Hi, everyone. This topic may be of interest to those looking to play Civilization IV in Chinese (simplified characters) or access files. I didn't manage to find ways to legally buy Civ 4 in Chinese either in English or Chinese internet (unless you count buying disks off ebay or something like that) but I did manage to find the translation made by the Chinese fans of Civilization.
Translation scope: all in-game texts (audio remains English)
Requirements: Civ 4 vanilla/Warlords/BtS of the latest version (1.74/2.13/3.19 respectively); in my case, it was the multilingual (EN/FR/DE/IT/ES) GOG complete edition. N.B.: After installation it leaves only English and Chinese (simplified) versions.
Link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/c8zzxqz5ohznokq/civ4_3in1_cn_20100719.rar (contains an .exe installer with new text .xml files; doesn't contain any new graphical, video, sound assets; Windows Defender didn't detect anything sus)
Instruction:
1. Unpack the archive, 2. Launch the installer, 3. Select the folder containing the game.
Notes on this version
In the attachments below you can see some screenshots after the translation is installed. Since it's a fan-made, and not an official translation, it doesn't contain any weird censorship of anything related to China or communism like the official localization (which renamed China to 九鼎国 or "state of the nine tripods" among other things; see it described in detail in this post).
From a cursory glance (especially given that I'm not proficient in Chinese), it has adequately translated civilizations, wonders etc. But I did notice some things that should be pointed out.
- 'German' is translated as 日耳曼 ri4er3man4 which literally means 'Germanic' (as in Germanic peoples - English, German, Dutch etc) instead of 德意志 de2yi4zhi4 'German' which comes from the German word Deutsch for 'German'. It is amusing, though, that due to this Japanese and Germans are collated together under the same character 日.
- 'Scandinavian’ is translated as 维京 wei2jing1 'Viking' instead of the more accurate but ginormously long 斯堪的納維亞 'Scandinavia(n)’.
- 'Korea(n)' is translated as 高丽 gao1li2 which means 'Goryeo'; this is not wrong, of course, and historically appropriate given that the Korean leader is Wang Kon, founder of Goryeo dynasty. 高丽 is used sometimes in Mandarin to refer to things from Korea or Korean civilization in general (like 高丽人参, 'Korean ginseng') but this is not a term that refers to any of the currently existing Korean polities.
I did stumble, however, on a pretty snide remark left by one of translators in the article on the Korean history. It precedes the first paragraph (which relates the story of the mythological Korean king Tan'gun born of a bear-woman in the 3rd millennium BC), and says basically the following: "note that the content below is the fantasy of Korean people, and shouldn't be taken seriously". The translator does use the term 高丽人 which means "Goryeo people", and doesn't imply any modern Korean people by itself (which would be rather refered to as 朝鲜人 or 韩国人).
This version plays exactly the same but I did notice it added an era indicator in the upper left corner, between the treasury and research bar (in the screen below it says 远古时代 'Ancient era'). IIRC it isn't present in the official version.
Translation scope: all in-game texts (audio remains English)
Requirements: Civ 4 vanilla/Warlords/BtS of the latest version (1.74/2.13/3.19 respectively); in my case, it was the multilingual (EN/FR/DE/IT/ES) GOG complete edition. N.B.: After installation it leaves only English and Chinese (simplified) versions.
Link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/c8zzxqz5ohznokq/civ4_3in1_cn_20100719.rar (contains an .exe installer with new text .xml files; doesn't contain any new graphical, video, sound assets; Windows Defender didn't detect anything sus)
Instruction:
1. Unpack the archive, 2. Launch the installer, 3. Select the folder containing the game.
Notes on this version
In the attachments below you can see some screenshots after the translation is installed. Since it's a fan-made, and not an official translation, it doesn't contain any weird censorship of anything related to China or communism like the official localization (which renamed China to 九鼎国 or "state of the nine tripods" among other things; see it described in detail in this post).
From a cursory glance (especially given that I'm not proficient in Chinese), it has adequately translated civilizations, wonders etc. But I did notice some things that should be pointed out.
- 'German' is translated as 日耳曼 ri4er3man4 which literally means 'Germanic' (as in Germanic peoples - English, German, Dutch etc) instead of 德意志 de2yi4zhi4 'German' which comes from the German word Deutsch for 'German'. It is amusing, though, that due to this Japanese and Germans are collated together under the same character 日.
- 'Scandinavian’ is translated as 维京 wei2jing1 'Viking' instead of the more accurate but ginormously long 斯堪的納維亞 'Scandinavia(n)’.
- 'Korea(n)' is translated as 高丽 gao1li2 which means 'Goryeo'; this is not wrong, of course, and historically appropriate given that the Korean leader is Wang Kon, founder of Goryeo dynasty. 高丽 is used sometimes in Mandarin to refer to things from Korea or Korean civilization in general (like 高丽人参, 'Korean ginseng') but this is not a term that refers to any of the currently existing Korean polities.
I did stumble, however, on a pretty snide remark left by one of translators in the article on the Korean history. It precedes the first paragraph (which relates the story of the mythological Korean king Tan'gun born of a bear-woman in the 3rd millennium BC), and says basically the following: "note that the content below is the fantasy of Korean people, and shouldn't be taken seriously". The translator does use the term 高丽人 which means "Goryeo people", and doesn't imply any modern Korean people by itself (which would be rather refered to as 朝鲜人 or 韩国人).
This version plays exactly the same but I did notice it added an era indicator in the upper left corner, between the treasury and research bar (in the screen below it says 远古时代 'Ancient era'). IIRC it isn't present in the official version.
