Language translations for leader sayings

Soon enough Suleiman's new persona will be available

Nothing new, this is the old line and old animation, just the new look.

What I noticed though, is that in Sultan Saladin's spotlight the subtitles were the same as of his base game persona, but it got changed in the game.

But my point is they didn't actually "change his subtitles" for everything else - they literally forgot to assign the appropriate Saladin text lines, so they're defaulting to generic text.
I stumbled upon one comment under snowgigas's video with animation for the new persona and finally understood what you meant.
Dang the lines got changed but the voiced dialogue is still the same
Also as a modder myself, it looks like they used the default lines that exist for when someone makes a modded civ with a leader that has no custom dialogue….
That is some interesting choice on Firaxis part. Now I wonder will new Suleiman's persona also use them.
 
Certainly Persian, although I don't know the language to understand if it's modern or not.
I'm not an expert on Persian, but it sounds like Classical Persian to me, which is an older form of Farsi/Modern Persian.
 
Soon enough Suleiman's new persona will be available and we'll see if this is a pattern or just an unfortunate exception.
Just played two quick games:
  • One to meet Muhteşem Suleiman in the game - the Greeting subtitles and spoken words are the same as with old (Kanuni) Suleiman and the quote from Civilopedia is certainly a new recording.
  • Another to meet Sultan Saladin - his Greeting is back from generic one to the same as his Vizier persona. So most probably it was a mistake that got patched. Good that Firaxis listens. :thumbsup: Now I if they also swapped the Attacked and Declares War spoken dialogue so they match the English subtitles. :mischief:
 
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@Red Khan Can you upload the new leaders (Julius Caesar, Nzinga Mbande, Abe Lincoln, Tokugawa, Nader Shah) lines onto Soundcloud whenever you have time? I would greatly appreciate it! :)
 
I'm hoping they have Sundiata speak a Mande language instead of just Arabic like Mansa Musa. I'm glad Nzinga Mbande seems to be speaking a Bantu language, as for which specific Bantu language I am unsure. Kimbundu would be the most appropriate choice for her. I'm disappointed in Julius Caesar's pronunciation of his name. Was it that difficult to tell the voice actor to pronounce "Caesar" in the Classical Latin way? I was expecting a higher pitched voice for Abe Lincoln too. And Sean Bean once again mispronounces a leader's name, calling Nzinga something like "Kinga" in the DoM. I remember Kin Shi Huang, Hojo Tokimoon, and Taowarahman....
 
I'm disappointed in Julius Caesar's pronunciation of his name. Was it that difficult to tell the voice actor to pronounce "Caesar" in the Classical Latin way?
I'm guessing they grabbed a priest. The entire dialogue is in Ecclesiastical Latin. Though the first instance of Caesar's name is mispronounced even in Ecclesiastical Latin so...maybe just bad dialect coaching.
 
I'm hoping they have Sundiata speak a Mande language instead of just Arabic like Mansa Musa. I'm glad Nzinga Mbande seems to be speaking a Bantu language, as for which specific Bantu language I am unsure. Kimbundu would be the most appropriate choice for her. I'm disappointed in Julius Caesar's pronunciation of his name. Was it that difficult to tell the voice actor to pronounce "Caesar" in the Classical Latin way? I was expecting a higher pitched voice for Abe Lincoln too. And Sean Bean once again mispronounces a leader's name, calling Nzinga something like "Kinga" in the DoM. I remember Kin Shi Huang, Hojo Tokimoon, and Taowarahman....
In Kimbundu, Nzinga is a bit more like “Jinga”. The N here is silent.
 
I did noticed Nzinga Mbande pronouncing her name like "Jin-ga" in the game. I've helped document a Bantu language called Ikota (spoken in Gabon) in a Language Documentation course at my university.

Since the Chinese leaders DLC is next, I wonder if they will just use some antiquated sounding Mandarin for Wu Zetian and Yongle Emperor. I guess it would be too much to ask for Wu Zetian to speak in a reconstructed "Middle Chinese". Since Qin Shi Huang isn't speaking in "Old Chinese", I assume they will go with antiquated sounding Mandarin for her. I've heard reconstructed Old Chinese and maybe Middle Chinese on Youtube before, they sound quite different from Modern Mandarin. As an interesting linguistic tidbit, my parents' native dialects are Hainanese and Hokkien, part of the Min Chinese group (those are said to be most divergent from the rest of the Chinese dialects).
 
I've heard reconstructed Old Chinese and maybe Middle Chinese on Youtube before, they sound quite different from Modern Mandarin. As an interesting linguistic tidbit, my parents' native dialects are Hainanese and Hokkien, part of the Min Chinese group (those are said to be most divergent from the rest of the Chinese dialects).
It's a slight reach, but there is a very small chance that Firaxis reached out to the studio that handled Middle Chinese in AoE4.
Here's an example of it in action*:

*note that there are errors both in the game's MChinese and in Der Rote's explanations, but it's great seeing someone take the first step. Latin in games is somewhat normal and it would be nice to eventually have a similar level of confidence in reconstructed Middle Chinese voice acting.
 
I’d definitely be curious to see reconstructed Middle Chinese, though NGL, might be a bit weird to have Qin Shi Huang speaking with a more modern accent than the upcoming new leaders.
As an interesting linguistic tidbit, my parents' native dialects are Hainanese and Hokkien, part of the Min Chinese group (those are said to be most divergent from the rest of the Chinese dialects).
I’ve heard the opposite actually, that the Min dialects are one of the more conservative branches of Chinese. Cantonese is also more conservative in pronunciation than Mandarin, so personally I’d say modern Mandarin is actually one of the most divergent of the Chinese languages.

That said, I haven’t actually studied this in depth. Just light reading and some personal experience with the languages. You definitely can more easily spot cognates working with Cantonese than Mandarin at least.

I'm hoping they have Sundiata speak a Mande language instead of just Arabic like Mansa Musa.
So much this. I was incredibly disappointed Musa wasn’t speaking Malinke. I really hope Sundjata does.
 
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It's a slight reach, but there is a very small chance that Firaxis reached out to the studio that handled Middle Chinese in AoE4.
Here's an example of it in action*:

*note that there are errors both in the game's MChinese and in Der Rote's explanations, but it's great seeing someone take the first step. Latin in games is somewhat normal and it would be nice to eventually have a similar level of confidence in reconstructed Middle Chinese voice acting.
Ahh....Age of Empires. I actually recorded the unit dialogues from Age of Empires 2, Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3. They are probably one of the reasons I became so interested in languages. I remember the Teutons and Goths having the same exact dialogue though. Same with the Huns and Mongols.
I’d definitely be curious to see reconstructed Middle Chinese, though NGL, might be a bit weird to have Qin Shi Huang speaking with a more modern accent than the upcoming new leaders.

I’ve heard the opposite actually, that the Min dialects are one of the more conservative branches of Chinese. Cantonese is also more conservative in pronunciation than Mandarin, so personally I’d say modern Mandarin is actually one of the most divergent of the Chinese languages.

That said, I haven’t actually studied this in depth. Just light reading and some personal experience with the languages. You definitely can more easily spot cognates working with Cantonese than Mandarin at least.


So much this. I was incredibly disappointed Musa wasn’t speaking Malinke. I really hope Sundjata does.
I guess I'm wrong about Min Chinese being more divergent.....I guess it's still divergent from the Mandarin dialects.
Yeah, they had some Egyptian man voice Mansa Musa. It must have been for budgetary reasons, though I'm sure there are Malians living outside of Mali. I don't mind if the voice actors for the leaders are not actually professional voice actors. Firaxis and whoever they hire to do the recordings should keep that in mind. Like for example, I would have preferred if Lady Six Sky was voiced by an actual Mayan language speaker than a professional Mexican voice actress who botched the pronunciation of certain sounds in the language. Or a scholar of Sumerian voicing Gilgamesh than a Mexican voice actor. At least, the voice actor should be advised on pronunciation by scholars/or native speakers in those languages.
 
Like for example, I would have preferred if Lady Six Sky was voiced by an actual Mayan language speaker than a professional Mexican voice actress who botched the pronunciation of certain sounds in the language. Or a scholar of Sumerian voicing Gilgamesh than a Mexican voice actor. At least, the voice actor should be advised on pronunciation by scholars/or native speakers in those languages.
Ironically, a professional voice actor with a vocal coach probably is the next best thing to a native speaker; having a scholarly knowledge of a language is not necessarily the same thing as knowing how to speak it (e.g., if you listen to recordings of Tolkien talking about Old English, he was one of the foremost scholars of Old English in the 20th century but his pronunciation was...not great). It is interesting that both Gilgamesh and Hammurabi are voiced by Latino actors, but I have to say that Jose Daniel Martinez Robles (Hammurabi) did a magnificent job (I mean, Gilgabro's delivery is great--his pronunciation, not so much). I've tried doing some searching, but I haven't been able to find any background on Robles or why he has such a great command of Akkadian. (In a pinch, I'd probably be looking for a Georgian actor to play Akkadian speakers--Georgian has most of the right sounds and is probably one of the more widely-spoken languages with ejectives.)
 
I’ve heard the opposite actually, that the Min dialects are one of the more conservative branches of Chinese. Cantonese is also more conservative in pronunciation than Mandarin, so personally I’d say modern Mandarin is actually one of the most divergent of the Chinese languages.

Min and is completely unrelated to Middle Chinese (and all of its descendants, including Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese,...). It simply loaned a lot of Middle Chinese words which somewhat hides that fact.
 
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