Languages of Might and Magic

Hand in Hand with Professionals

According to the information provided during the Kickstarter campaign, pledges will be sent in two waves (I - English, French, German, and Polish, II - Czech, Spanish, Swedish). We are still on the right track to deliver everything on the promised dates.
We work with professional translation agencies for all of our games; this is no different with "Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Board Game". In this blog, we would like to tell you a bit more about them - about Ludiversal Translations, about Focus Translation’s Anna Skup, as well as the specific professionals working for these companies.

Ludiversal Translations

All Ludiversal members are experts in their field and either hold a degree in Applied Linguistics, Translation Studies, Philology, Graphic Design, Game Theory, or have a ton of expertise, and/or both. Apart from that, they are all seasoned gamers, for obvious reasons. ;-)
"Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Board Game" is also not the first significant project for Ludiversal Translations; previously, they worked on language versions of games such as: "Among Cultists," "This War of Mine," "Akropolis," "Sword & Sorcery," or "Brass."

Let's give the floor to the individual translators!

We worked as a couple: having worked in the board game industry for 15 years, Matthieu is used to editing and proofreading rulebooks, so he took (extra) care of all the gameplay texts. As a translator by trade, including many RPG books, Judith dealt with all the narrative and fluff texts. That's what we're each good at, and also what we like to do; it worked out perfectly that this project has about the same amount of texts for each aspect (the solo campaigns are massive!).
Besides the wording of all game concepts, one part we worked together on was localizing the Astrologers' Proclaim cards: they include a lot of fun pop culture easter eggs, some of which are totally unknown to the French-speaking players. So we took the time to do a bit of research and find silly French references where it was needed, in order to stick with the original intent of funniness. On espère que vous connaissez vos classiques ! ;)

- Judith and Matthieu - French Translators

The funny part about translating Heroes III to Czech is never knowing for sure how much of the terms translation is actually canon, because there have been several translations of the video games and neither of them seems to have an official status. Having said that, I'm very glad I found very extensive source of materials online, like whole wiki pages written by fans of the Heroes series. That certainly helped a lot. I do hope I'll do the translations justice for the fans, but after translating huge board game worlds like Nemesis or Stuffed Fables, I do believe I can.
I was certainly surprised there are other pop-culture references, and without going too much into spoiling, among all of them, a nod to Discworld made me especially happy. Mr. Pratchett made my early adulthood so much more awesome - and Discworld Czech translations are a source of awe and inspiration to my profession.

- Michal - Czech Translator

Working on Heroes III took us back to our youth and we really enjoyed our long discussions about the PC game.
The board game is full of small details and we are looking forward to people discovering all of them.

- Nina and Peer - German Translators

High five!! It’s an honourable mission to translate the board game adaption of this epic PC game!

- Birgitta and Dennis - Swedish Translators

Focus Translations

Her spirit animal is a cat, but by profession she is a translator and a religious studies expert.​ He, on the other hand, wants to be Captain Picard when he grows up; so far, he is a cultural anthropologist and a psychologist. In her room, she has a set of paints, but she usually either paints with words (and watches them dry or knocks them off cat-style so they don’t feel useless) or paints Necropolis skeletons. He likes a wee bit of thrill, so he keeps the skeletons* in his closet, each given the name “PhD thesis in linguistics”. When no one is looking, they secretly ship Sandro and Vidomina; otherwise, they stir up trouble in Kociołki Znaczeń [Cauldrons of Meaning] – a blog on fantasy, table-top gaming, and cultures in translation.

Although together we’ve been working in translations for over 25 years, HoMM3: The Board Game was one of our greatest adventures. It had everything: linguistic machinations with the mechanics, the struggles to maintain the atmosphere of the original game in the fluffs and flavs, the battle of wits against the easter eggs that sometimes defiantly stood their cultural ground, and some serious sorcery in magicking the narrative that—we are hoping—you’ll find as compelling as we did.
*We’ll give them back, once you return the Skull Helmet, Sandro, you gnoll!

- Anna and Piotr - Polish Translators

As with the other language versions, this pair of translators is absolutely not accidental, nor are they newbies who are taking their first steps with the "Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Board Game" project. Ania and Piotr worked on the Polish versions for titles such as "Aeon's End," "Massive Darkness 2," "Stranger Things: The Upside Down," "Vikings' Tales," "Neuroshima Last Aurora," and "Call of Cthulhu."

Ania and Piotr did a great job with the Polish translation. Some Polish versions of fluffs on the cards sound even better than in the English-language originals I provided.

- Jakub, Project Manager of "Heroes III: The Board Game"

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P.S. The people presented above do not constitute the entire team of translators working on individual language versions. There are many more people involved in the translation!

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The Fruits of Labor

Finally, we've prepared some component samples from the Wave 1 languages:

"Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Board Game" is a massive project and a great challenge for all of us - rules designers, artists, graphic designers, project managers, and translators. We gave it our best and left a piece of our hearts in Antagarich. I hope that the fruits of our labor will bring you much joy!

Until next time, Heroes!