Civilization 7 Leaders Dialogue Translations

[Lord Lakely]

Lafayette speaks very clear modern French.

"Nous marchons sans cesse entre deux abîmes. Le précaution et la moderation sont le chemin à suivre" - We constantly march between two abysses. Caution and moderation are the way to go (this sounds like Agenda Approval)

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Lafayette speaks very clear modern French.

"Nous marchons sans cesse entre deux abîmes. Le précaution et la moderation sont le chemin à suivre" - We constantly march between two abysses. Caution and moderation are the way to go (this sounds like Agenda Approval)

I was amused that the diplomatic screen translated his greeting into English with the gratitude phrase 's'il vous plait' unchanged.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I assume it's because "s'il vous plait" is universally known? Ironically I would have translated that - Lafayette was an aristocrat and would have intented such a phrase in its full and formal meaning. ('if it pleases thee")

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I assume it's because "s'il vous plait" is universally known? Ironically I would have translated that - Lafayette was an aristocrat and would have intented such a phrase in its full and formal meaning. ('if it pleases thee")

It's probably known well enough by the intended audience for the anglophone version of the game, sure.

 

[notNamed]

Lafayette speaks very clear modern French.

Does he make any consideration for Napoleonic French or is it modern Parisian?
Stuff like the famous uvular R which only developed later and such.

EDIT: Finally got to listen to him and nope. It is an anachronistic, fully modern French.

 

[Guandao]

so Catherine the Great speaks fluent modern Russian according to those in her thread.

 

[Xyael]

Does he make any consideration for Napoleonic French or is it modern Parisian?
Stuff like the famous uvular R which only developed later and such.

EDIT: Finally got to listen to him and nope. It is an anachronistic, fully modern French.

I am French myself. I can say that Lafayette speaks simply contemporary French. The interpreter gives him just a little emphasis with a slightly flowery, feminine tone that goes hand in hand with his mannered movements to signify his belonging to the aristocracy.
He speaks contemporary French, as any middle-class person here could do, without any linguistic marker of bourgeois class.
A nice detail is the use of the word "Citoyen" (which we hear when he introduces himself: "Citoyen La Fayette"). It was a popular title during the revolutionary era: the desire to erase all titles of nobility, by calling each other "citoyen" (or "citoyenne" in the feminine), all equal before the republic.

It is a "title" that is now obsolete, but is still used as a proper name or an adjective. Today, we more readily use the term "monsieur" (madame).


Just for the transcription :

"Nous marchons sans cesse entre deux abîmes. La précaution et la modération sont le chemin à suivre"
- We walk without ends between two abysses. Caution and moderation are the way to go.

(Appellez-moi) "Juste Citoyen Lafayette, s'il vous plaît"
- (Call me) Just, Citoyen Lafayette, please.

nota bene: just Lafayette without nobility titles

 

[Solver]

so Catherine the Great speaks fluent modern Russian according to those in her thread.

What we hear in her intro is "править силой личности, страстью, а не..." which means "to rule by force of personality, passion, but not..."
In the diplo with Machiavelli, I can only make out "но вы" - "but you".

 

[Uberfrog]

What we hear in her intro is "править силой личности, страстью, а не..." which means "to rule by force of personality, passion, but not..."
In the diplo with Machiavelli, I can only make out "но вы" - "but you".

There’s a little more in the short (with a translation which Russian YouTube commenters seem to think is accurate, if confused around the word “bloodless”).

 

[Solver]

Ha, that's a very unexpected phrasing. It can mean bloodless, but not necessarily - while that's definitely the translation of бескровный, in Catherine's time the word was often used in the meaning of "homeless", but that in turn could be used as "unprotected", so if I reaaaaaally stretch it, I could translate to "a system that protects nobody" but I don't believe that myself. Not in the least because suddenly using a word in an 18th century meaning would be strange in a script that otherwise uses very modern language.

I believe the intended meaning is something like "dispassionate system", in which case бескровный is a mistranslation. The root word кровь (blood) can mean "passion" and would be used so in classical literature, but then only as кровь - doing something else with the root returns it to the literal meaning of blood. And бескровный as in bloodless has always been understood as a good thing, so it just doesn't make sense for it to be used in a negative sense like Catherine does here. So from my knowledge of the language and translation experience, my best guess is "dispassionate" or something close was intended, but unfortunately translated in a way that won't convey that. Perhaps @Andrew Johnson [FXS] would be kind to confirm what the script said.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

My intent was "dispassionate," with a meta-commentary on players who seek only yield porn. Franklin, too, has some meta-game references in his opening line (in his First Look video). But in this case, I do not speak Russian and can't comment on the meaning of бескровный here. For this, we used a translator. I think in general what you see in the subtitles is what the writers have written (me, in this case) mostly in English (but there's often some back and forth with the translator).

 

[Solver]

Thanks Andrew - I'm admittedly a bit jubilant that I reverse engineered the intent there! Probably not as jubilant as you are at being able to poke fun at players in the script though.

Then бескровный is definitely going to be misunderstood, a clear option would have been бесстрастный (dispassionate) but that has a repetition with her mentioning passion earlier in the sentence, so I would have gone with бездушный (soulless), for better variety and also to circle back to the "Russian dusha" reference you have in the game guide and, I presume, the in-game encyclopedia.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Ah, yes, dusha was definitely a concept that I pulled from with Catherine. Thanks, belatedly!

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

(thinking re: Dusha a bit on Dale Pesmen's Russia and Soul).

 

[notNamed]

But why leave out the "Russian" part of it? Russian writers weren't really pondering the nature of soul, they were talking about the Russian soul.
This way you just run into issues with languages where dusha is just a normal word like any other.

What's in English:
Russian ability: "Russian word"

Will simply be:
Russian ability: Soul
in Polish, Russian, and any fan translations into other Slavic languages.

... and lack any tie to the musings about the nationalist spirit of the Russians.

 

[Solver]

That's the usual pattern really when conveying foreign cultural concepts. Take the foreign word that means something more general or mundane in that language, and give it a more specific meaning instead. It's like mentions of Ordnung in German culture. Ordnung is a regular noun meaning order in German, but Ordnung can be used in other languages to specifically refer to the German way of thoroughly defining and following regulations. La dolce vita just means "the sweet life" in Italian but in other languages it's a reference to specific aspects of the Italian lifestyle.

There's even more examples from Russian, like Spetsnaz is commonly used as a reference to Russian military special forces, but in Russian it's a generic noun for any special forces of any country, including police units.

In languages where dusha already means he soul, the correct approach is to modify the name in the target language, in this case clarifying it. A Polish translation should use "dusza rosyjska" and absolutely not copy the English "dusha" or use a one-word "dusza". Of course I say that as someone who considers the semantic approach to translation superior.

 

[untitledjuan]

Now that we've seen that José Rizal will be making an appearance in the game, I hope his voiced lines are delivered in a mix of Spanish and Tagalog, considering he wrote his literary works in Spanish and spoke Tagalog as his family language. I'm also hoping he speaks Filipino Spanish, which is a rather uncommon variety of Spanish that, in the present-day, is sadly at risk of going extinct.

 

[notNamed]

Ok so the final tally seems to be:

21 leaders of which:
7 leaders have a historic language: Ashoka, Hatshepsut, Augustus, Charlemagne, Xerxes, Ibn Battuta?, Isabella?
2 leaders spoke a modern language: Harriet Tubman, Ben Franklin
12 leaders spoke a historic language, but the game has them speak a modern one instead: everyone else

Of those 12 we could have had:
Napoleon and Lafayette speaking Revolutionary French (extremely well documented, not impossible to do)
Catherine speak Petrine Russian (extremely well documented, not impossible to do but you need to do research in Russian)
Confucius speak Classical Chinese (well documented, but a stylistic choice, his own language is not reconstructible to the point of sentences)
Himiko speak Old Japanese (well documented, doable but takes serious effort not unlike Hatshepsut)
Machiavelli speak medieval Italian (well documented, not impossible to do)
Pachacuti speak Classical Quechua (don't know enough to comment there)

I'm writing José Rizal off as someone who's going to get the modern language treatment (because he almost certainly will) but I hesitate specifying him here as he's likely going to be speaking Tagalog and that sounds reasonable. Unless they go all-in on English words with it, once again skipping into the modern day with a language which, while similar, wasn't exactly the same beast in the 19th century (just like Russian or French).

 

[ThERat]

just to clarify, so these people will speak their historic nations language, like Napoleon will speak French even though he leads Spain? This is all so nonsensical lol

 

[gdr_willter]

just to clarify, so these people will speak their historic nations language, like Napoleon will speak French even though he leads Spain? This is all so nonsensical lol

Meanwhile, in Napoleonic Spain in real history:

Civilizations in Civ 7 is not ethnics/nations, but just forms of life and tradition.