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[nimthirielrinon]

It isn’t much of anything tbh…

[emberdyer]

[into-the-feniverse]

It’s Dabi’s birthday over here in the states now so have some doodles 🔥

[aibafiles]

Esperanto in Metaphor: ReFantazio

Not long ago I saw this this tweet pointing out that the in-game language in Metaphor is Esperanto (written in another script) and I decided to investigate for myself! The vocal tracks are in Esperanto as well, but I want to focus on the text here since I don't have a great ear for it. (The quoted tweet also points out that you can rearrange the title to get an Esperanto phrase - I think it would be more accurately spelled "Metafore Fantazio," or "metaphorically fantasy"!)

For the unfamiliar, Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed language, developed in the late 19th century with the aim of being an easy to learn secondary language that could act as a bridge between speakers of other languages. While its vocabulary and grammar are largely derived from various European language families, it has speakers worldwide, including a sizeable number in Japan. Given the relationship between Metaphor's world and our own, I think it's a cool choice to take a constructed secondary language and make it the in-universe primary language—not to mention the game's themes of uniting different people with a language intended to do just that.

I studied Esperanto myself for some time 9 years ago, though I've forgotten most of it, so I'm very rusty. That said, I was able to sit down and parse one particular block of text that the game provides a translation for, and use that to read the rest! I'm slowly combing through the demo and translating any legible text, and I wanted to share some of the interesting details I found. If any Esperantists see this and want to weigh in, please do! There's plenty I may not remember or be aware of.

Continued under the cut, including content from the demo:

Let's start with the text the game translates for us! Here's what the VO/subtitles say:

O Great Seeker, bearer of fantasy empowered... Hear my wish, and come forth from thy epoch of glory to grant me thy guidance.

Here's the "deciphered" Esperanto:

Ho, granda serĉanto, kiu vivas en epoko de gloro, kiu enkarnigas la povon de fantazio. Bonvolu disdoni al li vian gvidadon.

And here's a more "direct" translation:

O Great Seeker, who lives in an epoch of glory, who embodies the power of fantasy. Please grant him thy guidance.

Not too much different of note here other than the pronoun usage—in Esperanto, the speaker explicitly uses "he," likely referring to the protagonist. I suspect that the English is actually translated from the Japanese line, which is ambiguous, so they made an educated guess here. But, since this is the same speaker who narrates awakening cutscenes and new bonds, it makes sense that they're calling to the Seeker on his behalf!

This is a point I'm unsure about, but from my understanding, "granda" (here translated as "great") typically refers to size, so it seems like an odd word choice to me—but it's possible there are connotations I'm not aware of.

After some poking around I stumbled across some text on the background of the name entry screen that reads "signaro" (character set), followed by the whole Latin alphabet on the next line.

"But Batts!" you may say. "Esperanto doesn't use QWXY! What about the diacritics!"

Well. There aren't any! There are 6 characters with diacritic marks used in Esperanto (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ), and since our character set doesn't use any of them, we have to make some educated guesses about which one it is at any given time. This is mostly a non-issue since they're real, existing words, but it does make it a bit trickier at points, and relates to another problem I'll get to in a bit. (There are a select few instances where I've seen diacritic marks on handwritten text or shop names, but there are still far fewer than there should be.)

That said, there is also some plain English text using this script as well, so the game does make use of those extra letters, such as the Memorandum UI - scrolling books have titles like "Marine," "Royal Capital," "100 Mystery of Ningen (humans)," and "Melancholia Gen" (?), plus cute notes in the background like "I want to read slowly" and "already read very good."

Anyway, this diacritic ambiguity bugged me for a bit when I started translating some text with "Euchronia" in it, like the above "Regno de Eŭcronio - Dezerto de Tradia." The Esperanto "C" and "Ĉ" are always pronounced "ts" and "ch" respectively, so the pronunciation here is a bit awkward either way, as both characters are meant to precede a vowel. A more natural pronunciation in line with both the Japanese and English would be "Eŭkronio," a spelling I found once in the body of the contract our protagonist signs to join the army, and never again. Alas.

I noticed a few interesting details while translating place names - the "Trad" in "Grand Trad" (Granda Tradicio) means "tradition" - and many locations are labeled on the map that I don't think are mentioned in the demo's runtime - Oceana to the west is named, but also of note are Kalendulo ("marigold," maybe "Calendula" in English) to the east, the Hulkenmont mountains surrounding that region, and the "Malnova Insularo" (old archipelago) to the south.

(Screenshot grabbed from justonegamr on Youtube.)

Lots of fun stuff going on with these posters - the big propaganda poster says "Mi volas vin por homoj" - "I want you for humans!" The poster immediately to its right and the one with the light-haired paripus are both wanted posters with rewards of 50,000 and 7,000 respectively, and the former has a somewhat legible name - Mikelan something (?). There's also quite a bit of illegible text that I'll need to boot up the game to stare at, textures willing.

Here is where I noticed an occasional problem with the text in this game: some of these posters include words that should have diacritic marks, but instead the characters are gone entirely or replaced with a space. For instance, the poster with the face that appears twice on the bottom row reads "Ser a peto - i tiu viro" where it should say "Serĉa peto - ĉi tiu viro" (Search request - this man). I spent so long wondering what "Dan ero" meant on the poster with the red "no" sign before I realized it was meant to be "Danĝero" (Danger).

This extends to some other parts of the game, such as the world map title ("Unuiĝinta Reĝlando de Eŭcronio" written as "unui inta re lando de e cronio," which is how I knew it was a plain C oops), and the giant statue in More's study covered in archetype names, some of which are missing characters.

I suspect that at some point in the process, these characters couldn't be properly encoded and got lost before making it into the game. Most of the UI text seems to be intact, and this only affects graphic text as far as I've seen. Luckily, we can usually use context to guess at what they should be.

There's a ton more that I'm still hunting down and translating, so if you'd like to see it, you can check out my spreadsheet here! I'm hoping to keep updating it as I play through the full game, and I may make some more posts if I encounter any particularly interesting details. A few more tidbits before I go:

This appears to be an annual calendar - number 1 is at the top and it circles around to 12, and then the inner circle runs from 1-30, likely representing the weeks.

Various graffiti found around Sunshade Row that reads:

Ĉi tio estis infero (this was hell)

Malbela elda (nasty/ugly elda)

Merdo (shit)

And in the words of our favorite tooth...

Elbe venontfoje! (Maybe next time!)

[itslilacokay]

communitythoughts

[zenubi-scribbles]

Jan 1st + Monday ("Moon Day" in Japanese)? Yep, felt like I should draw Moon God Sans again created by @aka-indulgence. Thank you to everyone who liked my previous Moon God Sans fan arts. Here's my thank you back after so long. The Tumblr compression/resolution thing is wonky with this one. "aka-indulgence" or someone else I know can PM me if you want to see the true resolution pic. I was trying to stick to the canon design. That...did not happen. Zen is too weak NOT to draw tattered clothes and other non-canon stuff. Top: Final image, darker background Middle Left: Lighter Background Middle Right: Inked Version

[amiracleilluminated]

Characters of «Hades II» (pt 2) Art by Jen Zee

[opia-png]

oc-tober, day seventeen, something about chrysanthemums

[neptunym]

ms paint doodles for @post-it-notes7 's fic series, heart and soul. i highly recommend it to anyone that either likes the kirby anime or meta knight bc it's a delight to read :]

[intercal]

colors tonight and a gradient I made in gimp from the colors of the sky

[jimmerzz0905]

uhhhhhh

drops this and runs away

[carehounds]

Customizing the theme and made a handful of images :^) going to make the curs downloadable someday for anyone who wants to invite red guy to live in their blog .

[infiniteseriesofhalfways]

also here's two terrible photos of what ive been knitting this week:

there's too many stitches so i cant stretch it out properly, and the construction makes it hard to really show it off. also im in bed so it's the best i can do right now.

anyhow this is clue 1 of Stephen West's Go Go Dynamo MKAL, which im two weeks behind on but it's fine. it's been fun so far, minus the 'bubbles', which are the bane of my existence.

[reactionimagesdaily]

I need help finding an image, the post it came from preferably because whoever this was from IS on tumblr

someone drew themselves in a western cartoon sort of style, big round head and 4 round fingers on a big hand and stick arms in a featureless T-shirt, black and white, a loose informal style

they were looking up with a lost in thought look, blushing, and twirling hair around their left pointer finger, a thought bubble with an image of two people kissing or something similar above them (my bad rendering to follow)

then when the post was a hit, they updated it with a drawing of them on stage like a comedian, holding a mic in right hand, speaking a speech bubble with a similar kissing image in it, and a shot of the audience roaring with applause (my bad rendering to follow)

the caption of the post was probably very short or nonexistent and I don't remember the artist name or any of their other works so this has been impossible to find 🙏

Aah, man. I'm so sorry - I've got exactly 0 inkling as to what this one could be T_T Hope someone knows it, or you're able to find it eventually!

[creaturefeaster]

Been working on this for the last little bit. Elevation & listed primary town versions.

Due to be tweaked and updated in the future :3.

[mokadevs]

new game releasing on sunday thumbs up