Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-45744861-20200510074100/@comment-36874080-20200523174245

The Fulminato wrote: "Monarca" is "king". and a mundane one. lustlord is more "the god of lust" so probabily better working around the word "imperatore" and synonym. i have my share of translation headache working with skyrim. it was enoguh. I was mainly thinking in terms of etymological roots. Monarca = monos + arkhos (greek roots), meaning 'person ruling alone'. Lussarca would be a construct meaning 'ruler of lust' / 'lust ruler', which is fitting IMO.

Arakhne wrote: For the Lustlord, won't something like "il Lussuria Signore" work? I think the "lord" is "the Lord" in that context.

Translating puns is a nightmare indeed. I don't feel the double entendre with the "Cleavage" skill works in a lot of languages for example.

Wondering about how Qum D'umpe sounds in other languages though. 'Signore' could work pretty well with 'sanguinare' to translate bloodlord. Would Sanguinore sound good?

'Cleavage' is 'décolleté' in French, and there's an old word that sounds like it and means 'beheading' (décollation), so surprisingly it kinda works, but it's out of sheer luck. But this one I wouldn't worry too much about; skill descriptions are self-contained, just drop the joke if you must. Or come up with another joke to replace it.

Basically there are two schools of thought when it comes to translation: either stay close to the wording, or the meaning. Letter vs spirit, if you will. I prefer the latter approach. Any joke which links a sexual thingy with a sword combat thingy can do the trick, no need to worry too much about translating the original joke which may very well be untranslatable as is.

My own translation of Qum D'umpe is Saka Ph'outr (sac à foutre) or something similar (I don't remember where I've put the apostrophe). Note that the order of words is reversed: Qum is Ph'outr and D'umpe is Saka. It's pronounced \saka futʁ\.