What needs to be done and who's doing what

[Beiss]

PLEASE, look in the staff section on our website to see which positions are filled and who's on the team.

As you might have gathered already, most of the job that needs to be done in this project involves translating and recording.

The following will be translated:

1. Unit responses (e.g. "Attack!" "Run for your life!" "Yes, commander!" "Peasants!" etc.);
2. Pre-battle speeches

In short - all speech in the game, save for faction intro videos and such.

STAGE 0

The first thing we need to do is to write down everything everyone says in the game. Unit names, commands, responses, everything. Every spoken word in the game needs to be written down, so that the translators can start translating things. Hopefully, we'll find a way to extract the subtitles from the pre-battle speeches, so we won't have to listen through them all and write them down. All of this written-down speech will then be available in what I've decided to call "master source documents" - read more about those here .

The below has been grayed out until it becomes important:


To those of you who don't know how you can help, this is the help we need:

A. People who speak any of the languages mentioned below (or who can find people who do), and who fit into any or several of the below "slots" (or know someone who does). Keep in mind that we need more than one person to do each language, or we'll be having the same voices for agents, generals, and princesses... yeah, that wouldn't be so good.
- Decent voice actors (Keep age in mind. Teen voices might sound wimpy on the battlefield - no offense intended)
- People with decent recording equipment
- People who have done army service and are familiar with present-day commands
- People who can translate the pre-battle speeches into something that doesn't sound awkward in the other language
- People who know anything about any of the medieval languages mentioned below
- People who know things about military history / medieval army commands
- People who can collect information on / learn about the above or below.

B.
- People who know how to implement the sound files into the actual game
- People who know how to extract the sound files from the actual game

C. People who can help with writing down every line heard in the game. This is actually the first thing we need to do.

We will need lots of people for this project. Tell your friends, tell the world! I don't want to sit here all alone doing all the work

STAGE 1

Stage 1 consists of having each faction speak their modern form of their language. For example, Milan and Venice will most likely speak the same kind of Italian, unless someone feels like the modern Milan accent is very different from the Venice one. It's all up to you. This stage will require little work - hardly any, if we can find native speakers of the languages listed below. The real issue here is figuring out which modern-day dialect of each of these is the most representative for all - for example, if we use Berliner German, will that make other Germans feel weird? Would using Hannover German be a good compromise? Sometimes, the dialect spoken in the capital of a country is considered by the rest of the inhabitants to be "posh", which is not a good thing in this case.

Of course, dialectal differences are not necessarily an issue, but if it is, it's also something we want to circumvent.

RTW was translated completely into several languages such as German and French. Unfortunately, I'm afraid we can't simply extract samples from various versions of M2TW and inject them into an English copy - there would probably be tons of legal issues there. Nothing stopping us from imitating those translations, though... right? ;P

Also, I've heard suggestions to skip this stage for as many languages as possible and go straight to Stage 2. We might not be able to do this with more than one or two languages, however. It also might be a good idea to keep a copy of what the modern version of a language sounds like so we can compare it to the medieval one.

LIST OF LANGUAGES: (will be completed later/under revision)

Arabic (split into Egyptian and Maghreb?)
Danish (eastern / western?)
French
German (Hannoverisch?)
Greek
Hungarian
Italian (split into Milanese, Venician and Sicilian?)
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Scottish (Gàidhlig?)
Spanish (non-Madrid?)
Turkish
etc.


STAGE 2

Stage 2 will be the making of voicepacks with speech that is intended to sound as authentically medieval as possible. This will require research and will take time. This text isn't grayed out, because research can be done without the game. Look for any information on how to speak any of the medieval Languages listed below. The idea is to make a voicepack that is somehow an average of how the language in question sounded during the period in which M2TW takes place.

This stage might never be done or finished, but we should be able to push out one or two voicepacks here. There must be lots of people who know all about medieval English, for example. Judging from how much info I've already found on wikipedia alone, much is known about most of the major medieval languages, and even though it is impossible to reproduce these languages 100% correctly, we should be able to produce something that most people would think of as passable. The links below will direct you to relevant articles. For most languages, I haven't been able to find an article on their medieval form in English. If you're a native speaker of, say, Hungarian, I'm sure you'll have a much easier time finding information about medieval Hungarian than I will, being a speaker of several languages, but not Hungarian. The articles I have linked to are not intended to be be-all-end-all, but rather a starting position for further research.

Concering Latin - as we all know, it was something of a unifying language in medieval times, much like modern-day English. In RTW, spies, assassins and diplomats were all given their own voicepacks/soundsets, and assuming the same goes for M2TW, it would be nice to have diplomats, and especially priests, speak Latin on the campaign map. Ideally, they will even speak their own accent of Latin

LIST OF LANGUAGES: (will be completed later/under revision)

Medieval Scottish
Medieval Arabic
Medieval Danish - Icelandic
Middle English
Old French, Anglo-Norman
Medieval Latin (for agents such as priests)
Medieval Greek
"Italian"
Medieval Portuguese
Medieval Hungarian
Medieval German
Medieval Castilian Spanish
Medieval Russian
etc.

CURRENT STAFF:

Beiss (Coordinator)
hogofwar (Arabic)
Jan-Taihwo (Medieval Danish)
Corinthian Hoplite (Portuguese)
U.A.T. (Portuguese)
Pyrgopolynices (Portuguese, Latin)
Oswald von Wolkenstein (Medieval German)
Hun Birodalom (Hungarian)
Ultras DVSC (Hungarian)
Wilhelm_II (Medieval Polish)
Matty_P (Polish)
mac89 (Medieval Latin)
Kurogane (Spanish)
finneys13 (... "obscure tongues", possibly Scottish)
Valentin the II (Russian)
conspicuous (Russian)
Shigawire (Tech)

Any of the above who are listed as (Medieval X) are expected to be able to help out with the modern version of X as well, naturally.

[Korinthos Hoplites]

I think I can only help with point C and A. Working only as a secondary Portuguese actor in point A.

[Valentin the II]

There is a slite problem with old slavic.
There are just no sources about its military usage.
I can translate English to russian with some old words and exprations (18th-19th sentury old).
But thats it.

[Beiss]

I see your point, Valentin. This is a problem with the other langauges as well. Finding info on how the language sounded and what it was like is difficult in itself, but finding medieval military commands might just not be possible. We'll have to do our best with what we have.

Also, you don't have to do stage 2, you can just stick with stage 1. I'm not counting on being able to make much progress in stage 2 with most languages. For languages like medieval German, middle English, and medieval Italian, however, I think we should be able to produce something, but it will mean lots of hard work for those involved.

[Pyrgopolynices]

Corinthian Hoplite, we have some excellent documental supports for our military language in medieval ages:

The Crónicas of Fernão Lopes, mainly the Crónica del Rei Dom João - Fernão Lopes and his description of Lisbon siege and the Battle of Aljubarrota can provide us excellent vocabulary.

Os Lusíadas of Luís de Camões, where we can extract military and naval language (if needed)

The cantigas from galaico-portuguese trobadours: cantigas d'amigo and cantigas d'escárnio e maldizer are the best because cantigas d'amor have a differente type of language (often based on languedoc, not in true portuguese popular language). Although the military languague is not very common in cantigas, the variety of popular vocabulary will prove very useful. Cantigas d'escárnio e maldizer tell about some cowards who ran from battle and use military language, though.

The Compilaçam de todalas obras de Gil Vicente, from the same author (reunited by Paulo Vicente): first, Gil Vicents uses oral language, which is very important to find some common expressions; second, those plays written in portuguese that have no military language are very, very rare. The negative part is that Gil Vicente uses late XV-XVIth century portuguese...

[Beiss]

Wow. This is wonderful, Pyrgo. We need exactly this kind of info for the other langauges as well. If you want to start a thread on Portuguese/medieval Portuguese, go right ahead.

[wilpuri]

You could try to get Fianóglach to do the Gaelic. He's a native speaker.

[Beiss]

Fianóglach sounds like an Irish name, haha. Are you sure he's a speaker of Scottish Gaelic?

[Jan Taihwo]

Good News from me!
I just got my hand on the "Icelandic Sagas" collection. It contains many old Norse/Icelandic sagas written around AD 1200-1500.
Lot's and lot's of old text and poetry. (Though slightly modified).

Also found this interesting site : http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/...ega_about.html

Now is the time for me to research..


*And this one: http://www.northvegr.org/zoega/index002.php#bottoma (Just the same as the one above)

[finneys13]

Fianóglach sounds like an Irish name, haha. Are you sure he's a speaker of Scottish Gaelic?

In 1080, Irish and Scottish Gaelic were the same tongue, called Middle Irish.

[Beiss]

When did they become so different that they began to be looked upon as being two separate langauges, then?

Well, the Scots definitely need to be redone - I've been playing the game for a few hours now.... haha

[finneys13]

Middle Irish is the name given by historical philologists to the form of the Irish language from the 10th to 16th centuries; it is therefore a contemporary of Middle English. The modern Goidelic languages Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx are all descendants of Middle Irish.

At its height, Middle Irish was spoken throughout Ireland and Scotland; from Munster to the North Sea island of Inchcolm. Its geographical range made it the most widespread of all Insular languages before the late 12th century, when Middle English began to make inroads into Ireland, and many of the Celtic regions of northern and western Britain.

Few medieval European languages can rival the volume of literature extant in Middle Irish. Much of this survival is due to the tenacity of a few early modern Irish antiquarians, but the sheer volume of sagas, annals, hagiographies (etc) which survive shows how much confidence members of the medieval Gaelic learned orders had in their own vernacular. Almost all survives from Ireland, and little from Scotland or Man. The Lebor Bretnach, the "Irish Nennius", survives only from manuscripts preserved in Ireland; however, Thomas Owen Clancy has recently argued that it was written in Scotland, at the monastery in Abernethy.

A form of Middle Irish, known as "Classical Gaelic", was used as a literary language in Ireland until the 17th century and in Scotland until the 18th century; the Ethnologue gives the name "Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic" (and the ISO/DIS 639-3 code ghc) to this purely written language.

From wiki, covers MTW2 perfectly

[Pyrgopolynices]

I'm playing a quick campaign also

[Beiss]

@ finneys13: Aye, then, Middle Irish it is! I was too lazy to look it up in wikipedia myself, hehe

I'm sorry about things being updated slowly around here, but the forum and its server issues are really bothering me. I'm trying to move everything to the website, which will hopefully be up to date once I'm finished moving things.

[mac89]

I think we need to reorganize things - see what all the languages are(exactly which country speaks what)> Have we got the necessary translators> do we have the localized files

[ConstantineVII]

I would like in for Modern/Medieval Greek and Modern Turkish

[Beiss]

You're already in... check the website.

EDIT: Oh, I listed you under Ottoman instead of Modern Turkish. Sorry.

[Beiss]

Please refer to the website in the future. Locking thread.