I'm a sad roleplayer-translator, paaaaat me : <

[Kaworu]

Hi people.

Okay, to make the long story short - there is this very cool, nice and well-thought conversion of Exalted into Fate Core mechanics. I am convinced that if English roleplayers would have access to that, they would fall in love and never look back at alternative systems.

But, there are some problems, such like:

1. It's in Polish.

2. I do not know the author(s) of the conversion...

3. ... or the license (there could be a few).

So... X_X

Okay, I am a kinda hobby translator. And I *COULD* translate it into English. But, because of the reasons above, it would be a violation of copyrights. And I do not wanna do something like that. What I wanna do is to make a translation I could legally, pridefully put on DriveThruRPG. And without the authors' knowledge, acknowledging them and knowing what kind of license the Fate of Exalted is based on, this is simply impossible.

I am sorry that you will not have a nice conversion of Exalted to Fate because of formal reasons :'(

I'm just angry and sad as heck, cause good RPG was never so close, yet so far. And really, this conversion is SO FREAKING GOOD! Every single person should have access to it, not only Polish speakers. And I rarely wanna translate something so badly as this piece this time.

In short, I am sad and angry. Will I get them headpats? : <

EDIT:

Okay, so below, in Spoiler, you can find the log (from oldest to newest) with news about the translation as I am working on that :D Cool, huh? UwU

[The date format is this - day, month, year (I believe you do so differently in US, but I am a European, so... xD ;-) )]

Ther is also a separate list of things I have already completed working on ;-)

Spoiler: News log

Show

17.10.2022 - pages: 38. I currently translate Caste charms of Infernals.

19.10.2022 - pages: 41. I am translating Ebon Dragon charms.

04.11.2022 - pages: 45. I already translated all Malfeas Charms and I am working my way through She Who Lives in Her Name.

13.01.2023 - pages: 49. Today I translated Kimbery's and Metagaos' Charms. I have yet to translate Szoreny and Devil Tigers (1 page, maybe?) and then the Infernals are all set! UwU

14.01.2023- pages: 54. Woo-hoo! I passed the symbolic number of 50 pages! :D All Infernals are translated now and currently I am working on Lunars :3

23.01.2023 - pages: 56. I translated all Full Moon charms and now it is a time for Changing Moon.

28.01.2023 - pages: 62. Lunars are now fully translated. Right now I am working on Sidereal Astrological Houses.

09.02.2023 - pages: 67. I translated Charms of Battles and Endings, now I am working on Journeys.

08.03.2023 - pages: 69. I translated Charms of Journeys and Secrets, now the only Caste left is Serenity :D

EDIT: Okay, I have got 70 pages and I translated all the usual Charms of Sidereals :D Weeee :D Now I need to translate the mechanics of their astrology :3

EDIT 2: 73 pages translated, and I finished all Sidereals :D Woo-hooo :D Now is the time for Dragon-Blooded :D

14.03.2023 - pages: 79. I translated the whole of Dragon-Blooded file.

15.03.2023 - pages: 81. I Just started working on Alchemicals.

06.04.2023 - pages: 83. I translated Caste Techniques of Alchemicals and I am working on Orichalcum Caste Charms right now :D

07.04.2023 - pages: 85. I translated Orichalcum, Moonsilver and Jade Charms, now I am working on Starmetal.

[It's middle of the night and I cannot sleep cause schizophrenia : < HALP T_T ]

EDIT: Okay, it is 7 AM, I haven't sleep xD BUT! (UwU) I have translated the whole Alchemicals file :D Weeee :D

I currently have 89 pages of the translation.

EDIT2: Hi :D I have 93 pages and I am translating Gods' file currently, but my newest achievement is having written more than 200 000 characters :D Woo-hooo? :3

EDIT3: Weeeee :D I have the 100th page of translation :D Such happiness :D

13.04.2023 - pages: 105. I have translated the Gods file and now I am gonna work on Elementals.

15.04.2023: - pages: 115. I finished translating Elementals. Now is the time for Demons... which are covered on 50 pages xD HALP, I'M DYING XD

23.04.2023 - pages: 123. I'm working on translating the Demons of Adorjan.

05.05.2023 - pages: 129. I finished Demons of Adorjan, now I am starting to work on Demons of Cecelyne.

08.05.2023 - pages: 134. Still working on Demons of Cecelyne.

09.05.2023 - pages: 142. Finished Cecelyne, I am working on Elloge right now.

10.05.2023 - pages:150 (!!!). Elloge is done, now I am working on Ebon Dragon

16.03.2023 - pages: 153. Still working on Ebon Dragon ;-)

EDIT: I reached 157th page :D Yay UwU

17.05.2023 - pages: 160. I finished ED and now it is time for Isidoros :D

23.05.2023 - pages: 164. I finished Isidoros, now I am working on Kimbery :D

24.05.2023 - pages: 169. I finished Kimbery, now is the time for Malfeas :D

30.05.2023 - pages: 175. A round number of translation's pages :D I am still translating demons of Malfeas ;-)

03.06.2023 - pages: 177. Still working on Malfeas, but I have 1.5 pages (1 "big" demon and 2 "lesser" ones) till the end of that part.

06.06.2023 - pages: 182. I finished Malfeas and now it is time for Metagaos :D

07.06.2023 - pages: 186. I finished Metagaos, now is the time for Szoreny :D Also, I finished 80% of the whole Demons file :D Wooo-hoooo :D

09.06.2023 - pages: 189. I am still working on Szoreny.

10.06.2023 - pages: 194. I finished Szoreny :D Now just SWLIHN and... all the demons will be translated :D

12.06.2023 - pages: 196. I am still working on She Who Lives in Her Name.

13.06.2023 - pages: 203. I finished translating all the Demons :D Now is time for Raksha :-)

21.06.2023 - pages: 206. I am slowly starting translating Raksha.

Spoiler: Things done already

Show

• Rules
• Creating a character
• Skills
• Solars
• Abyssals
• Infernals
• Lunars
• Sidereals: Constellations
• Sidereals: Typical Charms
• Sidereal Astrology
• Dragon-Blooded
• Alchemicals
• Gods
• Elementals
• Demons (of Adorjan)
• Demons (of Cecelyne)
• Demons (of Elloge)
• Demons (of Ebon Dragon)
• Demons (of Isidoros)
• Demons (of Kimbery)
• Demons (of Malfeas)
• Demons (of Metagaos)
• Demons (of Szoreny)
• Demons (of SWLiHN)

[TaiLiu]

Imaginary headpats coming your way.

What's stopping you from communicating with the authors and working together on a translation? Also, if it helps, I've played FATE before and I'm not the biggest fan. So it's possible that this conversion isn't for everyone.

[Smoutwortel]

Imaginary headpats coming your way.

What's stopping you from communicating with the authors and working together on a translation? Also, if it helps, I've played FATE before and I'm not the biggest fan. So it's possible that this conversion isn't for everyone.

What's stopping them is the lack of knowledge of who these authors are in the first place (point 2).
If they're willing to share the title I'm willing to attempt and track down an indication of who these authors're and if I succeed I will also try to find if it is under an open gaming license like it's predecessor FATE(non-recursive license, so you've to check with each of them separately).
Any extra information you can provide would be helpful, but especially names and/or contact information of organizations that distribute the work.



Also pat, pat, pat.

[TaiLiu]

What's stopping them is the lack of knowledge of who these authors are in the first place (point 2).

Oh, you’re right. Somehow I wildly misread that.

[Dame_Mechanus]

That really is sad, and for a moment I was going to say "hey, I know a few people who speak Polish and English fluently" before I noticed your location and put the rest together. It's heartbreaking when you see something really cool that a lot of people are going to miss out on just because... the communication isn't there.

Pettings ensue.

[sunrise.archive]

@Kaworu
Can you give us a link to the original? Exalted with Fate sounds very interesting.

Pat -pat, of course.

[Kaworu]

Okay, update! xD

I remembered the friend who had given me the files in the first place. They didn't remember the authors either ("just some marriage of RPG players), but he remembered the FB group on which the communication took place. So I visited and used search feature - I did not expect any results, really, FB is soooooo ****ty :/ BTW, why Polish roleplayers do not use any kind of Internet forum? It's so nice to search, read and archive! Boooooo : < - BUT I had found the original post of my friend he was talking about. And then, in comment, I found the person! Yatta :D

Then I communicated with them and... I have all the files from the source :D And they agreed for the translation and to publish it under a CC license :D

Weeeeeeeee :D I found them :D Kinda by sheer luck, but whateva xD

Oh my God, I am sooooo happy UwU

But I cannot tell you when I will finish the translation. I am a very busy person, you know? I need to write RPG reviews for one site, I have two blogs I need to write, now I also will be starting Coursera courses (and maybe try to find a job, dunno, I have schizophrenia). But the results should be good UwU Alas, for now I have not translated even the first of several files... X_X

Also, it is cheating if I wanna put the whole file through a grammar, spelling and commas checking software? Cause I have been told that English of my translations is "pretty" (by my sis, who's an English studies graduate), but I do realize that my English is "just" good, but maybe kinda not enough to publish something in the language professionally? It is NOT cheating, I assume?

[I mean, maybe most non-natives would find a use of such software...?]

TL:DR - yay, I found the authors and they allowed me to translate :D Now the English-speaking world can look at the glories of Fate of Exalted UwU Yay :3

EDIT: Also, I wish I had two screens xD Or at least "always on top" feature from Linux : < Boooooooo : <

[Dame_Mechanus]

That's great news and I'm glad to hear it!

Admittedly it's been many years since I looked into such software but I'm generally a bit leery of automatic grammar software; it's not generally all that reliable, at least in English. My suggestion would be to get an English-speaking person to look things over and offer edits or grammatical checking, if that's not too arduous a task. Having said that, if that's not really possible due to time, money, or other reasons, the software isn't the worst idea. But your general grasp of grammar is clean and comprehensible.

[Kaworu]

Well, Grammarly is a pretty novel software and it seems to be working pretty well? ;-) But I also could ask some kind of native speaker ;-)

EDIT: In theoryyyyyyyy... I could ask my sister, but she totally does not understand what RPG games are, and since they use a specific kind of language... nope, not a good idea xD

[Persolus]

As far as I am aware, Grammarly states that the free version cannot check over anything for commercial use.

Plus, to second what Dame_Mechanus said, grammar/spell checkers aren't great at finding mistakes, just errors - i.e. they might catch that you forgot to capitalise a sentence, but not that you used a double negative. This would only be made worse by the fact that, as you said, RPGs use a specific kind of language.

If I was in your place, once I did my best to translate, I'd probably try looking around on here for english-speakers who've played both Fate and Exalted to give it the once over. However, I am not a translator, editor, RPG publisher, or have ever played those games, so take that with a grain of salt

[Kaworu]

Hm... I didn't realize the license limitation. BTW, if we wanna publish something for free, does this still counts as a "commercial" use?

[Kinda rhetoric question, I think you cannot ask for legal things on these forums? And no, I do not wanna an answer or something, it just... the ways the conversation flows? :-P :-) ]

Also, I am sure I can find some other grammar checker ;-) I hope... xD Plus really, I can always ask some native speakers ;-)

[Fyraltari]

Hm... I didn't realize the license limitation. BTW, if we wanna publish something for free, does this still counts as a "commercial" use?

Obviously the law varies from country to country, but generally speaking, distributing something for free is not enough to constitute fair use.

Copyright law exists precisely to avoid people distributing your intellectual property without your permission and without giving you money for it.

[Kaworu]

Ah, okay, thank you ;-) BTW, there seems to be a open source replacement? UwU Cool :D

[Smoutwortel]

That's great news and I'm glad to hear it!

Admittedly it's been many years since I looked into such software but I'm generally a bit leery of automatic grammar software; it's not generally all that reliable, at least in English. My suggestion would be to get an English-speaking person to look things over and offer edits or grammatical checking, if that's not too arduous a task. Having said that, if that's not really possible due to time, money, or other reasons, the software isn't the worst idea. But your general grasp of grammar is clean and comprehensible.

If you don't consider it unreliable in English it's not in any other language, due to the nature of its development(Its a lot easier to get qualified texts to use for the deep learning algorithm) its the best for english.

[Smoutwortel]

Obviously the law varies from country to country, but generally speaking, distributing something for free is not enough to constitute fair use.

Copyright law exists precisely to avoid people distributing your intellectual property without your permission and without giving you money for it.

He spoke about commercial not fair use, which due to the provided cc license is a mattering difference.

[TaiLiu]

But I also could ask some kind of native speaker ;-)

You might be able to recruit people from this forum to help with that. How big is the project?

[Kaworu]

You might be able to recruit people from this forum to help with that. How big is the project?

It's... somehow hard to say? (xD) There are at least 19 separate DOCX files, every dedicated to one topic (various kinds of Exalted, Sorcery, Artifacts etc...). If we will assume that on average, a file is 5 pages long (it depends...), then we have 100 pages of text to translate.

Oh, it will take a long time, especially considering that I have other things to take care of... xD But when I will finish the translation, I will be sure to ask people here about help with language ;-)

[TaiLiu]

It's... somehow hard to say? (xD) There are at least 19 separate DOCX files, every dedicated to one topic (various kinds of Exalted, Sorcery, Artifacts etc...). If we will assume that on average, a file is 5 pages long (it depends...), then we have 100 pages of text to translate.

Oh, it will take a long time, especially considering that I have other things to take care of... xD But when I will finish the translation, I will be sure to ask people here about help with language ;-)

Oh, wow. The .docx format can't help. Good luck!

[Smoutwortel]

Oh, wow. The .docx format can't help. Good luck!

I can very much have misinterperted your comment, but if your porblem is that you can't open .docx I think I can help by converting it to a digital text(or picture) format of your choice.

[TaiLiu]

I can very much have misinterperted your comment, but if your porblem is that you can't open .docx I think I can help by converting it to a digital text(or picture) format of your choice.

Oh, no, I just meant that .docx files are a real pain to work with. And they're gonna be a real pain to put together as an aesthetically-pleasing PDF or website or something like that. But I'm not the one working with them.

[Kaworu]

Actually, I use Libre Office on my computer and I am gonna put all the text in one file (.odt) and then export them as PDF ;-) No problem here ;-)

[TaiLiu]

Actually, I use Libre Office on my computer and I am gonna put all the text in one file (.odt) and then export them as PDF ;-) No problem here ;-)

Oh, glad to hear. I confess I'm not the biggest fan of word processor > PDF conversions, since I think the resulting typography isn't ideal. But it works.

[ereinion]

I can very much have misinterperted your comment, but if your porblem is that you can't open .docx I think I can help by converting it to a digital text(or picture) format of your choice.

Most translators I know prefer working in a CAT-tool, such as Trados or similar. I think most of these handle importing Word-files just fine though.

[Kaworu]

Hm... you know, I am not a *PROFESSIONAL* translator, maybe I am wrong, but would not a CAT be... hm... too much to handle for me? :-P

[Laserlight]

I used to handle sales for a localization company and have some idea how to do a good translation.

1. What we'd have done is break the text into strings, see how many of them are duplicates, translate each string once. For example: BigBankInc has a motto "We'll keep your money" on every page on their website. We don't want to translate that 25,000 times (and pay for every word translated), and we don't want the phrase translated two, three, five different ways. Do it once, insert it everywhere.

I don't know how you'd do that in Libre Office--maybe if you go crazy with Find & Replace--but you can develop a glossary, so your translation of compel, aspect, invoke, sorcery, Exalted, etc are consistent.

2. We would always have the translation done by someone who spoke the target language as a native. I'm assuming your first language is Polish so what I'd suggest is that you translate it, then beg someone who is a current native English speaker (not "I grew up in Chicago but I've lived in Poland for 35 years") to make an editing pass. I get Italian games, often obviously translated by the writers. I don't mind the occasions when I say to myself "this is kind of a clunky translation" but I do mind when I say "what on earth does he actually mean?"

[Kaworu]

Hi laserlight ;-)

Okay, so:

I don't know how you'd do that in Libre Office--maybe if you go crazy with Find & Replace--but you can develop a glossary, so your translation of compel, aspect, invoke, sorcery, Exalted, etc are consistent.

Actually, both Fate and Exalted have Polish translations (and are English games originally), so mechanical terms aren't that big of a problem (unless there is a little piece of vocab I cannot find original version of... xD I had one situation like that when working on the piece xD it was about... attuning to artifacts? xD "Oh, how it's called in English? Synchronizing? Oh my, I lost a word!" xD But it's okay now :-P).

As to native English speakers - usually native English speakers do not speak fluent Polish, plus I cannot expect a translation being made by someone else, right? :-P ;-) But yes, I am gonna ask some native English speakers (most possibly using this forum?) for their input as to what change in the translation. Plus I am gonna use Gramarly-like software, it would be a great help too ;-) But for now I am still (slowly) working on the translation... :-P

[Kaworu]

Still working slowly ;-) You shoudl expect the very early version of finished text at around a year from now, if no longer, U know xD The artifacts themselves are 40 pages long xD

But I finished, lemme think... the general rules section, how to create a character, skills, and Solars and Abyssals files. Right now next in line is the file about Infernals (10 pages long, will take a while :-P). There is progress, but very slow - I am working alone and there are yet many, many files to go through :-P

But at some point in the future, it will be finished... ;-) But really dunno when, it seems a titanic work :-P Nice, but titanic xD

EDIT: Also, if you wish, I can post in this topic progress as it is happening ;-) But also, I wouldn't like to spam these forums, so... *shrug*

EDIT2: My translation is currently 36 pages long? ;-) Thought U might wanna know ;-)

EDIT3: Okay, I really do not wanna spam the forum with news... but I think I can edit the first post with a SPOILER tag and there write news ;-) UwU can we do it like that? ;-)

EDIT4: Oh, the person I have written in response to has deleted their post...? :-) xD Okay...? xD Dunno what is happening, but whatever ;-)

[Kaworu]

Hi people! I have kinda problem that I would like to ask you for help with.

I am translating now No Moon Charms. And there is one that allows for using Fair Folk powers. However, I was never truly interested in how Raksha works and I do not know much about them (I am referencing right now Fair Folk 2e, which sadly, I never read fully).

The text I have problem with is like that (my first attempt at translation):

Prince of the Fair Folk’s Court (exclusive – No Moon): You can learn non-exlusive Techniques of Raksha, if you have the right kind of teacher. In order to do so, you need to buy the respective skills: they cannot be bigger than half of your own Essence. For every point you get a Technique from a list, but you do not get the basic Techniques (which can made some of them unusable). You have no possibility of Shaping, if you haven’t forged your own regalia (insignia???)

The problem is a mechanical term in the last statement. What do Fair Folk need for Shaping? How is it called in English version of Exalted? Regalia? Insignia? Something else?

Sorry, I feel really ignorant right now : <

[Smoutwortel]

Hi people! I have kinda problem that I would like to ask you for help with.

I am translating now No Moon Charms. And there is one that allows for using Fair Folk powers. However, I was never truly interested in how Raksha works and I do not know much about them (I am referencing right now Fair Folk 2e, which sadly, I never read fully).

The text I have problem with is like that (my first attempt at translation):



The problem is a mechanical term in the last statement. What do Fair Folk need for Shaping? How is it called in English version of Exalted? Regalia? Insignia? Something else?

Sorry, I feel really ignorant right now : <

"Can made some of them unusable" is unclear to me, do you mean "can make some of them unusable"?

"do not" my english teacher would grow hair over this, but in everyday english it's just uncommon. do not=don't.

[Kaworu]

Yup, make, not made :-P A typo it seems xD

Also, isn't it true that "do not" kinda... sounds better? 0_O (xD) I mean, I am obviously not a native speaker, but the mechanics should (I believe???) be written in kinda... official-sounding tone? I always thought?

Anyways, it can all be taken care of later, I think? ;-) But thank you for the answer :D