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Guten Tag, Bon jour, Salute, Hej,

As non-englishmen/americans what do you think of your GW stuff being translated into your language? I personally hate the german ork codex, so i got it in english. My brother also has an english codex, and for us 40k is something to be spoken about and played in english, so whenever we have a battle we talk english (or at least some outsider-unfrienly made-up-language consisting of both english and german bits) This habit quickly spread, like an infection, to other people playing with us. I just don't like the german names of units and rules. I'm curious how other people think about this.

I bought the AoBR box not thinking about the language....and it was in French.

Since then I moved to english entirely. It's much better (some horrid translation issues aside, most 40k stuff online is in english anyway) imo.

Pardon my ignorance, what's the issue with the localized books?

FearPeteySodes wrote:Pardon my ignorance, what's the issue with the localized books?

I think that some of the rules get translated incorrectly.

The german translation has a horrible style compared to the english version. They should for example never have literaly translated unit names from english to german.

In some codexes, the translations impact rules and wargear. I know there are circumstances where the ork codex replaces 'exchange choppa' with 'exchange choppa and slugga' which changes some wargear combos like the Nob with a heavy weapon and PK and the dual PK mek.

Not huge deals but still issues. I am sure other codexes have similar issues.

Wow that's frustrating just hearing about it.

Well, the translations some times create problems with some rules. But in Spain is totally necessary. If the rulebooks and army books were completely in English, GW games would not be played here. It would be like in early 90's, when 40k and WFB didn't have Spanish translations, and so they were known and played only by some people in Madrid and Barcelona, where the biggest gaming stores import games. Well, now we have Internet, so more people would know it, but there would not be a real market here.

Edit: long story short: the average level of English in Spain is painfully awful.

I prefer the rules with the intended wording and vocabulary. GW makes enough confusing rules, I do not need not so well translated confusing rules to mess with my head even more.

Not to mention the litteral translation of character names/units (I'm looking at your space puppies!) which is just horrid.

Erasoketa wrote:Edit: long story short: the average level of English in Spain is painfully awful.

I'd say it's more or less the same here in the south side of Belgium...and there are laws that force GW to translate their products. I realise the local playerbase would be completely lost without the french rules (youngsters mostly), but I just can't stomach it

They did a run of Black Reach in Dutch but everything else is English. Most of the non-GW stores I attend only stock the English version, stating that while the Dutch version is nice, its useless when nothing else is translated.

Besides, we don't need no stinking translations, we can understand you just fine. Mmmmm.

GW codexs have a habit of always misspelling honor, color, armor and defense!

Kirasu surely you mean spelling them properly...


(and besides that's what you get when it's an english company )

FearPeteySodes wrote:Pardon my ignorance, what's the issue with the localized books?

Another thing apart from the rule issue is the fact that you very often get english grammar with german words. And Ork-dialect sounds crappy. And sentences that only work in english get tranlatet word by word. Example: Ork fluff, the part about "The lost race". There they quotet an ork, and he says "da only lost race i eva heard of woz wehen hef crashed his trike....". Now this doen't work in german, but instead of making up something else they just translate that and confuse german readers . Really, a single look into the german codex aured me that buying it in engl. was right. Even the troop-names on the packages are enough!

Kirasu wrote:GW codexs have a habit of always misspelling honor, color, armor and defense!

And 'despatch' *shudder*

And I'm not even having English as my first language...

Oh yeah, it was totally ridiculous to talk to the GW redshirt using the German troop names etc, so I just kept them in English

Luckily GW don't localize in Slovenia, but if they did it would be absolutely awful.

On french rules and codex, I found some traductions disturbing (names...) but also very useful sometimes. My main example is about the "wounded" word. In french there is a strict separation between the "wound" which come after the hit (french : "blesser/blessure"), and the "wound" lost after failing a save (french : "points de vie"). I found it clearer.

Anyway, I also have most of rules and codexi in french AND in english to not lose anything !

I have two codices in French and two in English. I get whatever language I can read it in if I can buy it locally. Otherwise I just order it in english off the web. I do prefer the books in English though.

So what are some of the horrible names?

cyrax777 wrote:So what are some of the horrible names?

Generally everything in the ork dex; Nobs are called "Bosses", and the syllable "war" is exchanged with "waagh" (waaghboss, waaaghbike)
Deffdreds are "Gargbots" and trukks are "pikk ups", and many names just include faaar too many Äs, Ös and Üs, wich makes them sound ridiculus.
Some more eyamples:
bazzukaz for rokkiz
Gargboss for Meganobs
Abrissbirnä for chrusha ball

and in the SM dex they turn devastators into "devastors"

Maybe some non-german speakers don't understand why theese names are so idiotic because you don't know what they mean, its quite hard to explain