Valeriy: Today’s article is a little unusual for me. It started as a conversation in Gmail chat, when John Dale asked my help for his article about flavor text in different languages. An hour later, we realized that the discussion went so far and deep that it could form the basis of an article about Russian localization (translation and flavor) of Magic: The Gathering. There is none of my usual strategy this time, but I hope it’s a benefit, not a drawback.
John Dale: For me, one of the best parts of writing for StarCityGames.com is making contact with Magic players who come from diverse backgrounds. A message from one such Magic player, a college professor and Spanish-English translator named Dr. Steven J. Stewart, turned into a lengthy and inspiring correspondence that has had considerable influence on the direction of this article. Thank you.
Valeriy: Here’s how the conversation started (with minor cleanup for the typos of Internet chat):
John Dale: Hello, Mr. Shunkov. Do you have time for a quick question?
Valeriy: Yes
John Dale: http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=62664 — 9th Edition Kird Ape in Russian. How does the flavor text translate to English?
Valeriy: She converts “beast” into … Oh, I forgot the word. Cruel action of beasty nature.
John Dale: That’s perfect. Google Translate gave me “He puts the ‘beast’ in ‘savagery.'”
Valeriy: It’s almost correct.
John Dale: Google Translate gave a few other options, including “bestiality,” but that has a rather creepy connotation.
Valeriy: There is a funny moment. The word, which is a direct translation of “savagery,” is rarely used in Russian. “Savagery” as an action of savage nature is more “strange” than “cruel” or “violent.” And what’s wrong with “bestiality?”
Valeriy: Wait… Oh. Google Translate offered me only one meaning of this word…
John Dale: …I should’ve warned you.
John Dale: Have you seen the English version of that Kird Ape?
I found it fascinating that the Russian localizer was able to come up with a pun to match the pun on the English.
Valeriy: I know that Russian translations are made in the USA. 🙂
Valeriy: This is only one example, and many will follow. By the way, international communication has been one of my most interesting experiences to come from the StarCityGames.com Talent Search. There was great Twitter buzz at the end of the Search, and my discussions with John Dale have been pretty exciting and stereotype-breaking.
It started when John Dale asked me if I had some Russian basic lands to trade. I recommended him to my friend, who later said that he “sold a piece of Russian land to a Texas Ranger.” So now I know a third Texas Ranger after Chuck Norris and George W. Bush!
John Dale: “Texas Ranger?” That’s funny. No, I’m far too out-of-shape to be a real Texas Ranger. That, and I’ve never fired a gun. I grew up around them—my father was a collector—but I’ve never fired off a live round.
Valeriy: The stereotype Russians can have of Americans is they all have guns, but it’s not true. John Dale and I speak from time to time about how life—real life, not stereotypes—can be different for two people on opposite sides of the Earth.
These topics are rarely Magic-related; John Dale helps me a lot with my English, shocks me with his deep knowledge of Russian literature, etc. In exchange, I tell him about things that actually happen in Russia, about how the USA looks from Moscow, etc. The opportunity to chat with a person from another continent is, I think, the best gift that the Internet has given to us all. I travel reasonably often, but this opportunity to use written English at the speed of typing is priceless.
John Dale: My knowledge of Russian literature isn’t that deep. I made an Anna Karenina reference once, talking about quirks of languages: “All happy languages are alike; every screwed-up language is screwed up in its own way.” English is the most unholy mishmash of a language ever to exist; like an undisciplined child, if it sees something it wants, it takes it without a thought to the consequences. (Magic: The Gathering has used Russian loanwords from the start, including mammoth for War Mammoth and the name of an Alpha dual land, Taiga.) Of course, English is far from alone in having strange rules and exceptions. Valeriy told me about how certain materials trigger weird rules in Russian…
Valeriy: We’ll get to that later, OK? I want to talk more general translations first.
Magic has been translated into Russian since Ninth Edition and Ravnica Block. The early translations were rough (if you want Selesnya Guildmage producing three tokens instead of one, get it in Russian!), but hidden gems (like the Kird Ape) are here and there. The most recent translations are not the best the game has seen; the translations for Scars of Mirrodin and Innistrad cannot match Lorwyn block.
John Dale: I suppose we should be glad that the English Oracle wording always takes precedence; otherwise, nothing could have stopped the Russian Selesnya Guildmage token armies from taking over the world! It’s interesting that Valeriy finds Lorwyn so well-translated, with strange names such as Aethersnipe, Benthicore, Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, and so on floating around. Then again, there are some flavorful names that probably have good correspondence in Russian folklore or other traditions, like Crib Swap. Is there a Russian equivalent to Lammastide (as in Lammastide Weave)?
Valeriy: John Dale has identified one of the principal problems with card names; there are many names that are directly translated (like Hollowhenge Scavenger) for which a translation of true meaning is nearly impossible. Strange names are always problematic; because I have literally no idea what Lammastide is, it would be tough to explain it inside the card name.
[Five minutes later…]
Hmmm… Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, now I know that a similar festival is known in Russian tradition as an “Apple Salvation,” but I’m not sure if this deeply Christian-influenced name would fit into Lorwyn’s setting. Maybe a more Pagan “Feast of Fruits” would be better, but then the whole point of “Lammastide” would be lost. By the way, the Italian translation reads “Intreccio di Fine Estate,” which means “Waves of the Festival of Summer’s Ending.” German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese translations use word “lammas”—I think that is because this word belongs to these languages. So the Italian translators made something that their Russian colleagues didn’t.
John Dale: The religious component to “Lammas” is a strong association with Saint Peter’s deliverance from imprisonment. Without knowing the translator’s heart, it is impossible to tell if the Italian choice to avoid the specific word “lammas” was to avoid possible offense taken by Roman Catholics of that nationality. Theology is hard enough to consider when there is a common language; now try to translate it!
Valeriy: Maybe so. As for names like Shriekmaw, they are mostly easy to translate into Russian because a similar concept is very familiar to our language. For example, “Medved,” the Russian word for bear, consists from roots of “honey” and “knowledge” combined in similar fashion to, say, Faultgrinder. Concepts like “oakgnarl” (in Oakgnarl Warrior) are also easy to translate as single words. Moreover, the Russian translation of “Shinewend” can easily be the name of a legendary “knyaz” (the Russian equivalent of duke) or wizard from Russian folk tales.
John Dale: At least “shriek” and “maw” go together to make Shriekmaw. Don’t get me started on a name like Gravelgill Axeshark; I don’t think that makes sense in any language! In a way, it’s rather fitting that Ravnica was the first block translated into Russian, due to the Eastern European-influenced flavor of the set. Slavic mythology (source of the Rusalkas, like Drowned Rusalka) isn’t Russian mythology or folklore, but it probably has more kinship than, say, the British Isles vibe given off by Lorwyn.
Valeriy: Yes, the Slavic influence on Ravnica is well-known, but not as strong as you think. I know a person who was surprised by it, even though he’s fluent in Polish. As for me, the clearest Russian influence in Magic is the split card named Crime / Punishment, after the Dostoyevsky novel. So, when Ravnica was printed, the fact that it was the first nonbasic set translated into Russian was much more significant than any Slavic influence in the flavor.
I have already talked about Selesnya Guildmage, and there are other translation errors. It was a first try, and I’m not here just to list problems and blame the translators—I’m sure they did their best. But there are interesting things, like the split card Hit / Run. (Now available in Russian in the store!)
Imagine you are the translator. You have a card name, “Run,” that could have a lot of meanings. The card text is the following: “Attacking creatures you control get +1/+0 until end of turn for each other attacking creature.” How would you translate that? Maybe “charge.” According to the Ravnica translator, though, pumping attacking creatures is their… “escape.” Yes, escape, without a shadow of a doubt!
John Dale: Oh, great. Now I’m going to have that “Escape” song stuck in my head. Enrique Iglesias, “you can run, you can hide, but you…” and I shouldn’t say any more, or else you’ll start hearing it, too!
Part of me wonders if the translator wasn’t given the two sides simultaneously. “Hit and run” is a common, if colloquial English phrase. The thing is, I have a lot of sympathy for the translator here, because in that phrase, the “hit” is the violence and the “run” really is an escape. So the translator has to pick one: make the phrase make sense, or the card.
I remember challenging Dr. Stewart with how he would translate a card named “Dulzura” from Spanish to English, if Magic were a game created in Spanish. The literal meaning of “dulzura” would be “sweetness,” but the word has a range of emotional connotations. I saw it described first in a high school textbook as “release after a long period of suffering.” It’s funny how English borrows so many words, and yet there are still concepts that are untranslatable from Spanish.
Valeriy: Speaking of Spanish, there is a funny story about Spanish and Russian and Grand Prix: Madrid.
Valeriy: You know “Bone Shredder?” In Spanish the name is “Triturahuesos.”
John Dale: So?
Valeriy: So, when pronounced in Russian, it means…what is the phrase for doing badly?
John Dale: How strong?
Valeriy: Kind of strong.
John Dale: Hmm. “Sucking?”
Valeriy: Yes, but body parts involved.
John Dale: Front or back?
Valeriy: Front.
John Dale: Ah, that’s a “Seven Dirty Words” upgrade.
Valeriy: Oh! I’ve heard about that one! Word police didn’t like it.
John Dale: It went all the way to the Supreme Court. They liked some of his later work more. George Carlin, that comedian, later hosted children’s TV, Shining Time Station.
Valeriy: Now that’s funny.
Valeriy: So when the Russian players went to Legacy Grand Prix: Madrid, their second task after actually playing the main event was to buy out every Bone Shredder they could find. Now we give them out to players who are sucking!
John Dale: That’s… interesting.
Valeriy: You know what else is interesting? Planeswalker.
John Dale: Yes, planeswalkers are interesting, but what does…
Valeriy: No, no. “Planeswalker” the word. It showed up in Russian Magic one day and hasn’t left.
John Dale: How’s that?
Valeriy: Here’s the first Ajani Goldmane. Now here’s Nicol Bolas.
John Dale: Wait a minute! That’s in the Roman alphabet!
Valeriy: Mm-hmm. It happened in other European languages too. Not Japanese or Chinese, though. I guess they’re special, and Russian isn’t.
John Dale: There may be some cultural factors we don’t know about. It does seem a little unfair that French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian would all have “Planeswalker” planeswalkers inflicted on them while Chinese (Simplified or Traditional) and Japanese would retain their original card types. That mix of Cyrillic and Roman on Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker just looks wrong to me.
Valeriy: Me too. It’s worst for Russian because, as you mentioned, there is the difference in alphabets. Enough about planeswalkers, though. I want to go back to the conversation about Kird Ape. One interesting thing that John Dale immediately caught:
Valeriy: She converts “beast” into … Oh, I forgot the word. Cruel action of beasty nature.
John Dale: “She?” So the Russian 9th Edition Kird Ape specifies a gender? Interesting.
Valeriy: Just because word “ape” is feminine in Russian. It’s like the word “city,” which is neutral in English, (“город”) masculine in Russian, and (“Stadt”) feminine in German. Different grammatical genders are an almost infinite source of jokes. “Mädchen,” the German word for “little girl,” has a neutral grammatical gender. There are good reasons for it, as stated by German grammar, but it does seem strange.
Valeriy: By the way, see the names of Russian Glory Seeker in 9th Edition and Rise of the Eldrazi. They have different endings.
John Dale: Why?
Valeriy: The name was translated to the feminine for the Rise of the Eldrazi version.
John Dale: Oh. I saw the extension on what I assume is the word “Seeker.”
Valeriy: Moreover, Meddling Mage always has been a woman in Russian, so if Wizards of the Coast ever reprints this card with Pikula’s portrait, there will be an awkward moment for the Russian translator.
John Dale: The emphasis on gender is striking to me, largely because Magic in English has tried hard to move away from gender-specific terms for sapient, non-legendary creatures. Ant Queen is acceptable because male ants (drones) do not dominate colonies. Sorceress Queen, on the other hand, is out, as is Dakmor Sorceress. Hasran Ogress is in the distant past, along with Bird Maiden.
While “mage” is a preferred, gender-neutral term for arcane magic types, “witch” has seen use for men (see Cackling Witch) and Reveka, Wizard Adept is a woman, so there is some leeway to use both terms in modern names (such as Bitterheart Witch). It fascinates me that for all the effort Wizards of the Coast puts in to make the game as gender-neutral as possible in English, it gets undone in Russian.
Valeriy: Almost all modern professions are gender-neutral in Russian (engineer, doctor, judge, etc.), while ancient ones always have separate male and female forms (made by word endings, as usual in Russian), so there are peasant and “peasantess,” warrior and “warrioress.” But the word “witch” is female-only in Russian and its male analog is warlock or magus. For example, the Witch-king of Angmar is translated into Russian as “Warlock-king of Angmar.” Then there is a word, “the Witcher,” invented by Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski. I’m not sure if this great book series is known in English-speaking countries, but I’m pretty sure that the word “witcher” was invented by Sapkowski’s Polish-English translators.
John Dale: Wikipedia suggests that’s exactly what happened. Only a few of his works are in English. I’ve not read any.
Valeriy: First thing I’ve mentioned you haven’t read! Ten points for Ravenclaw!
Speaking of translators’ inventions, there is an interesting story about the Myr. This quirky little card type was printed in three blocks (yes, three!), two of which are translated into Russian. There was a universally adopted pronunciation of word “Myr” during the era of original Mirrodin block, and the sadly-alone Sarcomite Myr (printed in Future Sight) was translated accordingly. A few years later, Magic revisited the plane of Mirrodin, and Russian players realized that Myr are translated differently! Compare “Мыр” and “Миэр.” See the difference? We did too. And now it’s time for the true masterpiece: enter the Russian Myr token from New Phyrexia.
John Dale: Yowch. You don’t need to know Cyrillic to know that’s bad.
Valeriy: I think this card can even be included in a collections of misprints. But there are other errors. Some of them are just typos (like the word “philosoVer” in the flavor texts of Valeron Outlander and Walking Corpse), while some of them are more complicated. There is a concept of “false friends of translator”—words that are written similarly in foreign languages but have different meanings. “Magazine” in Russian is “shop”; “biscuit” is “sponge cake”; “decade” is ten years in English and ten days in Russian.
John Dale: I feel like singing some Madonna.
Valeriy: What?
John Dale: “We are living in a material world and I am a material…”
Valeriy: No! No! Make it stop!
John Dale: Then talk about the materials exceptions. I’ve been waiting!
Valeriy: Oh! Sorry, sorry.
If other languages are determined by its rules, Russian is mostly determined by exceptions. There are lots of them, regarding anything. The two most interesting exceptions are the one about adverbs with a hissing sound at the end (there are three, except words remembered with the phrase “too impatient to marry”) and the “material one”—adjectives usually have a single “н” in their endings, and there are three material-based words that have two “н”: glass, tin, and wooden (“стеклянный”, “оловянный”, “деревянный”). So when translators made a common mistake in the name of Silver Myr (“серебрянный” instead of “серебряный”), this picture was immediately created. The words say “Wooden, Tin, and Glass blame translator.”
John Dale: You think Russian’s weird and has a bunch of exceptions? English is far worse. It’s about the only language where the idea of a spelling bee makes any sense.
Valeriy: You’re telling me!
Other Russian spellings are weird, too. A card with an error like these poor Myr is Ethersworn Shieldmage. Maybe you noticed the word “артефактное” in the Myr token’s creature type. This word means “artifact” (with ending “-ное” that makes it an adjective). The problem is that the correct spelling of this word in Russian is “artEfact.” So look at the spelling of Ethersworn Shieldmage’s Russian text box. Note to translators: “е” is not “и.” Not by a long shot!
John Dale: Don’t get me started on misspellings. My first plane trip was to Washington, DC for the National Spelling Bee, and every time I see a misspelled word, I hear that big stupid bell they ring at the Bee to tell you you’re wrong, and if there’s anything I hate worse than a misspelling, it’s that bell.
The National Spelling Bee didn’t traumatize me or anything. Bee Week was basically a giant word-nerd paradise party with private Smithsonian tours, ice cream socials with the good stuff, a barbecue at Mount Vernon, and, oh yeah, a chance to win lots of cash and prizes for spelling a few dozen words. It’s just… that bell!
Valeriy: Are you sure you’re not traumatized?
John Dale: No. The bell just makes you stick when you hear it. That was the point of John Donne’s famous meditation, though he was listening to a different bell…
Valeriy: OK, OK, you convinced me.
Stuff like the Myr token and Ethersworn Shieldmage is why proofreading is necessary. Translation into different languages is great for Magic, but the fact that the Portuguese Stoic Rebuttal left out the part about “Counter target spell” is not good for the game. As far as I know, all translations into Russian are made by two people. I hope that Wizards knows what they are doing, but as someone who likes clean cards, I would be happy if they’d spend more resources on translations to make sure they’re right. As the Portuguese Stoic Rebuttal shows, Russian is not alone here.
John Dale: There’s a classic business line I see in print shops: “Fast, right, cheap: pick two.” Wizards of the Coast is a business; we get constant reminders of that. If cards keep selling in Portuguese despite Stoic Rebuttal being printed as terrible and Russian Myr tokens not agreeing Myr-to-Myr, who at Wizards is going to push to increase costs? Who’ll champion proofreading?
Valeriy: Heh, “champion.” Brings up another weird word that gets translated all over the place. In Russian, the equivalent of “champion” has only one meaning: “winner in sports.” Yet this word is mostly used as something like “advocate” or “defender” in English Magic (see Champion of the Parish, which is like “Advocate of the Parish” in Russian).
There are twenty cards containing word “champion” in their names; only seven of them are translated into Russian, and five different words are used. Here’s how the Russian names of these champions translate back into English: the keyword “champion” (see Mistbind Clique) and Champion of the Parish are translated into English as “advocate” or “paraclete.”
John Dale: “Paraclete?” Interesting choice of words. In English it has a much more religious connotation implying a comforting of the spirit. I could see “paraclete” applying to the Champion of the Parish because their backstory includes teachings of the setting’s church, but definitely not Mistbind Clique.
Valeriy: In Etched Champion and Champion’s Drake, “champion” is replaced with the word “wrestler.” Crypt Champion is a “defender,” the same word “Защитник” appearing as the term “defender” on a card like Wall of Roots, while Null Champion is something between “devotee” and “apostle.” The very first appearances of the word “champion” in Russian are Elvish Champion (Ninth Edition, the first regular printings) and Laquatus’s Champion (who was printed in Russian as the Torment Prerelease promotional card). Back-translation gives us “Laquatus’s Warrior” and “Elvish Champion.” That’s right; Elvish Champion is clearly a sports winner. To be honest, I can’t even imagine the kind of sport that can be hymned as “For what are leaves but countless blades / To fight a countless foe on high.”
John Dale: Maybe a back-to-nature version of Rollerball?
Valeriy: Hey, I know dystopia! Russia did it first! Yevgeny Zamyatin, We.
John Dale: Jack London’s The Iron Heel came first.
Valeriy: OK, fine.
So Laquatus’s Champion, Elvish Champion, and the many other problems in Ninth Edition and Ravnica are like a childhood awkwardness that the Russian version “grew out of” in Lorwyn. Yet the translation quality, having increased from Ravnica to Lorwyn, has somehow decreased back to annoying levels in recent sets. Innistrad is like “Pet Sematary” by the Ramones. The song is great, the horror atmosphere is great, but the typos are confusing. Okay, “sematary” itself was deliberate on Stephen King’s part, but the typos in Russian Innistrad are just typos; Bloodgift Demon’s typo messes up the “blood” part (Кровавого) and instead makes him “Krovavajo” (Кроваваго), like that one Native American group…
John Dale: Navajo?
Valeriy: Yes, them! Really, when I hear this word, I think first about Western movies and just then about the blood!
John Dale: I think of the code talkers. There’s only one left now.
Valeriy: Language is just a code, isn’t it?
John Dale: You could say that. Languages, codes, translation, communication—it all ties together.
Valeriy: Indeed. I hope the old good times of Lorwyn-quality translation will come back (even in a horror setting), but for now I can only suppose that a new sort of collecting might emerge: there are collectors of misprints, so why not collectors of rough translations from different languages! But, to be serious, I really hope that these collectors will have no new examples for their collections, and the quality of translation will evolve and grow with the game.
John Dale: So do I. No translator is perfect, but as long as Magic is an international game, its players deserve a quality experience, no matter what language they buy…
Valeriy: …or what side of the globe they live on.
We are:
Valeriy Shunkov John Dale Beety
Moscow, Russia Dallas, USA