I know there are people watching this game with interest.

I've just posted a longish article on Gone Gaming about the process of translating this (unofficially!) into English, as well as some thoughts on the game itself.

Any errors or inaccuracies are entirely mine.

Hope this will be interesting for some of you

That was really interesting to read through your process of translating. It sounds like quite a task!!!!

I'm interesting in getting this game but as you say I would also love to see it taken on by an English publisher.

Just wondering how easy or difficult this translation was compared to the many others you've already done? It sounds like it might be towards the more difficult end due to the old agriculture theme...

AB

Thanks, AB.

I have to say, this was a really hard game to translate for three reasons:

1. Working with the rules, you only have partial information. There's just so much in the game, and a lot on the cards that I haven't got to yet.
2. The terminology - as I said, 17th century farming practices are not something I know much anything at all about. I'm sure there's a couple of errors - I found one today, in fact. I'd worried about the word Vorkoster - not in any of my dictionaries, but a Vorkosten is an initial cost. I tentatively used Assessor but saw the card today at Boardgame News and, from the picture, realised it's actually a different verb - vor=before, kosten=to taste, ie a Food taster. (Luckily, I hadn't uploaded the file with that term in it). That's a hazard of unofficial/amateur translations, unfortunately.
3. The sheer length of the rules - I think my docs got to 25 pages.

What was great, and made the translation much easier, was the level of communication with Hanno, who got up each morning to long emails from me asking detailed questions about complex aspects of the game, and who patiently dealt with all of them.


Speaking completely off the top of my head, and with no inside knowledge or industry contacts, I would think it would be a big undertaking for an English publisher, due to the amount of translation and typesetting that would be needed (did I say, 360 cards?). I'd guess that they'd want to see a fairly high level of interest and excitement in the game before they would take it on. I hope someone does, though, as I really am very excited about this one and I think it would get a lot of play.

Well - I am the one to say Thank you, Melissa.
You just took a hell of a task out of my hands and thus provided me with some spare time to do the tutorial.
Allright, now I have to change some of the terms I used to the ones you used, but that's fine with me. :-)

Thanks for your work Melissa!

Hopefully, the file queue won't be too long...

On the stall / stable translation.

Could you not have kept it as stall? It is the proper English word for a place where an individual animal is kept. Having never seen the game maybe it would need to be stalls but I don't like stables for non-equines.

It's tricky, Andy, because the stables allow up to 4 animals - they're not spaces for individual animals.

Happy to discuss what would be a better term - but I'm drawing a blank. I did consider 'Barn' but it seems too big.

For what it's worth, dictionary.com disagrees with us - it gives as the first definition "a building for the lodging and feeding of horses, cattle, etc." - so I think stable is probably OK.

Wow Melissa, this looks like it was lots of work. Hope you enjoy the gameplay.


Why didn't they send you a (low quality) scan of all the cards to look them up when necessary?


dict.leo.org
der Vorkoster - taster (as bodyguard)
It's somebody who has to eat from the food to make sure it isn't venomed.

Regarding some other words mentioned in your blog:
- Ausbildung: training/learning/teachings of any type. School, apprenticeship, study, training on job, ...
And no, "Chief's daughter" or "Lazy student" are no Ausbildung in german, too; it's used in an ironic sense here.
Looking over you list of examples, it sounds like "Tätigkeit" would have been the better german word. But then, it doesn't fit to the fact that you need to have several of them to be able to play some cards.
- Stall: i think stable is the right translation.
- Nährwert: nutrition?
- Anschaffung: purchase?

And this big thing is a 30 minutes game? Now i'm very curious.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/files/boardgame/all?filestate=p...
10 days. 180 items.

I see what you mean - although you often have more than one stall in a shed or stable.

I would call a building for animals a shed. Pig sty and stable are the obvious specialisations which get their own names. Cow shed is the most common usage. I know of no-one who would call a cow shed a cow stable. However shed seems far too prosaic.

BTW - The English Heritage Online Thesaurus says "Stable: A building in which horses are accommodated."

It's a pity that games that'll be out in Essen can't get a bit of a push forward...that'll be 10 valuable days wasted...