Regarding the mounting of different animals and monsters:
WTF is wrong with you? Beastiality is gross and wrong.
WTF is wrong with you? Beastiality is gross and wrong.
Not sure if joking or serious. :hmm:
It will be interesting to see if there will be mounting, not like the Kayran QTEs, but maybe something similar to some of the stuff in GoW.
But all in all, I really don't care that much about climbing monsters.
Holy crap, have you played Dragons Dogma yet? Now That was some fun monster climbing
I bet cdpr could do it even better in TW3 too.
It came up in one of the Q&A sessions, and they said no. I don't think anyone asked about the OTHER kind of mounting.
I remember a dev said @e3 2014 that he didnt know if monster climbing was in the game but he smiled really big and said it would be so awesome.
This is my only hope, that it might be in the game because he didn't say no and the fact that he didn't know still means it might just be in the game.
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Wondering this myself. If I'm an English speaker, and I'm playing the game in its English version, I want to catch those monster names that mean something. Poludnica means nothing to me, while Noonwraith is evocative.
Why not then rename Geralt to Gerald or Gerard, Ciri to Keira, Yennefer to Jennifer etc, just so you alone could understand it easier. In your response I can only see an utter unwillingness to get to know another culture.
I think there's a big difference between swapping Geralt to Gerald and Volkodlak to Werewolf.
Volkodlak makes literally 0 sense to Western Audiences, whereas everybody knows and understands what a Werewolf is. However Geralt is a character name, it's also a much more basic name that's much easier to spell/sound out. I don't quite approve of every name change, I think Jaskier to Dandelion is unnecessary or Janek to Johnny, but stuff like Volkodlak & Poludnica are odd and would be very hard to decipher for most folk. You probably wouldn't actually know what the hell it is until you finally met the creature in-game and connected the dots, or someone described the creature and you went, "Oh now I get it".
Ultimately the decision making as to what should be translated and what shouldn't comes down to CDPR, and I think overall they've done a great job at changing what needs to be translated to make understanding stuff easier, without entirely losing the meaning behind those original names.
The games are not really just Slavic but a pasticcio of artists and traditional and popular cultures. Maybe the dominant themes are Slavic and Arthurian, but there are seasonings of everything from Irish to Persian and Tolkien to Assassin's Creed contributing to the flavor.
To take one example, Dandelion is an excellent translation of Jaskier. The translator is responsible for carrying not the dictionary meaning, but the dramatic experience of reading and hearing a name and associating it with a character. If they had translated it literally, "Buttercup", it would have been ludicrous. Dandelion carries exactly the right associations in English.
Noonwraith and Midday Bride are together another example of good translation. The spectre known as południca in Polish is also well known in English, where she is called Lady Midday.
I understand your enthusiasm for the Slavic culture expressed in the games, but we're not going to accuse anybody of bad or lazy motives on this forum.
To take one example, Dandelion is an excellent translation of Jaskier. The translator is responsible for carrying not the dictionary meaning, but the dramatic experience of reading and hearing a name and associating it with a character. If they had translated it literally, "Buttercup", it would have been ludicrous. Dandelion carries exactly the right associations in English.
Noonwraith and Midday Bride are together another example of good translation. The spectre known as południca in Polish is also well known in English, where she is called Lady Midday.
I understand your enthusiasm for the Slavic culture expressed in the games, but we're not going to accuse anybody of bad or lazy motives on this forum.
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Hard to say. I think it's sometimes good to keep the original sounding of it. For example in the Vampire the Masquerade, Tzimisce leaders are called voivodes, which is a Slavic term for a military leader. Probably not more commonly known than volkodlak.
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But you don't mind the slavic name "Leshen", despite the fact that it can be translated as "Wood spirit". Why don't you like "Poludnica" then?
All monsters in the Witcher universe don't have Slavic origins, and Andrzej Sapkowski has burrowed from other cultures such as Greek, Egyptian, Persian and so on.
Griffin for example was first seen in Egyptian and Persian art dating back to 3000 B.C., and it was also common in the art and lore of ancient Greece. Another example would be a large flying creature called Roc in Witcher universe, which comes from Persian mythology. So the translation of the names of mythical creature is a common practice in order to make the names meaningful and easier to remember across different cultures.
Griffin is γρύφων in Greek, and Roc is Simurgh in Persian. So by your own logic you are the one who have "an utter unwillingness to get to know another culture".
Didn't you know I'm an ethnocentric schmuck?
I don't understand what I understand better by Gerald.
Utter unwillingness is a pretty strong statement, and painting me as so narrow-minded just because I prefer some monsters, in the English version, to be called a name they are widely known for throughout popular media, is a bit too slander-happy. But I'll bite your bait and say:
1) I'm not necessarily into a game to get to know another culture.
2) Even if I am hoping for that, it doesn't begin and end with our werewolf. So even if I am willing to have this "cultural compromise" and mar the "cultural purity" of the game regarding some monster names, doesn't mean I want it in every aspect, such as politics, atmosphere, behavior, way of thought, the actual monsters (beyond their names), scenery, etc.
Also, as Guy said:
Admittedly, no. I can't give you a stern and completely rational list of what to translate and what not to. There is a some degree of arbitrariness in my preferences, I confess up front. That's not to say I can't at all explain it. Werewolf, to me, and I'm guessing to... anybody who played a game or surfed the web in his life, is a very well known monster. The moon usually plays a big part and the creature is a wolf-looking humanoid. As far as I know, CDPR's iteration is similar to all the previous ones at its core, so using a different name seems odd to me.
Then again, this explanation of mine doesn't hold regarding Noonwraiths, because it's not as established as a werewolf. I can analyze why this translation should remain from my perspective, but I'll just give a short and uninspiring version: I think Noonwraith sounds cool. The other version... doesn't. Noonwraith evokes drama, mystery and an emotion that Poludnica fails to.
As for the Leshen - again, no seriously rational explanation here. I just find Leshen to be a cool name, while Wood Spirit doesn't trigger anything in me. Also, I don't understand anything by Wood Spirit. It's as likely something ethereal as it is something physical, so the literal translation doesn't serve much purpose here.
We can go over monster by monster and you'll eventually expose that there isn't some consistent, all-encompassing principle guiding my preferences. Because I still lack the literal capability to explain why Leshen, at the end of the day, and to me - just sounds cool and evokes interest. While Wood Spirit does not.
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This slavic monster is nonexistent in the westerly mythologies, hence it would be appropriate to use its original name. It is time for you to get to know original slavic culture.
(Google Translator)
Why Volkodlak ?. Actually, in the Polish language is a wilkołak. There are differents even in Slavic languages .
Werewolf is a popular monster in pop culture. I do not understand why the name of non-Slavic monster should have a Slavic name in the English version of the game?
The word "leshen" is so inaccurate transcription. In Polish it is "leszy". Adjective form.
First of all, there is no Slavic monsters in Sapkowski's Witcher saga. A monster named "diabol" is "silvan" indeed.
Honestly, I'm only interested in the Slavic influence of the game in that it adds a subtle flavor that doesn't exist in games from my side of the world. Really, though, I'm mostly interested in immersing myself in the fictional culture depicted in the game. For that, a name of some monster isn't so relevant to me (certainly not as important as the lore behind the monster). That, and "Poludnica" hardly rolls off my American English tongue.