What are the Germans saying?

[5211N5]

(This is a question regarding the Vanilla version of Civ4)

Just curious as I usually play as the Germans, yet I don't speak a lick of it, what are the phrases that the German units are yelling at me?

Thanks

 

[AlphaShard]

Probably the same things the American and English troops are, just ya know in German.

 

[Monsterzuma]

"Erwarte ihre befehle." - "Awaiting your orders."
"Sage mir was sie zu tun haben." - "tell me what you have to do."
"Ihre befehle?" - "Your orders?"
"Melde mich zum dienst." - "Reporting for duty."

 

[joanne]

Probably the same things the American and English troops are, just ya know in German.

That's what I was thinking too, but what about the sumerians, babylonians and the carthaginians? Their language along with their culture was wiped out centuries ago... who speaks their language nowadays?

 

[T_F]

I seem to remember there was a discussion about this a while ago.

Sure, no one speaks Punic or Sumerian or whatever natively nowadays, but there's enough evidence in some form or other to reconstruct a guess at they way they might have said that stuff.

 

[edgelachance]

The phrases in Turkish is a little different and funny actually.

 

[Monsterzuma]

In Dutch one of the lines reads along the lines of "this military-man reports himself." The funny thing is, workers and settlers say this too. Never thought they would be part of the military.

 

[starmanbeta]

I can speak Japanese, and I can tell you that a lot of the Japanese lines sound like they took the English and put it through a translation machine. I understand what they mean, but it's not quite natural Japanese that you would actually use in that situation.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Probably the same things the American and English troops are, just ya know in German.

They may mean roughly the same things, but I don't think you have a good handle on the differences in languages. If you translate something word for word from one language to another without taking into account the differing grammars and common phrases, you get very strange sounding sentences. For instance, if I said "You've put on a shirt made of eleven sticks" you'd probably have no idea what I'm talking about. In Spanish, that's the equivalent of "You've bitten off more than you can chew". In Spanish, you don't ask someone how old they are, you say "How many years do you have?"

Several of the responses to orders from units in English are phrases that I'm pretty sure would not translate exactly into other languages. In some cases, it appears that the developers found equivalent phrases in the other language, but in some (like the Japanese example mentioned) they don't appear to have used the help of a native speaker.

I'd be really interested in the literal translations of the various unit responses if anyone has a list of those.

 

[Dearmad]

oh boy I'll start with the english ones! lol

 

[5211N5]

"Erwarte ihre befehle." - "Awaiting your orders."
"Sage mir was sie zu tun haben." - "tell me what you have to do."
"Ihre befehle?" - "Your orders?"
"Melde mich zum dienst." - "Reporting for duty."

Ah, thank you much!

 

[AlphaShard]

"Erwarte ihre befehle." - "Awaiting your orders."
"Sage mir was sie zu tun haben." - "tell me what you have to do."
"Ihre befehle?" - "Your orders?"
"Melde mich zum dienst." - "Reporting for duty."

Those look like the exact same lines as the American units say.

They may mean roughly the same things, but I don't think you have a good handle on the differences in languages. If you translate something word for word from one language to another without taking into account the differing grammars and common phrases, you get very strange sounding sentences. For instance, if I said "You've put on a shirt made of eleven sticks" you'd probably have no idea what I'm talking about. In Spanish, that's the equivalent of "You've bitten off more than you can chew". In Spanish, you don't ask someone how old they are, you say "How many years do you have?"

Several of the responses to orders from units in English are phrases that I'm pretty sure would not translate exactly into other languages. In some cases, it appears that the developers found equivalent phrases in the other language, but in some (like the Japanese example mentioned) they don't appear to have used the help of a native speaker.

I'd be really interested in the literal translations of the various unit responses if anyone has a list of those.

Yes but what your talking about is sayings like "letting the cat out of the bag" and etc. What the units are saying however are pretty much simple asking of orders. I mean I'm sure the Babylonian unit isn't saying something like "Screw you I'm not doing this!" and is something very close to "Your Orders?" or "Your Command?" it's pretty much the same thing.

 

[bioelectricclam]

I can speak Japanese, and I can tell you that a lot of the Japanese lines sound like they took the English and put it through a translation machine. I understand what they mean, but it's not quite natural Japanese that you would actually use in that situation.

What are the Japanese saying anyways? I know a little bit of the language but don't have enough of an ear to pick up what a few of the phrases are, besides the obvious ones like "Hai!" and "Wakarimasu".

 

[Badtz Maru]

Those look like the exact same lines as the American units say.



Yes but what your talking about is sayings like "letting the cat out of the bag" and etc. What the units are saying however are pretty much simple asking of orders. I mean I'm sure the Babylonian unit isn't saying something like "Screw you I'm not doing this!" and is something very close to "Your Orders?" or "Your Command?" it's pretty much the same thing.

English has a subject/verb/object order that is different from most European languages (not sure about all languages) and uses more words than most languages for many common phrases because it lacks a lot of grammatical cases that other languages have. Just from your example, "Your orders?" would be redundant in many languages because the "Your" would be replaced by having "Orders" spoken in a way to indicate that the subject is the second person singular. It would be said differently if the orders were coming from a group of people.