Chants of Sennaar, part 2

It's Tuesday, and we're continuing unwrapping the tale of Chants of Sennaar — a game from Focus Entertainment , delving into translation and language learning. This isn't your usual point-and-click; it's an odyssey demanding sharp deduction, anthropological curiosity, and linguistic flair.

Now, let's hear from our language specialists.

Please share your standout moments in crafting this unique project. Was the journey extraordinary or particularly memorable for you?

Fernando Moreiras (Castilian Spanish linguist)

For me, it didn't really feel like a game about translation, but rather something like what Champollion did while deciphering the Rosetta Stone; which, for a linguistics geek like me, was extremely pleasant! The most challenging part was keeping all sentences short and simple while stating all required linguistic information clearly, for instance, choosing whether to convey "plural" with a pronoun, as a verb suffix, or through noun inflection in Spanish. The most enjoyable part was finding the perfect word that would fit in all sentences requiring it just to make the slightest changes!

Matteo Scarabelli (Italian linguist)

To me, it's been like working in slow motion, thinking every step through—the whole process of decoding, finding parallels and patterns that I take for granted after decades of doing this job. However, I never found it hindering or frustrating—in fact, it never felt like work. Actually, it made me appreciate again (and brush up on) linguistics at an academic level. I wish there was a sequel planned so I can translate more of it (the story is gracefully self-contained, though, so it'll take a stroke of genius to write a new installment).

How can you describe your experience "translating" the game about the translation process?

Albert Wei (Simplified Chinese linguist)

Though, technically speaking, I would say the major part of the gameplay is about language deciphering and acquisition, and translation only makes up for a rather small part, I was still thrilled to experience the game as a player and one of the translators localizing it. It provides a great opportunity for players to get to feel and understand, albeit in a simplistic way, how meanings, ideas, and everything conveyed by words get glued, welded, and merged to form a complete "unit of meaning" or a simple sentence, instead of simply being put next to each other as words. That's also the precondition for understanding how translation, where meanings seem to be "transferred" to another language, is much more than that, as sometimes you'll need to break down the glued or welded entirety into smaller parts and use different adhesive or means to combine them when going from one language to another.

What do you find challenging in the process?

Making the decision on how I should handle the Bard language. Holistically speaking, its order of words is different from that in modern standard Chinese, which would make the Bard language sound/read weird if not misleading. However, the language is sorta more similar to the Chinese language in its more ancient forms, which are less comprehensible to players in general. I was torn between the two options and finally compromised by mixing the modern and ancient versions a bit to make sure that the language makes sense both grammatically and stylistically. I'm still not confident that my approach is the most ideal, but I’m happy to see that it at least works.

Hyang Jung (Korean linguist)

One thing I remember that was challenging is that the languages you encounter in the game were relatively easier to understand for speakers of English or European languages. It's common that one verb in those languages needs to be translated into two or more words in Korean, one example being "play". It was also the case of the in-game languages, so it was quite challenging to translate such words. You know we basically translated a game that is about translating, so you can imagine the complexities. We had to try to make the game not much harder for the Korean players than for the English-speaking players.

Filip Ženíšek (Czech linguist)

This game is basically about translating a vocabulary, and that’s how we had to approach the localization. As you surely know, however, languages do not usually work 1:1, and we had to be extra careful to tackle all the challenges, especially those related to syntax. Czech, for example, is quite tricky in this regard, what with all the declension, conjugation, and functional sentence perspective. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting and entertaining project for me as a linguist, and I definitely recommend the game to all fans of languages and puzzles.

Daniel Polhaus (German linguist)

Translating Chants of Sennaar was very challenging and at the same time highly enjoyable, since the game allowed us to connect with the essence of our profession: enabling communication between languages.

This wasn’t always easy, since every language in the game has its own grammatical rules, which we had to adapt to our working language. We had to make sure that the intended meaning of every glyph was carried over correctly in order to make all dialogues work that happen throughout the game—one inconsistency could kill the meaning of the concepts that the player had thought of, so we had to be extra careful with every single glyph we translated.

That led to us reviewing every alphabet dozens of times, so that the connections between the cultures could be made at the end of the game. Seeing it all come together and noticing that the translations we chose work really well together was one of the most satisfying feelings we could experience as translators. We’re really proud of having contributed to this masterpiece!

And there you go, folks! So, spill the tea - did this wordy adventure tickle your fancy or just add a sprinkle of joy to your reading time? Did you enjoy the linguistic ride, or if it was simply a pleasant stroll through the world of words. Your thoughts are the special something that adds that extra flavor to our writing mix!