Translation of D&D terms

[Keynub]

Hey, people.

Being French, it is sometimes difficult for me to understand all of the terms being used on these forums, as well as those of the English-language books I possess (alas, most books were never translated to French). Feats, skills, classes, spells, game mechanics all have different names between languages. Finding out what word matches what word is made harder by the fact that some translations seem illogical : the word "pinned", not "immobilized", translates to "immobilisé" in French.

I'm searching for a lexicon or another tool in order to help with this matter, but I couldn't find anything.

Do you know of something that might help me with this?

If nothing exists yet, I'm thinking of making a lexicon myself.

[docnessuno]

I'm italian, so i used to face similar problems. The solution is quite simple overall:
Option A: Limit yourself to translated spaltbooks.
Option B: Use english spaltbooks even when a translation is avaiable. (this is what i do btw)

[Cicciograna]

I'm italian, so i used to face similar problems. The solution is quite simple overall:
Option A: Limit yourself to translated spaltbooks.
Option B: Use english spaltbooks even when a translation is avaiable. (this is what i do btw)

Seconded. I'm Italian too, but I never reference the translated manuals: the problems are twofold, namely that many terms are not so easy to translate, and often the actual translation is poor, to say the least.

I only buy and use English material.

[Keynub]

I see.
The issue is, I already possess 7-8 books in French, and I would rather not buy them again. Plus, some of my players aren't fluent in English, so they use mostly French material, and I need to understand what feat/spell/etc they are talking about.

It seems I'm going to have to do it myself then.

[ThiagoMartell]

Such a product was released in Brazil, but it's Portuguese-English, so I don't know if it would help... it has also been out of print for years

[javijuji]

Same thing happened here. Most of my players are spanish speakers and know some english. When we started playing we used translated books and ran into lots of translation problems. Eventually we started using english books and only using the translations when we couldnt completely grasp some concept.

[Uncle Pine]

I'm italian and I used to have the same problem.
My suggestion is to bookmark wizard's online glossary (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary). You can then use it as a reference every time you find a game mechanic you can't translate well you can compare the english description with the one from your Player's Handbook.
Note that the glossary I linked is from the english Player's Handbook and doesn't cover feats (http://www.realmshelps.net/cgi-bin/featsform.pl) and skills (http://www.realmshelps.net/datafind/skills/index.shtml), as well as classes from splatbooks (sorry, I have no links for this one).

[Keynub]

My suggestion is to bookmark wizard's online glossary (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary).

Thank you! :smallsmile:
It isn't an optimal solution, but it will certainly help.