a second life, such as after being reincarnated (but I thought it would be funny to capitalize the letters for people who have played the game and get the reference, and, for all I know, maybe Grindea is recruiting on Second Life!). The rest of the text does not really relate to the game/chat itself!
 

res7less

Jumpkin
About the Phaseman entry. I'm referring to Phaseman01 part 3 of 3 in FlyingTemple.

I did translate part 1 of 3 and part 2 of 3, but I'm not entirely sure whether or not I should be translating part 3 of 3. The Phaseman appears to be quoting parts of his programming code (machines would barely quote their own programming code, blah blah, it's still cool) and programming is usually done in english, no matter what country the code comes from. While functions like UnlockWeapons() are sure to have been custom named, I doubt a qualified russian programmer would name it using russian letters, since it could cause problems using cyrillic glyphs in programming code. Not to mention it wouldn't be professional.

I played the german translation yesterday and there it was translated, but I think this matter is debatable. What do you think, fellow translators, devs and other people generally interested in any topic?
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
^
Most programming languages, including C++ and Java, don't support unicode characters as variable/method names. So code written in Russian/German/Whatever using special characters, like ą or ł or anything non-latin, will not compile. The German Phaseman should crash before battle started. Unless of course ancient Grindeans used some language that supported multibyte characters in the code, but I don't know any language that has this feature AND looks like a standard C++/Java. Or maybe it's a work of a hipster programmer, who programs in Ruby, but tries to mimic C++/Java syntax.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Well, german is actually not that of a big problem, since the only non-unicode letters are ä, ö, ü and ß and it would be easy to find method names without them, but it still looked weird, seeing them translated for some reason. Russian alphabet, though, completely consists of glyphs that would not compile then, even if there are similar looking letters like o, a, c, y etc. That's why I think it would be fine to leave UnlockWeapons() and the other function as they are, but I still would like to hear some more opinions.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Hm... going by what I used to work with when writing ASM for Pokémon Red and Yellow (damn that got amusing) you could potentially insert something that doesn't really even looks like normal words. It could be hexadecimal codes with spaces in between, or something more like this:

codes.png

This language worked by changing certain addresses hard coded onto the cartridge, and read in certain ways to produce the stuff you saw on screen. While I'm not sure exactly how it worked, what I do know is this made things very limited, such as there could only be a limited number of certain size sprites on the screen - everything else had to be the background map. There could also only be a maximum of 4 music tracks with very little instrument variation, and produced some of the iconic chip-tunes many still know and love today.

Anyway, hardware aside, this could be a viable solution.
 
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