Spellcasting Words (Translation and Discussion)
Varwulf
Member Posts: 564
Does anyone know the latin for when a priest casts spells like cure disease, and some of the healing spells? I think the male voice for this spell is very addictive to the ears, especially with the magical surge sound you can hear in the background while the priest says this spell.
Sorry for the stupid question, but I am one of those types who, when my mind has a question (mostly for itself), it can't stop focusing on the question until it has an answer, no matter how menial the question's importance may be
Sorry for the stupid question, but I am one of those types who, when my mind has a question (mostly for itself), it can't stop focusing on the question until it has an answer, no matter how menial the question's importance may be
Post edited by Dee on
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Comments
1) Illusion: "Veritas, Credo, Oculos" = "The truth, I believe, with my eyes"
2) Alteration: "Praeses, Alia, Fero" = "Protecting, another, I bring this forth"
3) Necromancy: "Vita, Mortis, Careo" = "Life, and death, I am without"
4) Divination: "Scio, Didici, Pecto" = "I know, for I have studied, with my mind"
5) Abjuration: "Manus, Potentis, Paro" = "A hand, powerful, I prepare"
6) Evocation: "Incertus, Pulcher, Imperio" = "Uncertain, beautiful things, I command"
7) Conjuration: "Facio, Voco, Ferre" = "This I do, I call, to bring you forth"
8) Enchantment: "Cupio, Virtus, Licet" = "I want, excellence, allowed to me"
Wow so *that's* what they are saying! I thought it was just a made up language!
"Incertus, Pulcher, Imperio" and "Facio, Voco, Ferre" used to inspire fear in me each time I heard it coming outta an enemy. lol
Thank you, sir!
I suppose that western minds are just socialized to find Latin ominous and intimidating, because for the last few centuries it's been used almost exclusively by the clergy and the intelligentsia. It's much more effective than made-up gobbledygook because we actually recognize parts of it, making it seem more real.
It's fun to observe the reaction of non-Western audiences to this. They just have no clue whatsoever, and it has far less of an effect. Might just as well be Klingon!
J.K. Rowling is a genius. She may have lucked into her current multi-millionaire fortunes, but she started in financial poverty with nothing to change her situation but a keen, and yes, GENIUS, awareness of cultural tropes in The West, not the least of which was the trope of "Latin = Magical Power."
Take a dead language, which has nevertheless connected with every root syllable in the contemporary languages of all contemporary political powers who have actual POWER on planet Earth. Invoke the death of that dead language at every opportunity in mythology creation or story-telling to bring in THE NUMINOUS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous
Win, win, win, all around, for both the invoker, AND the reader, viewer, listener, or player. @God kind of just does that to people. @God is kind of awesome, and I say that as an atheist.
@God just has a certain way about HimHer, as I perceive HimHer, and I don't even believe that HeShe exists! I just imagine such an Awesomeness to exist. But, ain't it grand to be a conscious being who can imagine such an Awesome Being? Hmm, I think that the philosophers call that little gem that I just invoked "the Ontological Argument" for @God's existence, or something like that.
If anything, HP brought the entire fantasy genre and its tropes to an audience not usually familiar with it. That doesn't mean that the tropes used are any more original, or any less stereotypical. If you actually go and dissect the HP story, it's a mish-mash of established paradigms more than anything else, except marketed to a different audience. That, if anything, has been the great JKR "genius".
Also, I'd be very careful about Western-/Eurocentrism. Never forget that half the world speaks Chinese or an Indian language, which have very little if anything to do with Latin. The associated socio-cultural implications are similarly absent in those cultures. Even just counting "actual POWER", India, China, and Japan alone easily match the US, Europe, and Russia, and constitute a completely different background in terms of socialization (and to that add the "less powerful" cultural spheres of Africa and South-East Asia, which make up the bulk of the world's population). It's easy to take a Western position and viewpoint for granted, but that's not something you should do in this day and age.
Be that as it may be, the media where Latin is used to its ominous effect are of course marketed especially towards a Western audience. It's interesting to observe a similar effect in other cultures, e.g. in Japan, where ominous eastern "magic" is often associated with and represented by ancient Chinese - it essentially plays the same role there that Latin plays for us, and in much the same way it means absolutely nothing to a Western audience.
This is interesting, because we increasingly find ourselves in a world where cultural boundaries are blurred, and cultural spheres overlap. For companies, this can be of great interest, because they are marketing towards a mixed audience - you will notice that this board, for example, has Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sections just as well as all the Western languages. I think that this is something that will become increasingly common, and will create many highly interesting effects!
Just me rambling one... now back on topic!
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/17190-what-the-casters-say/
There is a very fascinating discussion there, that Latinophiles like me should find interesting, and, I copy-pasted from the post of @-DarkAsKnight3050- from which I copy-pasted my guide in the second post, above.
Translated, that would be "Life, Death, Flesh!", which makes a lot more sense to me than the "Careo" meaning "I am without", or "I lack".
I think mine is a better auditory perception of the chant for healing:
"Vitae, Mortis, Carne!"
"Life, Death, Flesh!"
That sounds a lot more like a healing spell, to me.
Actually although I am Chinese, and can speak/read Chinese, I grew up in the UK, so it's a bit embarrassing that it did not occur to me sooner that obvious words like Veritas, Imperio and Vita were Latin
I know there is currently an attempt to translate BG into Chinese, but in my experience, a lot of things cannot be directly translated, or rather the translation loses a little of the original meaning, simply because another language does not even have the cultural background and vocabulary to describe something you are trying to say. This is especially true for Fantasy, since Western and Far Eastern mythologies are totally different, with little overlap.
For example, from what I've seen, 'Elves' in Chinese translations of western fantasy tend to be translated into words that have connotations of what you might regard as 'Faeries' or 'Immortals/Demi-Gods', which do exist in Chinese mythology, but from my Western perspective, neither is strictly accurate. Similarly 'Orcs' tend to be translated as 'Beastmen', which might complicate matters in games where 'Beastmen' exist as a separate race to Orcs (Warhammer Fantasy). I have no idea how they translated Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes, since as far I know, there are no equivalents in Chinese myths, so the vocabulary would not have existed.
I would love it one day if a major Western Fantasy setting merged with a major Eastern fantasy setting to give us a truly complete epic fantasy world. I know D&D kinda did it with the Kara-tur supplements, but as I understand it, it's more of a stand-alone campaign setting, and the majority of D&D content is still based on Faerun/Europe.
The literal translations above are more or less correct, although I would propose these as the actual meanings being conveyed:
"Veritas credo oculos" (Illusion) could also be translated as "Truth, I trust my eyes".
"Incertus pulchra imperio" (Evocation) could mean "I control beautiful mysteries".
"Vita mortis careo" (Necromancy) is better translated as "I separate life from death".
"Praeses alia fero" (Alteration/Transmutation) could mean "I, protecting, bring change".
"Scio didici pecto" (Divination) is actually three verbs, which loosely means "I know, I have learned, I seek [to know more]".
"Manus potentis paro" (Abjuration) is better translated as "I prepare a powerful hand".
"Facio, Voco, Fero" (Conjuration) is a bit like Divination, three verbs: "I make, I call, I bring".
"Cupio virtus, licet" (Enchantment) is pretty straight-forward, and kind of says a lot about enchanters in general: "I desire bravery; let it be permitted!"
Your examples are actually very good in that respect. It underlines a fundamental issue when dealing with cross-cultural translations and transpositions. A popular analogy would be "even if a lion could talk, you couldn't understand it", i.e. cultural differences can be just as large a gap as linguistic ones. With Chinese, it is doubly difficult, because you can't simply anglicize the way you can in many other languages. In Japanese for example it's very common to simply phonetically transcribe foreign words, so that even though they lack an original cultural context, they can be understood if the foreign one is known, or can at least be inferred. As such you can easily turn "elf" into "エルフ" (erufu) and leave it to the audience to figure out. This is also done in reverse: see for example the Japanese mythological creature "oni", which doesn't have a Western equivalent. When translated it can easily become "demon" or "ogre", but those two are distinctly different in our mythological understanding - the best solution in that case is often to leave the word as-is. But as a Chinese speaker, I'm sure you know that isn't a solution that always works, or for any language.
It gets worse the more abstract and vague the concepts become. In the case at hand for example the Latin incantations aren't (primarily) intended to convey any meaning - they are intended to convey atmosphere. That is something that is nigh-impossible to be directly translated, and in any case could only be done by potentially crippling approximation. There is a plethora of such details that we often don't even consciously recognize, but once you start paying attention and dissecting things, it becomes a fascinating overview of cultural matters-of-course.
And, indeed, that's all well and good, and, in a way, you have trumped all counterarguments.
However, I would propose this little countertrump:
J.K. Rowling is a multimillionaire, after her "little" taking of advantage of what I put forth as Western cultural tropes. You and I still have to work for a living, and worry about paying our bills.
Rowling never has to worry about money again. You and I, on the other hand....
So, who's the "genius" now, hmmm?
"Praeses, Alia, Fero!"
Yay, I have all the money in the bank that I will ever need, and I can just play Baldur's Gate and mess about with the BG:EE forums and all my good friends in there forever, and, yay, Happy Happy Joy Joy!
LOL. Please forgive my silliness. I'm feeling rather "happy, happy, joy, joyful" right now, and, honestly, I both envy and congratulate J.K. Rowling on her hitting it rich by invoking just the right cultural tropes at just the right time!
I can feel "happy, happy joy, joyful" just because of my non-belief in the existence of @God, and, also, my good friends @Shandyr and Bobby McFerrin, who once made me adopt this:
as my personal themesong.
LOL. Don't worry, be happy!
Oh, hey, here's something on topic:
Nolite ergo solliciti esse beata!
Or:
Bono animo esto ac feliciter vive!
Or:
Nullae in reliquam vitam curae!
So, yeah, read the Dresden Files. Those books are amazing.
Veratus
Neck-tie!!! ::cough, cough:::
I said the words. Ok, maybe I didn't say every single syllable, but I got the main point across.
I wouldn't say indian languageS are that different, but other than that you're right.
For those interested I include a couple of links where you can read more about the connection of Indian languages with European and the so called Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language
http://www.friesian.com/cognates.htm
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/IE_Main4_Sanskrit.html
And for those who are quite open-minded
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp115_chinese_proto_indo_european.pdf
I think the Latin is cool, but I still prefer the original casting sounds brought back from the original BG1 by @Akuro.
Can anyone help?
EDIT: Maybe it's "Facio, Voce, Fero!", which would be Conjuration in BG. Are the schools maybe just switched around?
EDIT#2: Whelp, I just went into my IWD2 game program, and saw that in IWD2, healing spells have been changed to Conjuration school. So I guess I just found the answer to my own question. Apologies.
Mythology is shared amongst all Indo-European people from Irish to southern Indians.
I do agree that the cultural diversification that came with the new monotheism of christians made a huge culural gap between us(Europeans and Indians). I wasn't really trying to say that we share the so called "Christian Latin" culture, I was trying to point out that the Latin language is in a strong relationship with Indian languages and that Latin doesn't have "very little" to do with them.
Are they also chanting in Latin in Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 when they cast spells as well? If they are, does anyone here know what they say there?
The point of all this is simply that the use of Latin or Pseudo-Latin in magical and occult invocations draws on a certain cultural knowledge and image that is particular to "Western" societies. Regardless of the common roots of many European and Indian languages, the distinct cultural and linguistic influences of (classical) Latin are a defining characteristic predominantly of cultures that were exposed to the Roman Empire and its successors directly. The more you distance yourself from that sphere of influence, the less pronounced the influence becomes, and subsequently the less of an effect you gain from using Latin/Pseudo-Latin to invoke feelings of mysticism or the occult.
The one for Cure Light Wounds sounds to me like:
Obidiah Medulla Makat
Stoneskin sounds like:
Obidiah Ne Bora Sisna
Cat's Grace sounds like:
Forat Um Matu
"Medulla" in Latin means middle, or bone marrow. Makat could be a form of the verb for "to make". "Forat" means "it pricks". "Matu" means morning. It sounds more like "maklu" to me, though, which doesn't mean anything in Latin. "Ne Bora" would mean "not the hour". "Sisna" looks like a form of the verb "to be" in the second person. "Not you, or you are not", maybe.
The trouble with trying to do this by ear, is that none of the consonants are clear. We would really need a definitive list of exactly what the voice actors are reading, because their pronunciation is often off.
Then, we don't really know what the language is. Latin is common for this trope, but it could also be ancient Greek, or Sumarian, Babylonian, or Egyptian for all we know, without some help from a developer.
So unless one of them remembers who wrote it, and exactly what it said, we'll probably never know.
I'm not sure how those people from the forum I linked managed to capture the BG Latin so well. I guess Latin is a little easier to figure out, if it really is Latin, than if they used a more exotic dead language.
EDIT: Just looked up "Vora". That means "devours". So that stoneskin one might say "Omnes Dii Ne Vora Sisna" which could loosely mean "For all the gods, you shall not, be devoured."
@belgarathmth You have a better ear than me, I thought it was all gibberish until Varwulf told me about this post. If it is a real language, which it certainly looks like, that is a touch that I find pretty cool.
The stoneskin chant would fit, it has certainly stopped my characters from being devoured by many a foe.
Shame that we might never know but it does make it feel a little more fun to know that my characters are chanting in a archaic language. I like the chant where my Warlock casts his Eldritch Blast from NWN2 best, but all I can hear from that is :
"Corps, nas preota"
Which is most probably wrong.
Mathematicians are often heard making a bold claim: "Mathematics is the language which God used to describe the world with". They certainly wish I did, don't they? The hell I would.
The initial, and fatal, mistake mathematicians make is to assume It can be that there are things and there are no things. As in '1' and '0', which is the foundation of, roughly, all modern science. Starting at this starting point is nowhere near being colourblind. It's endlessly worse than that. See, what mathematics fails to notice is that there is nothing. And there is also everything, which is composed of something or, to be more exact, somethings. Then, there is also all that is beyond. This might be confusing a bit, but don't worry - I'll be a scumbag god and give no clarification whatsoever. Philosophers have (sometimes with my help) failed to understand the nature of Nature for a few good millions of years, don't feel obliged to understand it yourselves yet. Anyway, back to my point: what mathematics disastrously fails to accomplish is not quite as much trouble to language. Using language, you can freely talk about e.g. legendary colourless blue fluffy iron toga-clad speaking mute human rabbits of hell who dwell in the fabric of Jan Jansen's nocturnal mental habits, while maths starts crying when faced with a simple concept like e.g. culture. That is, dear children, why language evolves much faster than maths. I even heard that you have developed several distinct languages over the last few aeons. Most cute!
Please, don't hate me for hating mathematics. Hate me if you wish, though be warned that I consider maths an ideology dangerous to human survival prospects.
@belgarathmth
I have prepared a place for you. And you know that.
True to form, You contribute maddeningly little of any specific nature to the topic at hand.
Although, I deeply appreciate that very creative tribute to Steven Pinker.
I actually got a gift from You today, in the form of a free download of a game that once gave me much joy during the 1990's, "Dark Wizard", originally for the Sega CD, and, my what a trip I am having playing it again! It is one of Your finest creations, I do declare! I'm about to start a thread for it in the Off-Topic forum. You even, through an apparent rare moment of divine benevolence, left a few crumbs scattered about the internet with all the technical clues I needed to reconstruct the ancient game in a miracle of Yours, called an "emulator". Even though it was all just vague enough to take me about three hours of my time this morning to find enough info to get it up and running.
Now, back on-topic: I know that You could tell us *exactly* what all these spell incantations are saying in both BG and in Neverwinter Nights, if You wanted to, being omniscient and all, but, I *know* You quite well. You are, of course, going to refuse to just hand over to us any such specific information.
It's "good" for us to try to figure it out for ourselves, and all that.
I do love You, You know. Even though You won't do me the courtesy of existing.
on the subject of dog latin (or w/e you call it) my personal favorite is: fabricati diem, pvnc XD