Why is this game's Latin so wrong? :: The Forgotten City General Discussions

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furrykef

Sep 23, 2022 @ 3:32am

Why is this game's Latin so wrong?

Yeah, I'm gonna be That Guy™. Specifically, that centurion from Monty Python's Life of Brian.

I hate to say it, but nearly everything in Latin longer than two words is wrong, including the most important Latin phrase in the game, "Pro peccata unius multis dolebunt". "Pro" takes a noun in the ablative, but "peccata" is accusative, and "multis" should be in the nominative (being the subject of "dolebunt"). One way to fix it would be "Propter peccata unius multi dolebunt", but perhaps better would be "Propter peccata unius omnes poenas dabunt" (literally, "On account of the sins of one, all will pay the penalty.")

I know, I know, 99% of the players will never notice. But I'm that 1%, and I'm puzzled that the game went out of it way to portray Rome so accurately and in such detail (hello, sponge on a stick) and yet messed this up. Latinists aren't that hard to find. I still love the game to death, but it took some getting used to and it broke my immersion a few times until I learned to turn my brain off and ignore it.

Other than that, though, great work on the game. :)

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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments

bvrakvs

Sep 23, 2022 @ 5:59am

They also should've added a Latin voice option as well, but classical, not that annoying ecclesiastical with terrible C's.

furrykef

Sep 23, 2022 @ 4:32pm

That would be cool, but I can understand why they didn't. It would be expensive to record that much audio in a language that almost none of the players will actually know. It would also be hard to find professional actors who can pronounce the Latin properly (it's not something you learn overnight).

Since the game takes place in 65 AD, the pronunciation would be a bit postclassical if we want to be strictly accurate. So, for instance, a patrician like Sentius would likely pronounce "caelum" with the diphthong (['kae̯lʊ̃]), but a farmer like Galerius would probably pronounce it with a monophthong (['kɛ:lʊ̃]). But yes, the pronunciation would still be pretty far from Ecclesiastical Latin.

Last edited by furrykef; Sep 23, 2022 @ 4:34pm