Requests to native speakers for sorting out voicelines

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · October 10, 2020, 08:44 AM

Greetings, as some of you may already know, I'm starting a project of a minimod that would make all factions speak in their native language (well, modern languages of the region, ofc.) Using medieval 2 localized multilanguage voicefiles and others (from total war games, probably some from Empire). However, I've come across the difficulty of having to classify some files as native or foreign sounding (within each language), so I'm asking native speakers for help. I do not need you to speak or record anything, I need people able to recognize their country's accent in an audio or video.

Update: Spanish, French and Russian are already covered. Now I'd need an Italian and a German.
If you are willing to contribute, or know a forum member from those countries that could be interested, please reply on this thread or message me. Any response would be greatly appreciated.

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · October 10, 2020, 02:07 PM

Can't edit posts yet.
Edit: British not needed, my mistake. Vanilla game in english has clearly foreign sounding accents for all the rest of the factions. (I think we all know those haha)

**Cephalophore** · October 10, 2020, 07:48 PM

I don't know if you found Arabic voice files. I know there are some threads that discussed it. I am not a native speaker, nor do I have proper audio equipment, but I do know some Arabic and I know native speakers who could help me with proper grammar and pseudo accent. (The current arabic accent is pretty bad imo)

I know an Iranian guy who might be willing to do Farsi - trouble is I don't think I can transfer money online to Iran as an American. So I can't really guarantee they would agree and I also wouldn't be willing to inquire until you were to produce a version that works... and just to further reiterate, I can't really speak on their behalf...

Nobody from wikitongues is going to give us old phrases for free lol

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · October 10, 2020, 10:08 PM

To be honest, if i may, i wouldn't care too much about authenticity as in it sounding historical, it would be nice if possible here and there, but i wouldn't think about it dedicatedly, because even various localizations of the vanilla game aren't really that either.

As for threads on recording arabic, i previously found some in the Broken Crescent forums (a submod), but when i downloaded the voices in that, i didn't found any arabic, and it seemed neither did other members (they may have had to remove or replace them for any ownership conflict? Or maybe an upload mistake, i don't know), otherwise i would be willing to ask for permissions, if you found any please let me know.

I'd like to point out that there are arabic voices in the EmpireTW files, maybe enough for campaign map, but very few for battle (I'd be partial for it being monotonous or even mixed with the english rather than being left as it is, but preferentially i'd be glad to leave those choices as optional). As for your knowledge of arabic, i'd probably ask you for help when i start checking them (on them being accurate to the event trigger, or them being well sounding in general, etc.) but that will surely take a while, and needless to say, only if you are interested.

Lastly, i appreciate your intention about the Farsi and the Iranian Guy, but i really don't want this involve any money, (well i guess nothing stops you from getting the files that way and replacing it somehow lol but personally i just wouldn't want to take part).

Thank you for your insights.

**Cephalophore** · October 10, 2020, 11:43 PM

I agree that the authenticity of the voices don't need to be historical, but it is a "historical improvement project" afterall. The other languages are modern afaik and that's okay.

I know the thread for broken crescent you're talking about (I think). I only found a youtube video of the Arabic voices in game. He might have uploaded on moddb. If I find them I'll inquire for permission.

Ahh, that's good news about Arabic in Empire. I don't mind verifying what they say for you and I would be interested.

As for the Iranian guy, he is a friend of mine and I would be doing it as an exchange of favors. It wouldn't be like an official contract or anything and the mods will remain free. The monetary exchange would strictly be between the two of us. Then I would send the files to you, then you could add them. Truly, I understand your objection and if you don't feel comfortable that is absolutely fine.
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No problem... I would like to help and I figured I should offer what I can.

Anyways, as long as you end up releasing a working version then I'd be happy to get more involved. Hopefully that doesn't sound rude, but I wouldn't want to do the work only for it never to get a release. sometimes life gets in the way of these projects.

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · October 10, 2020, 11:59 PM

Not rude at all, it's alright! You can do that, I understand, I could add those and mention you. And on my part, i'm sure i will release it, but maybe it could take up to months, for now i've majorly been trying to make orderly plans (after all there's like 30k files lol).

Yeah, i get the SSHIP vision, i love it, i meant i just wouldn't want to have to leave out or delete files among the "modern" ones.

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · October 11, 2020, 12:41 AM

^{Update: There's full length prebattle speeches recorded in russian (In that localization), oddly enough were included originally not for the russian factions, but for the others.}

**dfz** · November 22, 2020, 02:11 PM

Hi, I’m a Russian native speaker, let me know how I can help!

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · November 26, 2020, 05:55 AM

Originally Posted by dfz

Hi, I’m a Russian native speaker, let me know how I can help!

Hi dfz, I was trying to solve an issue some days ago, you're welcome, I'll PM you right away! Didn't expect a Russian contributor this soon, I'm glad.

**kaiser29** · November 30, 2020, 08:22 PM

I'm half italian and half danish, and i can norwegian and french too

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · November 13, 2021, 04:16 PM

AoE4 seems to have voicelines in the medieval versions of english, french, german, russian, arabic and even mongolian languages... Any opinions?

Btw, this project expanded a bit too much back then, when I tried to pick voices from ETW and RTW in all the languages, also a couple other games, but I haven't dropped it altogether, I just noticed after finishing a faction that the scope had gotten massive and extremely tedious considering is just one aspect of the game.

I plan to keep it going too, but for now I'd like to adapt the Ha Hawk native voices mod for vanilla to SSHIP and work the full thing through the next years.

**Cephalophore** · November 16, 2021, 08:46 PM

I haven't played aoe4 so I'm unsure. I'm assuming it's not feasible to use them because they won't have proper contexts for TW? I think an adaption of HaHawk would be perfect. Afaik, this leaves (icelandic/norwegian/or danish), Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi left. I wonder if the Hungarians have tried a translation at magyar mod

**~~removeduser_28376423423~~** · November 17, 2021, 12:41 PM

I think it's worth noting that Polish and Turkish are feasibly covered by ETW content, Portuguese also, but Arabic would perhaps be too few, there's also Swedish as an Scandinavian option. Greek may be covered by EB voices. I think the hardest to cover would be Hungarian and Serbian. Do we have a Persian faction? Or you meant Farsi for specific units?

By the way, I've found a way to look at the aoe4 audio files, I don't think it would be out of context; I meant mainly generic stuff like "yes?", "orders?", "charge!", etc.