A little more about the "on the Path" translation. Here's the song that's titled "Back On The Path" (willing to bet real money that it's something like "znov na szlaku" in the original, sorry for the Ukrainian-translit of Polish).
Does this sound like a Witcher Path to you? :P
To me, it sounds exactly like being on the road somewhere back home in Ukraine. I grew up with this atmosphere, hiked a lot through villages and so on. It feels awesome playing a game about it!
*says the person who hasn't touched the game in a week, b/c work and other stuff, lol - but looking forward to getting back to it
Another little translation thing that's been stuck in my head. When Geralt meets monsters, he sometimes grumbles "zar-r-raza", and I've been trying to figure out how I'd render that in English. It's an extremely mild, children's swear (think "darn" by mildness), which translates literally as something like "you contagious thing", with tones of an annoying thing/situation that just won't go away or leave you alone. I don't think I know any corresponding expressions in English everyday language.
He says that only in Russian version (not sure about Ukrainian). In Polish it's simple and straightforward "kurwa" and I was always wondering why in Russian translation they decided to use such a soft curse!
@kravietz Nope, I'm listening to the Polish version. Don't do Russian localizations on principle, most of them are shit. Witcher does have some exceptions - I know at least one really good translator on those games - but thanks to him, I already know exactly how the sausage was made on this one, which is what interests me.
But I do admit the zaraza thing surprised me immensely. I didn't even think it was a thing in Polish.
Can capture a sound bit when done with work for the day.
Oh wait, but it's the game, not the series, right?
That's interesting, I was thinking game was also using the original "kurwa" as in the books.
If Polish game version decided to go with "zaraza", which directly translates to "plague" in Polish, and is rather archaic form, this explains why they used the same in Russian.
And game might have gone for "zaraza" to bypass age restrictions 😃
@kravietz Yeah, the game. XD And nah, the Polish version isn't going light on the age restrictions - it has some of the most creative swearing in dialogue I've ever read, the English version doesn't hold a candle to it!
Geralt has a lot of different combat quips, from "damn, you're disgusting" to "...not good" on the milder side of the scale to a few more creative ones, where I'd need to look up the exact formula to be sure.
Ok, that is probably my mistake - it seems like Geralt uses "zaraza" even in the original book stories a lot - along with "kurwa" 😀
@kravietz Not surprising - if you're saying it sounds old rather than childish, then it's an easy way to create a medieval style simultaneously with the whole "intellectual with a sword" vibe Sapkowski was going for! Very elegant solution on his part, I think.
His opponents have a lot of variations, tho - apologies for bad spelling, I can understand Polish, but haven't read too much in the language so don't know how things should be properly spelled - but "zgin, stervojazhe" tickles me to bits.
Sapkowski's language is very rich indeed, and he brought back a lot of almost-forgotten words. I think language forms large part of his popularity, the other is the "intellectual with a sword" atmosphere that you so precisely captured.
"Zgiń, ścierwojadzie!" is the spelling in Polish :) Literally "die corpse eater".
@kravietz I should probably pick up the books in the original and read them for fun, maybe even go for the Rijnevan books as well for old times' sake. I leafed through the English translations of the Witcher books, and you can also see where the translators struggled with the language and where they lost.
And yup, I got the meaning - that's why it tickles me. :P But jadzie, of course, and the śc - makes sense. I really need to do some looking at Polish text so that I can actually spell!
Modern Polish spelling is problematic for many Polish speakers - all these sz, cz, rz could be easily replaced by š, č, ř (as in Czech in Slovak) but we stick to these awkward digraphs for some reason.
The word "ścierwo" has double meaning in Polish, one for "corpse", the other a popular insult - I guess it's the same in Ukrainian (стерва) and Russian. "-jad" (-ед) is obviously a noun made from verb jeść (eat).
I may be biased because as an IT guy I love to optimize things and Polish spelling is one of the most wasteful encodings I've seen 😂
So in addition to these digraphs, we have sounds which are identical but are written differently - H and CH, Ż and RZ, U and Ó - depending on their etymology.
For example, "morze" (sea) and "może" (he/she/it can) sounds 100% identical but are written differently, which is a cause of endless headache for school children in Poland 😀
@kravietz Most of those have historical roots, though - I suddenly wonder whether those spelling distinctions would be useful for NLP, because when humans do process those tiny differences, they let us catch much more of the context than we realize, afaik.
And at least it's not "dearest creature in creation" levels of pronunciation weirdness!
Do you mean natural language processing or neuro-linguistic programming? 🤔
@kravietz Natural language processing. XD The other NLP is fun, but not in a programming context!
@kravietz Yep, it's the same insult, and I'm guessing it's short for "corpse-eater" as an insult as well.
Changing spellings is a pain in any language, because it's a massive amount of effort to get it disseminated. So most of the time dictionaries go for recording changes that have already been introduced via necessity as modes of speaking and writing change. You may get your graphemes yet. :)