Translation of Return of Rome and some other campaigns into Russian was simply terrible

[Nebular905647]

I have long wanted to write this topic, but I put it off because creating it and explaining everything is a lot of work. Finally I’m ready to share it. I have already mentioned the most obvious example, in which two Armenian kings were confused. Their names in the Russian version are indeed similar, but this does not mean that it was impossible to spend 2 minutes checking on Wikipedia.

Osroes I ≠ Khosrov I - A very stupid mistake in Russian localization

First of all, I would like to say that the Russian localization of the entire AoE II is very uneven. Some campaigns are well translated, while others look like they were translated by primary school children or special ward patients. I have long wanted to inform you that all 3 “Return of Rome” campaigns fall into the second category. Almost not a single phrase in them is translated correctly. But I will create a more detailed post about this some other time. And now about the most obvious and ri…

In fact, the list of mistakes in Russian localization is simply monstrous. It is worth noting that this does not apply to all campaigns and some are translated absolutely normally. But some contain mistakes that a 6th grade pupil would not make.

I will give many examples. Since most of you do not know Russian, I will give a reverse translation and “translate mistakes” as much as possible.

kilometers instead of miles. No one used kilmeters back then! The difference is 1.6 times.

(Saladin)

wrong word chosen

(Saladin)
In Russian there are 2 words for “not”: ne and ni. Here is situation where both must be used and 1 was wrong.

The text is incomplete. Breaks off at the words “convince him that”

(El Cid)

Oman empire!

(Dracula)
In Ru the correct word for “Ottoman” is “Osman”.

Missing comma after "Nevertheless". 7th grade.

(Barbarossa)

on the battlefiilt

(Sforza)
There are cases in Russian language. Word endings play something like the role of prepositions. The wrong case was used: “poli” when needed “pole”. 5-6th grade of school, srsly.

gender form of verb

(Prithviraj)
In Ru verbs have gender forms. Phrase “I must” looks like “I musta” if a woman speaks. Here we see a woman but ofc she speaks of herself like a man. This mistake is made because the translator didn’t even play or watch the game which he translates.

на юге станы / on the South of counry

(Le Loi)

присоединяйтесь к мне / join t me”

(Hautevilles)

Roussel de Bailleul the swindler...

(Hautevilles)
In English, the word “venturer” has several meanings, united under one concept. But in Russian, a merchant, a traveler and a swindler are very different words. And the worst one was chosen.

said "huta" instead of "huna"

(Devapala 3)

the real vulture!

(Rajendra)
“vultures run to the corpse”
And in the picture we see exactly what these running vultures look like.

Here I have given about half of the examples that I have saved. This post is quick to read, but it took me a long time to create it; I had to work with screenshots, check which campaigns it was in, upload it, sign it. Next time I will continue specifically on Rome dlc.

[Nebular905647]

“Return of Rome” was translated the worst, it consists of mistakes entirely. Reading this is simply embarrassing and scary. It’s horrible. The person who translated this did not finish the 5th grade of school, his knowledge stops there. Most likely, it was just a cheap outsourcer who was found in a trash heap.

About who is an idiot

It’s quite difficult to explain what’s wrong here. Two friends are arguing, both calling each other an idiot. But when the second one says it, he returns the phrase, which should change the wording. It should be something like “He’s an idiot himself.” This was not done and the phrase sounds as if Kineas forgot that he was giving the answer.
In addition, there should not be a dash; it is not placed between a pronoun and a noun.

And hated this life

The word is missing: “And he hated this life” .
In addition, this destroys the comic effect built on the contrast between the previous and this slide.

Giving up is like, dying

There should be no comma here. In Ru comma is often placed before “что” (as, what) but not in this case.

Guided by its wisdom, the Augustan Empire reached...

This is a common mistake among the illiterate plebs. Wisdom did not belong to the empire, but to Augustus, because he was the living figure. Even in English, this formulation sounds strange, but in Russian the difference between living and things is even stronger, but idiots often simply cannot construct a phrase and instead of “thanks to experience, a man on a motorcycle was saved,” they write “thanks to experience, a motorcycle saved a man.”

a flame chocked by, corruption

This entire fragment was translated by a moron. There is a whole bunch of mistakes and it needs to be rewritten entirely.

1. The whole phrase “After so many decades, emperors and wars” should be formulated differently, but I cannot translate this mistake, it is complex. In general, the child tried to say something, but it turned out to be a bunch of random words.
2. Flame is not chocked, it is blown or extinguished.
3. There are two extra commas in the text.

regretted about omission of opportunities

In English this does not sound ridiculous, but in Russian it should have been written “about a missed opportunity” (an adjective and a noun), and not two nouns. Not a severe mistake, but better to change.

despised him, as a commoner

There mustn’t be a comma.

punctuation again

There should not be a dash here and there should be a comma instead.

thrown head started festivals

The same mistake with living and nonliving things. The wording needs to be changed. In English this is not so obvious, but in Russian you need to write like “this is where the festivals began.” The head itself could not be the doer, the initiator of action, it is not magical.

he was hit

In Ru, all nouns have a “gender” conventionally assigned to them, even if they are non-living. By the way, it was the same in Latin. “Nabatea” and “provincia” are both feminine (because they have that -a ending). But the fragment ends with “he was hit”.

Thoughts look at him

Same mistake again. The translator was a moron, he was incapable of constructing a simple sentence. Instead of “When I look at him, thoughts come to me,” he wrote: “Thoughts look at him and come to me.” 5-6th grade.

King who?

In addition to the fact that the king is signed incorrectly (Khosrov and Osroes are different people), there is also an incorrect adjective. Instead of “Parthian” it says something like “Parthiy”.

In fact, there were even more mistakes. As I progressed through the campaigns, I took screenshots, but as you can imagine, I was not able to keep track of every phrase. I will assume that there are 3-4 times more in campaigns.
I can seriously offer myself for the job of correcting entire game text. I already have this experience, in 2018 I corrected about 150 pages of text for one game.

[Yevardian]

Are you sure they’re not simply machine-translated? That was always my assumption

[Nebular905647]

I am sure. The fact is that these mistakes are much dumber than what auto-translation makes. That is, once upon a time, 15 years ago, machine translation was truly terrible and became the source of numerous memes on RuNet. But “Return of Rome” is new content. And now Google would not allow anything like this. These are the typical mistakes of a moron schoolboy, they are common, they are widely ridiculed among the people.