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Post by snorri on Feb 24, 2013 14:32:57 GMT -6
I've never seen the French translation (although I think I've seen some artwork posted online) - are there any particular features you're thinking of? Other than getting rid of halflings! There are three unofficial Holmes translations in French - the last one being currenly in the craddle. Zenous akllready mde a summary of creature here : odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=holmes&action=display&thread=2744&page=2a few funny translations : Intermittent dogs (=blink dogs) serpent -rooster (or serpent-cock...) (=cockatrice) mover puma (or removal puma) (= displacer beast) Howling bear (=owlbear) montrous rust (=rust monster) Nightmare bear (=bugbear) also see here : zenopusarchives.blogspot.fr/2011/10/lemunda-la-superbe.html
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Post by llenlleawg on Feb 24, 2013 15:32:57 GMT -6
Some of these translations strike me as odd. The "cockatrice", for example, has a precise parallel in French, namely cocatris (sometimes cocatrix or cocatrice). In fact, the English word comes from the Old French word cocatris!
Likewise, I might have suspected ours-hibous for "owlbear", which is both literal and, so I believe, how it is rendered in French translations of D&D.
While "bugbear" is rendered "officially" in some sources as gobelours, this is odd, since it is a mash-up of the word for "goblin" and the word for "bear". I would have used the term épouvantail, which literally means "scarecrow" but also means, and its original meaning is, "something causing terror". In this sense, it would relate to the Middle English bugge, which meant both "scarecrow" and "something frightening". (The word later, for some reason, comes to be restricted to insects, hence "bug", its original meaning surviving only in "bugbear" and "bugaboo".) While the English "bugbear" did have the sense of a demon/goblin in the form of a bear, which might make ours de cauchemard plausible, I rather like the echo between the ME bugge from which we get "bugbear" and the French épouvantail.
In the standard translation, a "blink dog" is a chien esquiveur (which is more like "dodge dog"!) while I might have gone with chien clignoteur, which is a fairly literal rendering of "blink dog".
Of course, it's sometimes hard to find equivalents of monster names, but I thought I'd toss in my two cents!
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Post by Vile Traveller on Feb 24, 2013 21:01:30 GMT -6
Tuatara - spikes on head but not nose, gap before spine spikes where rider could sit. Giant Tuataras are found in B/X. Good call, Zach - unless I come across anything even more suitable before the date, giant tuataras will probably make it into this slot.
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