Just a heads-up: a person living in my home address is apparently making a Finnish translation. Let’s see what happens.
I’ll be following closely this topic for the linguistic challenges.
Perfect!
And if it’s ok for you, I’d need your assistance with the sprites when the time comes.
I’ll do all the Photoshopping.
I wanted to say I could also help with drawing but I remembered @ZakPhoenixMcKracken showed me your work and you surely don’t need help
Yes, well, I’m a graphic designer…
I have encountered some problems already with pre/postpositions, but the real showstopper came with “air-quotes”. We use them as gestures all the time, but I couldn’t figure out what we call them. So I asked couple of our copywriters. They were a bit baffled too, but one of them knows a guy, who calls them “ilmahipsut”. Never heard of the term, but I understand it and I’ll go with that. “Hipsu” is an everyday expression, which is not really translatable, but for some reason everyone knows it means this: "
“Ilma” is “air”. Straight translation of “air-quotes” would’ve been “ilma-lainausmerkit”, but anyone using that would be recognised as an accountant.
(as a side-note: Teletubbies’ Dipsy is also known as Hipsu)
I already translated Chuckie as Pikku-Chuck (Little Chuck).
Madame Morena is now Rouva Morena (Mrs. Morena). It was a difficult choice, as the meaning is not entirely the same as in French (German “Frau Morena” is a close equivalence). I’m still on the fence if I’d still go with Madame.
Nickel News… I understand this refers to the nickel not bending, so I have been thinking naming it Taipumaton toimitus (An unbending newsroom) or Taipumattomat sanomat (The Unbending press). But as the nickel refers also to the coin, which is part of one assignment, I might leave this untranslated.
Although… 2 inches is 5,08 centimeters (so, 5 cents ), and an inch is tuuma, and a tuuma is also a thought. So Kahden tuuman sanomat would be A Press of 2 inches or A Press of two minds… But that’s too far fetched…
say that again! I always thought the Nickel News is simply sold for 1 nickel.
My suggestion is to keep the names as they are.
Keep Madame Morena, it’s part of her name.
Don’t translate Delores to “the low-res” in Finnish.
Keep Nickel News: you don’t translate The Huffington Post either.
Don’t translate “Mansion mansion” of course. Even if the second word is a translatable noun.
Back in the '50s or something maybe.
I have to. There are sentences where English word(s) don’t work. “Edmundin kartano -kartano” works perfectly.
Wasn’t going to Although I did think of a legal translation for that, which might be Loresa (never heard of a Finn with that name, but it would be a legal name). “Matalaresoluutio” would not be an approvable name…
Nickel News: I already decided not to translate that one.
Madame Morena: Madame has a certain sound to it, and Rouva has another. The latter would make her more respectable, and I’m a bit tempted to make her that in her environment, especially remembering her in TWP with mushrooms. It would create some contrast to the story. But Madame rhymes with Morena…
Obviously the newpaper’s got a long history!
Obviously the newpaper’s got a long history!
as witnessed by the printing press!
of course, when inflation came around they didn’t want to change the household name!
in 1988 it costed $1.99
It might have been a sarcastic remark in 1987. You know, usually the paper cost about 50 cents back then, but they called themselves Nickel News, because the content was worth of that much.
Obviously the newpaper’s got a long history!
Well, we all know the Nickel News has been established in 19…
All lines translated. Next up playtest and a lot of corrections.
As I suspected, I really have to bake the verbs into object names, which creates some problems.
Example:
Look at speck of dust = Katso pölyhiukkasta
Pick Up speck of dust = Poimi pölyhiukkanen
If we mix these, we’ll see where the problem lies:
“Katso pölyhiukkanen” sounds like “Look! A speck of dust!”, and “Poimi pölyhiukkasta” means “Pick up a part of the speck of dust”, which would be difficult without a really sharp knife.
So, I need to pick one. In this case it’s the basic form “pölyhiukkanen”, as Look at is used with the Speck of Dust only once, and Pick up a million times.
But there are a lot more with the same difficult choice to make, and as a result there will be some clumsy translations.
I thought that Italian was a though language, but I admit that Finnish is way more complicated!
Katso if it’s complicated!
Finnish translations for e.g. Turn on radio and Turn off radio sound a little cumbersome. Turn radio on and Turn radio off (so Turn NOUN1 on/off) would be correct.