Exult Forum

To all the people interested in Serpent Isle in French,

It's getting finsihed really fast. Only 24 files to go. The goal is to have everything translated by the 5 of April, to coincide with the anniversary of the move to Sourceforge, one year ago.

Hopefully, we'll make it good and we'll make it on time. As usual, we would like the most testers possible when the alpha release will be made. If you know some french and own Serpent Isle, please download the patch and test it.

It is likely there will be spelling mistakes as well as those pesky french conjugaison errors. Please bear with us as we try to correct them. Don't hesitate to report any error on the bug report. I'll create a spelling section for the bug tracker soon.

As usual, you can get all the latest information on http://www.serpentisle.fr.st or http://sf.net/projects/si-french/.

Thanks for your support!

Artaxerxes
translator / sf project admin


ps: for info, the conversations left to be done are:
MONITOR
* Shazzana - 044A
* Simon - 044C
* Spektor - 044D

MOONSHADE
* Filbercio (MageLord) - 0412
* Freli - 0413
* Gustacio - 0416
* Julia - 0417
* Melino - 0418
* Rocco - 041E

FAWN
* Zulith - 043D

SS
* Beryl (mage from SS) - 049B
* Drusilla - 0619 - translation started
* Rieya - 061A - translation started
* 3rd witch from SS - 061B - translation started

NORTHERN FOREST
* Draygan - 049C
* Morghrim (Master of Forest from Pagan) - 049F - translation started

OTHER
* Chaos hierophant - 0355
* Yenani (gwani) - 0494
* Gwenno - 0495
* Sethys - 0498
* signs - 0334
* books - 0638 0282 031D

Neato, when its done I'll take a look at it. I can use it as an excuse to tell myself I'm studying French.

Say... there's a thought for a future enhancement:

Allow 'usecode' to contain multiple copies of the text so it has both English and French, and provide a quick way to switch between the two. Then you really could claim you're 'studying'.

Bon travail, J'ai hâte de voir le produit fini.

Achile

If faut que vous finissiez SI-French!

Just that everyone is aware, we decided fairly early on the translation to use modern french.
True, it doesn't match U7's oldy feeling and true, it doesn't match Ultima 7 Part I: La Porte Noire.
Here are the reasons why you need to understand why we chose that path:

Old french and old english have different reachable crowd
In English, if you're (un)fortunate enough, you'll have to study the die-hard original Shakespear texts. And more than once. You are fairly acquainted with the old English grammar rules and "look-and-feel". However, old french is much much more rare. French literature studied in class never was in old french and I don't know of anyone who has studied textbook in old french. To get some old french books, you've got to look as far back as the 1500s. Moreover, there are almost no rules in its spelling as far as I know and to be honest, it's very hard to read. Which lead to the second point.

Ultima should be pleasant to play
The french version of BG was truely a immense work to accomplish and unfortunately, it was very unpleasant to play it. You'd rather play a game like Ultima to kill some monsters, to accomplish some missions and to save the world and not to squint your eyes and your brain trying to decifer what a phrase would mean in "regular" french. Ultima is fun and playing it should be fun. Also, when you think about it, Lord British and the avatar have been to and in Britannia long enough to help people to speak like it is done at home. Why would suddenly the Avatar talk to Lord British in old french while they both come from the modern world?

I think the purists will be upset at us. They are welcome to translate SI in old french. And while we are at it, I know of a couple of people interested in translating the old french BG into modern french. Anyone else interested ?

Artaxerxes

Really... the English version of BG employed an awfully modernized form of English, I'd hardly call in old English

Well at first the Sosarians spayk laik dis, but then Mr. Nose and the Avatar helped spread Ye New-Olde Lorde Bruitishes English to all Britannia, and the people rejoiced. Chuckles was ambivilent.

Yes, I wouldn't say that Ultima's text is old English, but more like modern English with a few thee's and thou's thrown in.

Just that you know, the french version of BG was 100% pure olde francoys.

It was HORRIBLE to read. A real pain in the butt.

Artaxerxes

Do you have example of it.

I can read Francien (Français Ancien) . J'ai déjà lu un roman du moyen-âge qui était complètement en Francien et c'était dur et long à lire car il fallait prononcer chaque mot comme c'est écrit.

Achile

/me tries his rusty French skills...

"
I've already read a book from the middle ages which was completely in Francien and that was hard and long to read because you had to pronounce each word like it's written
"

Please correct me if I'm wrong

pretty good Willem. I think you've nailed it!

Please you french speaking dudes. This is an international board. Please use the international language: English.

Artaxerxes

k

Achile

bah, you really know how to take the fun out of trying to act like an elitist

you got it all wrong! Speaking like an elitist in French would be:

z4rm4, 5i 7u c4pt3s l3 73x73 7'35 3l337!



4r75x3rx35

>4r75x3rx35

Wrong! It's meant to be 4r74x3rx35!

Hi Artaxerxes,
sorry if I address you in this topic.

I searched the forum for translation, and I found a very interesting topic about it: http://exult.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5118#p5118

Here you wrote:

"ps: I've also prepared a page on the side for those who want to translate SI in your own language. The page is not finished but it is a good start. Please visit [url]http://artaxerxes_2.tripod.com/serpentisleenfrancais/id2.html[/url] for more info"

Actually this link seems to be broken.
Did you move it somewhere else or the page is no more available?

After some research I found this
page http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_d ... p_id=50587.
These are the same info which were available at the broken link page? Or do you have some more?

I did not find the perl scripts referenced in this page. Are they still available somewhere?

One more question: I found a French fonts.vga (Italian uses accentuated letters) which I modified slightly for Italian and I realised that the line spacing is higher than the orginal English, probably due to the fact the the letters are higher. This happens also in French?

I'm asking since the transparent background Exult offers for text partially overlaps text itself when you have a two people conversation on the screen.

Finally (forgive me..): fonts.vga provided with SI is different from BG?

Thank you in advance

Ciao

Fabrizio

Fabrizio wrote:
>
> Hi Artaxerxes,
> sorry if I address you in this topic.

No pb


> After some research I found this
> page
> http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_d ... p_id=50587.
> These are the same info which were available at the broken
> link page? Or do you have some more?

It is the same. As a matter of fact, the sourceforge one is more up to date.

> I did not find the perl scripts referenced in this page. Are
> they still available somewhere?

I have them on my system. I can send them to you if you want.

> One more question: I found a French fonts.vga (Italian uses
> accentuated letters) which I modified slightly for Italian
> and I realised that the line spacing is higher than the
> orginal English, probably due to the fact the the letters are
> higher. This happens also in French?

Yes, the top/bottom spacing a different. It is because the uppercase ç.

> Finally (forgive me..): fonts.vga provided with SI is
> different from BG?

Yes, it is different. There are no ophidien letters in BG. SI's fonts.vga has more fonts in it.

> Fabrizio


Actually, I happen to have a list of people who started the Italien translation of SI. Send me an email and we'll talk about it.

Artaxerxes

Regarding Old English, I've been debating whether or not to use it for the new game I am working on. Personally, I like the older feeling it seems to give, but my biggest concern was that people who don't speak English as their first language might have a harder time with it. I hadn't considered possible familiarity with Shakespearian works and the like.

Anyone else have an opinion on Old English vs modern English for a CRPG?


-Karl

For the English crowd, I'd say use Ultima-English. As others pointed it out, it's not really old-english so it's pretty readable.

Make a script that replaces You by Thou or Thee and you're all set!

Artaxerxes

And replace 'do' with 'dost'