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Adapt published adventures for non English speakers (ttrpg.network)

submitted 1 year ago by afk@ttrpg.network to c/askgamemasters@ttrpg.network

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Any tips for adapting published adventures to a different language?

In my case, to Spanish but I'm looking for general tips, for example I'm gonna run Wild beyond the witch light soon and I'm having to sit down and think of what name would make sense I'm the setting while also being easy to remember and to pronounce to my players.

For example:

Tither Nither are hard, specially because of the TH, I'm thinking on translating them to "Aquí y Allá" I think they kind of work and seem easy to make rimes with.

Now I'm adapting/translating all the NPC's names and tip is welcome.

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[–] Khrux@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 year ago

Don't really overthink translating their names. Oftentimes a character will have a particularly sneaky name or a strong name, but thlse names are definitely just made up, and rather than translating, just choosing an apt name is also a good approach.

I can't remember the specific examples but I remember hearing that throughout even early 5e, characters have had their names lifted from words in other languages, leading people to suddenly having a shopkeep named Villain or something like that. The designera for 5e do amazing work but don't assume they choose their names in any grander way than we do.

Have fun naming characters but if you encounter a difficult one to translate, don't be worried about just naming a character Águila or something, even if it's unrelated to their current name.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 year ago

Most of my exposure to D&D is in English but we speak French at home.
Improv is slightly more natural for us in French, but my D&D vocabulary is mostly English.
Whenever we talk about any of this, we end up spraking almost an hybrid language that's both English end French.

I don't have much advice to offer but we don't generally translate names except if they're too weird or hard to remember, etc.