I’m preparing my first UW adventure for my group (we decided to put our DW campaign on hold to try this; Urban…

I’m preparing my first UW adventure for my group (we decided to put our DW campaign on hold to try this; Urban…

I’m preparing my first UW adventure for my group (we decided to put our DW campaign on hold to try this; Urban Shadows was also a possibility), but since most of them are not English speakers, I’m translating the Careers, Origins and Moves into Portuguese for them.

Yet, let me ask this before I do too much work: is there already some Portuguese translation of those?

9 thoughts on “I’m preparing my first UW adventure for my group (we decided to put our DW campaign on hold to try this; Urban…”

  1. Unfortunately not, so far UW is only in English. (I’m not quite at the point in my self-publishing where I feel comfortable handing things over to be officially translated by a third-party.)

    There could be fan translations out there, but I’m not aware of any.

  2. No problem. As a novelist and RPG author here in Brazil, I’m used to translate lots of things by myself (and even publish some of them).

    In fact, Sean Gomes, if you wanna discuss licensing, send me an email. 😉

  3. See, the whole licensing and taxes and all that stuff is exactly what scares the bejeebers out of me. It’s super far over my head.

    (Out of curiosity, what would “Uncharted Worlds” translate to in Portuguese?)

  4. Having licensed some RPGs in the past (note I’m tealling this from a “practical” perspective, not a legal one since IANAL), licensing from one individual is far easier than licensing from a company. In fact, it’s a simple deal (“Hey! How much would you charge me? Okay. Send me your PayPal account and I’ll transfer that. Am I allowed to change this or that? How long will you grant me this license? Great. Done. Please send me the text files and images so I can be faithful to your original creation… or I’ll do everything by myself here.”). Even an email exchange can be enough proof of this transaction, but I’ve never saw anyone dispute licensing on a Court of Law when everything is made clear and simple.

    Now, considering “Uncharted Worlds by Sean Gomes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License”, this means anyone can share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially), and the licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as one follows the license terms. In other words, if one decides to translate UW into Klingon and sell the translation, there’s no legal barrier (and he can even do that without asking you).

    Artwork and trade dress are other matters, but when we talk about pure text, the license you used makes fair game for everyone.

    Now, regarding your question, Portuguese doesn’t have a good single word for “Uncharted”. The closest term would be “not-charted” or “not-mapped.” But I don’t see the appeal of “Not Charted Worlds” or “Not Mapped Worlds” (Mundos não mapeados, in Portuguese). My choice would be keeping the original title and adding a subtitle, like “Uncharted Worlds – Brazilian Edition”. 🙂

  5. Marcelo Paschoalin I actually took an introductory English/French translation course, and they give us basic guidelines such as the fact that what is one word in a language may have to be two in another, or vice-versa. You may end up adding 25% to the length of a text regardless of which direction you translate, because of turns of phrases that can’t be translated easily. English has the fused negative un- added to a past-tense verb-word referring to a navigation chart, serving as an adjective before the noun. That’s not how it works in other languages.

    You have to try to find out a lyrical turn of phrase in the new language to reflect the original sentiment in English. If I ever were to translate it in French I would title it «Au-déla de la carte des mondes» (Beyond the Chart of the Worlds). The translator says this might be “in-delà os mapa os mundos” or “in-delà os mundos mapear” in Portuguese, hopefully as lyrical.

  6. Pierre Savoie, French and Portuguese are similar in some points, and I fully understand the problems with translation. English-to-Portuguese usually adds 32% to the final word count. 🙂

    In fact, Portuguese has a fused negative too. They are “in” (possível/impossível = possible/impossible) and “des” (fazer/desfazer = do/undo), but they are not fit to all words.

    The lyrical turn of phrase is a good idea, but strangely I’m used to do this when translating the main text only (never on titles), as I think something is always lost in translation this way.

    Beyond the Chart of the Worlds would be “Além do Mapa dos Mundos”, but I think “Além dos Mundos Mapeados” (Beyond the Charted Worlds) would be a better fit. Yet, keeping the original title and adding “Brazilian Edition” in the end still sounds better to me.

    And don’t even make me start on a word like “technobabble”. The closest word for this would translate back to “technicity”, but it loses all the appeal. 😀

  7. Marcelo Paschoalin Do what English does: Steal vocabulary. Officially English has over 200,000 to 300,000 words. Unofficially it tops 1,000,000. As James Nicoll once said:

    The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.

    Heck, there are about 60+ English words of Portuguese origin. 🙂

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