Assassin’s Creed 2 EP9: La lingua Italiana

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Oct 4, 2011

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 179 comments


Link (YouTube)

In questo episodio di Attenzione Spoiler abbiamo acceso il dialogo per la lingua italiana, nella speranza di sfuggire all’orrore della traduzione inglese di default. Questo ha funzionato contro di noi quando ci siamo resi conto che il flusso non ਠleggibile, lasciando Rutskarn Mumbles, Rutskarn, io e Rutskarn all’oscuro di quello che stava succedendo. Tuttavia, dopo aver attentamente guardando Josh giocare la partita per un’ora siamo stati in grado di discernere che stava uccidendo le persone che possono o non possono averlo meritato.

Inoltre, questa traduzione viene a voi attraverso Google Translate. Oltre al cibo, io non parlo una parola di italiano.

 


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179 thoughts on “Assassin’s Creed 2 EP9: La lingua Italiana

    1. Dnaloiram says:

      Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur!

      1. Raygereio says:

        Prosciutto crudo quattro formaggi, frutti di mare?

        1. Dnaloiram says:

          Bonjour, omelette du fromage!

          1. StranaMente says:

            Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit, Fà¼hrerprinzip, grundnorm.

            1. Tobias says:

              Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmà¼tze

              1. gragsmash says:

                A mi me gusta el queso porques el es amarillo

                1. Herrsunk says:

                  All den här utländska rapparkalja är otroligt stà¶rande fà¶r min egna njutbarhet à¶ver att bevittna nà¥gon mà¶rda folk i en visuell värld.

                  Ni borde skämmas.

                  *Translation: Bork bork borka bork bork, smorgosbord, borka bork.

                  1. X2-Eliah says:

                    You forgot the Kà¶ttbullar.

                    1. Herrsunk says:

                      That’s in the advanced course.

                  2. Dovius says:

                    Geen idee waar jullie het over hebben, maar als toch iedereen in andere talen gaat praten:
                    Coole video!

                    1. nawyria says:

                      Daar kan ik mee instemmen.

                    2. littlefinger says:

                      Vet idee jong!

                    3. ClearWater says:

                      (met Italiaans accent) Niet slecht, niet slecht.

                    4. Jarenth says:

                      Ik heb wel redelijk medelijden met al die mensen die maar één taal spreken.

                      Laten we voor de automatisch-vertalen groep er nog wat stereotypisch Brabants doorheen mixen: heddege da gezegd gehad, joa minde da, werkelijk woar, hoe doedege da, hoe doedege da, hoe heddege da gedoan.

                      Kijken of ze daar kaas van kunnen maken.

                    5. Bubble181 says:

                      Er zijn hier veel te veel nederlandstaligen.
                      En met aan waarschijnlijkheid grenzende zekerheid: veel te veel ‘ollanders :-P

                    6. Zak McKracken says:

                      @ Jarenth:
                      Krass, wie einfach Niederländisch zu verstehen ist, wenn man es nur in Ruhe lesen kann…
                      Nur Google Translate scheint sich extrem schwerzutun. Und nein, den mittleren Absatz bekomm ich trotzdem nicht entziffert. Da kann ich keinen Käse draus machen :)

                    7. Jarenth says:

                      Deutsch ist umgekehrt ganz einfach zu lesen. Ich muss Google Translate verwenden fà¼r diese Antwort, sonst wird es Niederdeutsch. Doch es ist so ziemlich wie ähnlich unsere Sprachen sind.

                      Der mittlere Teil ist Dialekt. Brabants, genauer. Viel SpaàŸ beim àœbersetzen!

                    8. Conlaen says:

                      Daar kan ik me alleen maar bij aansluiten.

            2. 4th Dimension says:

              Порцију пасуља, молићу лијепо.

              1. Tse says:

                Жалко, че не знам нито дума италиански.

                it’s a pity I don’t speak a word of Italian.

              2. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Пасуља немамо,можемо понудити само купус за исти ефекат.

                1. Milos says:

                  Какав је ово варваризам, нема пасуља? Па не живимо ваљда у средњовековној Италији!

                  1. 4th Dimension says:

                    А качамака? Немом ми рећи да у овој вукојебини нема качамака!

            3. RTBones says:

              Dass es keine Grundlage fà¼r ein System von Regierung!!

            4. Mersadeon says:

              Ach du Heiliges Fledermaus! ;D

              Also – What is up with Mumbles? She sounds so different! Different microphone? Throat cancer from eating mutated people?

          2. krellen says:

            That’s all you can say! That’s all you can say!

            1. Mathias says:

              I can only speak a bit of Spanish, is that okay?

              1. Tobi says:

                Hér stendur ekkert merkilegt enn til hamingju ef à¾àº veist hvaà°a tungumà¡l à¾etta er annars góà°ur à¾à¡ttur eins og altaf

                Try reading this ;)

                1. StranaMente says:

                  Those aren’t even real fonts! You’re cheating!

                  1. Tobi says:

                    yes they are this is icelandic :)

                2. pffh says:

                  àžetta gà¦ti mà¶gulega verià° à­slenska. Huh mér datt aldrei à­ hug aà° à¾aà° và¦ru fleiri à­slendingar aà°dà¡endur Shamusar.

                  1. GM says:

                    Hà¦,hvaà° segià°u gott? hmm hvernig là½tur à­slenskt letur àºt fyrir à¶à°rum?

                    1. Tobi says:

                      góà° spurning mér hefà°i aldrei dottià° à­ hug aà° à¾aà° và¦ru fleiri à­slendingar sem là¦su bloggià° hans shamusar heh à¾etta er là­til heimur bà½st ég vià°

            2. Jarenth says:

              ‘Star Wars’.

      2. RTBones says:

        Non est facillis esse viridis!

        1. Zombie says:

          Im going to guess Latin. Its Latin, right?

          1. RTBones says:

            Correct you are. It is Latin. :)

        2. Zak McKracken says:

          Situs vi late in isses abernet :)

          Sed plus graviter:
          Gallia est omnes divisa in partes tres, quorum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam, qui ipsora lingua Celtae, nostri Galli appellantur. Horum omnium fortissime sund Belgae propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate privinciae longissime absunt, atque mercatores, qui at effeminandos animos impertinent, important, minimeque at eum eunt, atque Germanes, qui trans renum incolum, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt.

          … but not any more, they’re not.

    2. Dragomok says:

      Niech to, dlaczego ja zawsze siÄ™ spóźniam z dodaniem jakiegokolwiek dobrego komentarza?
      Może to i lepiej, bo i tak nie mam co powiedzieć.

      Zaraz, zaraz, mam!
      GżegżóÅ‚ka. Kopytko. StóÅ‚ z powyÅ‚amywanymi nogami.

    3. theLameBrain says:

      ¿Donde esta el hombre nombre huevo?

      1. krellen says:

        I think Egg Man would more properly be Hombre Del Huevo.

        1. Kyte says:

          Nope. That’d be something like “The Man of the Egg”. “The Egg Man” is simply “El Hombre Huevo”.

          1. krellen says:

            I’m aware that Del is the “of the” part. Spanish doesn’t allow just “Hombre Huevo”, however.

      2. Zak McKracken says:

        My favourite spanish expression: Imagine Antonio Banderas saying this after defeating a dozen thugs with his saber, having just saved his damsel. She’s in his arms, looking into his eyes, still shaken from the scene she just witnessed, he looks back and says (passionately, yet firm):

        “estación de ferrocarril!”

        They kiss, she melts away, cut to the sunset.

        I’m pretty sure that should work for pretty much any audience that does not understand Spanish :)

    4. Aanok says:

      Viva l’Italia, viva l’Europa, viva le donne che danno la…

      Thanks for the language change! I haven’t had time to watch but the very first minutes of the video, yet I can already say that this is a most welcome change. I mean, of course, the dubbing is terrible. Mario in particular is kind of struggling with his throat, trying out his best tough guy impression and failing quite miserably. But still.

      Also, and I have to admit I’m completely going by ear here, I think that same dubber was the Italian voice for Rome Total War’s tutorial, too. There had been quite a fuss about that at a time, because they had made a mistake in post production and, at a given moment in the game, you could hear the guy screw up a line and soundly swear because of it.

      1. StranaMente says:

        Everytime I see the english actors try to fake the italian accent or spell some italian words I suffer.
        In a “multicultural developement team” couldn’t they just find at least a couple of italo-americans actors?
        It’s so stupid the it feels like a giant comedy.
        This is one of the few times I greatly prefer the dubbed version, at least they don’t seem dumb.

        1. Mersadeon says:

          I feel the same. I am german, and my first playthrough of that game was german, too. They first had english with a terrible italian accent with some little bits of it sprinkled into it, and then they translated that to german. It’s simply horrible.

          Also, Ezio suddenly sounds just so much better in italian.

    5. RichVR says:

      Quando decido di produrre cappelli, uomini nascono senza testa.

      Old Italian proverb about bad luck.

  1. krellen says:

    Translated back out:

    In this episode of Spoiler Warning we turned on the dialogue for the Italian language, hoping to escape the horror of the English translation by default. This has worked against us when we realized that the flow is not readable, leaving Rutskarn Mumbles, Rutskarn, and I Rutskarn unaware of what was happening. However, after carefully watching Josh play the game for an hour we were able to discern that he was killing people who may or may not have deserved it.

    Moreover, this translation comes to you through Google Translate. Besides food, I do not speak a word of Italian.

    1. Irridium says:

      Oh, look at that. I though Shamus was asking us all if we wanted to take a trip to Australia and tip Kangaroos.

      Not sure why I read it that way, but there it is.

    2. Shamus says:

      Wow. That is amazingly close to the original:

      “In this episode of Spoiler Warning we have switched the dialog to the Italian language, in the hopes of escaping the horror of the default English translation. This worked against us when we realized that the stream was unreadable, leaving Rutskarn Mumbles, Rutskarn, myself, and Rutskarn in the dark about what was going on. However, after carefully watching Josh play the game for an hour we were able to discern that he was killing people who may or may not have deserved it.

      Also, this translation comes to you via Google Translate. Aside from foods, I don’t speak a word of Italian.”

      Not bad for a two-step translation job. I don’t know what you used in your step, but it speaks well of Google that their translator did so little damage.

      1. Factoid says:

        Google does a very smart thing when translating its text. In true google fashion they’ve done away with the idea of just doing dictionary comparisons and verb conjugations.

        They actually just scrape the full text of human-translated documents and look for similar phrases to pluck whole. The more their library of translated text grows the better their algorithm gets.

        1. Ambitious Sloth says:

          That sounds like how chatbot works. Basically the same idea but instead of translated texts it just pulls from previous conversations it had.

          Thus you can “break” both by entering a phrase that the program has never encountered before. Though chatbot will give you a random phrase whereas Google Translate just goes for dictionary definitions and gives a bad translation.

        2. Jon Ericson says:

          Even better, users can highlight bits of translated text and get alternate translations. For instance, in this text I got the phrase “we turned the dialogue for the Italian language”. Google offered “turned on” as an alternate. Further, I could substitute “switched” (which is what Shamus originally wrote) in a text box. Presumably, they are collecting data about which phrases people prefer to improve future results.

          I translated an entire sermon from English to Spanish using Google Translate to save time. It did a competent job initially and using the alternate translations I got a result that gets very close to what I think I would have written if I’d started writing in Spanish directly. It was a huge time saver and the sermon was well-received by native Spanish speakers.

          Good translations will always need the human touch, but Google now seems good enough to safely outsource quick and dirty translations.

          1. Paul Spooner says:

            Forza ragazzi! Perché non ਠtutto questo in italiano? Ero davvero sperando di avere un intera sezione commento di analizzare attraverso di Google Translate.
            C’ਠqualcosa di tradurre da un’altra lingua che ti fa guardare oltre le parole e davvero cercare di capire cosa significa. Poiché non ਠpossibile affidarsi cosଠfortemente a spunti di serie essendo presente, si deve pensare di pi๠a quello che viene detto.
            Forse ora farಠtutti i miei commenti in italiano!

        3. uberfail says:

          I understand it looks at UN type documents that are in different languages.

        4. Primogenitor says:

          Except that it is (partly) broken by its own success. As more automatic translations services appear, the comparative texts become “polluted” with machine generated translations rather than human generated translations. So they’ve turned it off for the moment, assuming that it is as good as it will get.

      2. StranaMente says:

        The way adjective and verbs work can’t really catch up in italian. It’s far more complicated to get ’em right than simply apply an alghorithm.
        By the way, what’s about Rutskarn appearing 3 times?

        1. Hitch says:

          Watch the video, or go back and re-watch the beginning.

          1. StranaMente says:

            Now I watched the video and got it. :-D
            Rutskarn deserves more space.

      3. krellen says:

        I used Google Translate. I had to change a phrase option (you can click on phrases and pick from a drop down) to get it to say “we turned on the dialogue” instead of “we turned the dialogue”, but otherwise I left it as translated.

      4. Ringwraith says:

        Buona cosa che quando si traduce attraverso lo stesso programma che restituisce il testo di partenza senza problemi.
        Anche se, potrei sempre lo alimentano attraverso un altro traduttore e vedere cosa viene fuori se mi annoio.

      5. SleepingDragon says:

        Yeah, mechanical translation is becoming more and more advanced each year, seeing as I am trying to earn my living as a translator there are days when this leaves me worried for my job security. I mean, obviously not tomorrow but when am I gonna be in five or ten years? In fact most pros in the field already use various translation assisting programs.

        That said here is a babelfish variation, I really like the new title ;)

        “In this episode of Spoiler Attention we have ignited the dialogue for the Italian language, in the hope to escape to the horror of the English translation of default. This has worked against of we when we are rendered account that the flow is not leggibile, leaving Rutskarn Mumbles, Rutskarn, I and Rutskarn in the dark of what it was happening. However, after to have carefully watching Josh to play the game for an hour we have been in a position to discerning that it was killing the persons who can or they cannot have deserved it. Moreover, this translation comes to you through Google Translate. Besides the food, I do not speak a word about Italian.”

        1. Low-Level DM says:

          Holy smokes. This is horrible. I mean, yeah, it can translate words, but when you take it all together like that… Just comparing to Google Translate makes Google seem that much more impressive. To whoever was talking about job security, you don’t have to worry if Babelfish suddenly takes over the translation business.

          1. SleepingDragon says:

            Haha, yeah I know. The thing is babelfish is a relic mostly used by the clueless or for humorous purposes, even google’s thing is still something that’s available for free and it’s actually getting almost decent for casual translation. I mean, clearly you wouldn’t trust it with something that’s up for publication, but it needs less and less supervision.

        2. Zak McKracken says:

          My hunch is that Google is using a more or less reversible algorithm, and babelfish uses a different one.
          I wonder what happens if you put the English original through Babelfish and back again.
          I just tried using google translate to turn it into Italian, then German, then English again, and then just English-German-English. In both cases, the German version is actually quite a bit worse than the final English one. I figure there’s some word-by-word translating going on that gives bad results in language x but can be restored to something that’s close to the original by the same word-by word translation that got it into this situation.

      6. Dev Null says:

        I’m so disappointed. I did the same thing, expecting hilarity, and all I can say is circular translations used to be much more fun. On the other hand, you can run a mouse over it and see the discrete phrases that it has translated because it recognised them. Which makes me wonder why “killing people who” is an oft-used enough phrase that Google knows how to translate it…

        1. Dragomok says:

          I’m also dissappointed. I was hoping it would be some kind of Troll Italian.
          Initially, I found the text quite funny and was giggling. But when I got to the third sentence I realised it was the actual language and, suddenly, the text stopped being amusing.
          Hm.

          Reminds me of the stories about Londoners who went on a holiday in other parts of Britain and found a footage of local horse market extremely humorous, thinking it was an episode of Monty Python (there was a period when it was broadcasted only near London – or so I heard).

        2. Simon says:

          Since English and Italian still share a common origin and a lot of grammar, it’s easier to translate between them. The trick is to circle-translate with an Asian language, then you’ll still get hilarity. Like this!

    3. Ermel says:

      On a side note, I am impressed by Google Translate. Translating something into any language and back used to be a sure-fire recipe for a mildly amusing, nearly incomprehensible desaster of a text in my day; the above reads really rather well, despite one or two slight glitches. We’ve come a long way there.

      Edit: Shamus beat me to this.

      1. Fnord says:

        Quality varies quite a bit from language to language. My experience is that it works better for European languages than Asian ones. For example, the circular translation with Chinese:

        “In this episode, spoiler warning, we have switched to Italian language dialog, the default escape the horrors of the English translation of hope. This is our work, when we realized that the stream is unreadable, remain in the dark what happened Rutskarn Man Bosi, Rutskarn, myself, and Rutskarn. However, carefully watched Josh play the game for an hour, we can see, he killed people who may or may not be worthy of its people.

        In addition, the translation to you via Google Translate. Apart from the food, I do not speak a word of Italian.”

        And Japanese:

        “In this episode spoiler warning, in the hope of escaping the horrors of the English translation of default, the dialog is switched to Italian. We, on what’s going on, Rutskarn Manburuzu in the dark, Rutskarn, myself, and leave Rutskarn, worked against it when we noticed that the stream is unreadable. However, Josh looked carefully after playing the game we were able to identify the time that might have died or are not worthy of him.

        Moreover, this translation is the translation comes to you via Google. Aside from the food, I can not speak a word of Italian.”

        I don’t know if they have a smaller set of sample translations or if translating between European languages is just an easier problem.

        1. Destrustor says:

          That’s it: from now on I will only refer to Mumbles as ” Man Bosi”.

          1. Jarenth says:

            I’m partial to ‘Rutskarn Manburuzu’ myself.

            1. Zak McKracken says:

              +1

        2. bit says:

          Interesting how it has no idea how to handle Mumbles. Also interesting is how accurately it translates the last sentence throughout.

  2. Irridium says:

    Yes?

  3. StranaMente says:

    I’m not sure I have the guts the see this episode.
    The english version is already a joke of the italian language, but as far as I remember the italian version was instead quite good, but with your comment?
    Am I ready to bear your jokes of my native language?
    :-D
    Sure I am!

    1. swenson says:

      Please tell us how good/bad the Italian is!

      1. Fede says:

        The italian voice acting is clearly made by Italians. But, even if i’m Italian, I played with the English voices because they are hilarious.

      2. StranaMente says:

        As far as dubbing goes, this is quite good.
        Some actors are worse than others, but the overall quality is high. Compared to the original it’s pure gold, for me, by the way… :-)

      3. Aanok says:

        Eh, I kind of disagree with StranaMente, I feel it’s bad enough. The acting sounds forced and the dubbers have a really heavy accent from Lazio (Rome’s region). I do have heard worse, though.

        Italian dubbing can be very good. It was spectacular back in the 50s and the 60s (“First Generation” dubbers). Today it’s mostly good in movies, altough the vast majority of voice actors share their Roman accent with Mario, here. In videogames, though, producers always go for the cheapest way and, thus, Italian voiceover sounds generally bad. Actually, the whole localization is often lacking, as you can frequently hear idiomatic expressions translated almost literally, and a general lack of polish and accuracy.

        I usually go for English audio and text in videogames, but in the case of this AC, though, I would have definitely preferred slightly bad Italian over the butchering we were hearing before :)

        1. NihilCredo says:

          IMO it sounds forced because for some reason there is a bit too little dialogue compared to the length of the cutscenes, sooo Itaa-li-an a-c-tors keeep taalkiing veerryy sloowwllyy, which sounds really unnatural and melodramatic.

          Agree about the accents. Maybe it’s ahistorical, but I had really been looking forward to a ton of Tuscan aspired Cs. Oh well, at least the Roman accent works great in Brotherhood.

          But even with all of that, I still think it remains on a pretty good level. Particularly compared to the horrible New York Italian of the English dubbing, which had me tear off my headphones in cringing.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Do you remember what they did for the mario joke?

      1. NihilCredo says:

        Just a straight “It’s me, Mario”. For obvious reasons, Nintendo’s Mario doesn’t have a particularly distinctive voice in Italian, so there’s really no joke to translate.

  4. The Hokey Pokey says:

    Is that really mumbles? She sounds different this episode.

    1. Ambitious Sloth says:

      Her voice did really change in this episode for some reason. I was wondering if she had gotten sick or something though it doesn’t sound like when she has been sick in the past.

      Or they’ve done something to the real Mumbles. You know, fifty fifty chance of either really.

      1. Chuck says:

        I noticed that, too. Maybe her mic went kooky?

      2. 4th Dimension says:

        It sounds like a really sleepy Mumbles, or M on painkillers.

      3. Herrsunk says:

        Hm. Now that you mention it; I never once heard her say anything about ca-ca-ca-cannibalism.

        SHE IS NOT MUMBLES EVER! CALL COPS!

    2. X2-Eliah says:

      HMyeah, wanted to ask the same thing. Mumbles sounds completely not like Mumbles. In the introduction-call I thought Rutskarn was meta-trolling by faking as Mumbles too.

    3. krellen says:

      It sounds like she hasn’t been drinking.

      1. Kana says:

        So she’s kinda like Bender.

        Being sober is a bad thing. Voting now to start a donation so no mumbles ever goes without alcohol again! That’ll fix everything up in no time flat!

    4. Pete says:

      I have to say, I prefer this Mumbles over the vanilla version. Not sure why…

      1. Ambitious Sloth says:

        She has a deeper smoother voice in this one. I guess it might be kind of calming or soothing to listen to.

        1. Josh says:

          She got a new mic between recording the last batch of episodes and this one.

          1. Herrsunk says:

            I don’t like change!

            1. Raygereio says:

              I love this particular change. My ears thank the holy, hew mic for stopping poor Mumbles from sounding like she’s screeching 90% of the time.

          2. Eärlindor says:

            Wow, that is quite a change. I’m assuming this is a superior mic? Is this what Mumbles actually sounds like and we’ve been living a lie all this time?

          3. noahpocalypse says:

            So… Mumbles no longer mumbles?

            1. Dovius says:

              To be fair, most of the time she didn’t so much mumble as that she shrieked.
              ‘Cept for…ca-ca-cannibalism….

    5. Dante says:

      She sounds hotter.

  5. Tobias says:

    Italian mode. Interesting.

    The Subtitles are still in the annoying half Italian mode… WHY?? Do you not get how subtitles work, game?

    Why would you want to renovate the thief’s guild? It’s made of pure fantasy trope. Is there a in game justification?

    Shamus:
    Of course they can build a perfectly balanced secret door. The ancient assassins had technology which baffled even the great Leonardo da Vinci. A secret shelf of incredible wight is nothing.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Sliding doors werent beyond smarter people of the age.

      It would probably involve something along the lines of chains pulled by water, or possibly a primitive steam pump. The engineering for it is not avaiable to the world at large but an organisation such as Assasins, with their hands on future tech, such a mechanism is not impossible. There have been even greater such works in previous eras.

      The only thing lacking is something on which that shelf slides, because wood/stone friction is going to be great.

    2. Raygereio says:

      The Subtitles are still in the annoying half Italian mode… WHY?? Do you not get how subtitles work, game?

      I can’t check this as I don’t have the game installed, but if I recall right there are seperate language options for the voices and subtitles.

    3. Having a thieves guild makes sense for the personal use of an assassin – the jobs have a lot of skill crossover, but for a villa, not so much. Maybe they only rob tourists? or maybe it’s a safe house for when they’re on the road and in return they don’t rob local houses

      1. Kyte says:

        It’s very simple, IMO. Sponsored thieves work outside Monteriggioni. Lowers crime inside, increases it outside, desirability goes up. It’s win-win!

    1. krellen says:

      I just had to explain this joke to my co-workers because they caught me laughing out loud at it.

      1. Tjtheman5 says:

        can you explain it to me?

        1. Fede says:

          “TL; DR” means “too long; didn’t read”, usually used on the Internet meaning “you wrote too much and I don’t want to read it”.
          Hal wrote “TI;DR”, meaning “Too Italian; didn’t read”.
          Edit: Typo.

          1. krellen says:

            And it still makes me laugh.

            1. Hal says:

              You guys sure know how to make a fella feel appreciated.

    2. swenson says:

      I see what you did there.

    3. Ambitious Sloth says:

      Clever. Very clever.

    4. PAK says:

      Hal wins the comments this round.

  6. tsylba says:

    funfacts : when you switch back from Italian to English language (with sub), one of the ‘real world’ character tells you there was a bug in the ‘subtitle engine’ or something. I was like O___O for a moment, really impressed by this details.

  7. Guthie says:

    I keep Dynasty Warriors on Japanese language mode so that the awful English translation and voice acting can’t crush my fun. There isn’t even really a story to keep up with, so it works even better than this. =P

    1. Entropy says:

      But Dynasty warriors dub is HILARIOUS

  8. ps238principal says:

    Re: Rutskarn switching DVD language tracks to Spanish.

    “The Phantom Menace” is vastly improved by doing this (which isn’t hard, really), though Rifftrax is truly the only way I “enjoy” the film. Qui-Gon especially sounds muy macho.

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      I wonder how Jar-Jar sounds in Spanish..

      1. TJ says:

        Like an obnoxious character from a terrifying Spanish kid’s show.

        So, pretty much like in English.

        1. ps238principal says:

          I have to disagree: While he sounds nowhere near normal, his Spanish counterpart isn’t nearly as irritating as the original.

    2. Haddron says:

      The Galaxy Quest DVD has an audio track that is the entire movie done in the alien’s language – which sounds like loud high-pitched squealing.

    3. Ravens Cry says:

      Qui-Gon, even in English, is the best thing in Phantom Menace.
      Sexy, sexy Liam Neeson.

    4. NihilCredo says:

      Kids’ cartoons in German are also the best thing.

  9. Burek says:

    Did Mumbles get a new microphone? She no longer sounds like a skulking cannibal from Fallout.

  10. Wtrmute says:

    It’s not very surprising to find out that they were able to get Italian voice actors with voices similar to the English ones. After all, most countries that are not the US have a lot of English-language movies and TV shows they must translate into their native language, so they generally have very good dubbers. It was probably enough to have Ubisoft contact some dubbing studio in Italy and provide them with some clips of the characters’ English dialogue and let the Italians do the selection and hiring of people who fit those vocal profiles.

    1. Greg says:

      I think I read that Ubisoft just hired Italian voice actors for Ezio and the rest to begin with, rather than go through the hassle of trying to find voice actors who sounded similar to the English actors. It’d probably be cheaper as well, one set of voice actors, two different language options.

      1. NihilCredo says:

        Nope, Ezio has a 100% American voice actor in the English version. There’s absolutely no way his Italian is native.

        1. NihilCredo says:

          IIRC, the only Italian voices that remain in non-Italian dubbings are the random criers and market peddlers you hear while walking around.

  11. Amstrad says:

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum.

    1. Indy says:

      Gibberish…. I like it.

    2. RTBones says:

      Nice! Pain itself!

  12. Indy says:

    “Rutskarn, Mumbles, Rutskarn, myself and Rutskarn”. You’re still missing half the cast.

    1. Bryan says:

      No no, that was Rutskarn and Rutskarn. Duh. :-P

  13. Sekundaari says:

    You seemed to have a bit of trouble handling the horse. You should teach it to turn right after the Assassin’s Geed.

  14. Paul Spooner says:

    Avendo l’italiano rende l’impostazione sembrano molto pi๠credibile. Si dovrebbe fare tutti gli altri episodi come questo.

    Inoltre, c’ਠuna scenetta Brian Regan hai bisogno di vedere. Qualcosa su solo conoscendo le parole italiane per il cibo. “Carne in scatola e cavolo!” Bei tempi.

  15. Joe says:

    In regards to the several comments made by Mumbles and Shamus about how the Italian language actually sounds, a learned polyglot friend told me the following about Italian.

    Before the formation of the Italian nation, each Italian City-state had its own dialect, different to some degree or another from each other, similarly to how various former Yugoslavic nations speak different but similar languages (Bulgarians and Serbians will argue for days about their superiority to one another.)

    When Italy became a nation they had to pick one language from all of the dialects spoken by all the Italian city-states. What criteria did they use to pick this language? The robustness of the language? The diversity? The functionality?

    None of these. The Italians, being Italians, picked the most beautiful sounding of the Italian dialects to be the language for Italy. And that’s pretty dang awesome.

    1. Fnord says:

      And it just happened that the “most beautiful” dialect was the one spoken in Florence, one of the more influential cities (and, in fact, the capital for a big chunk of the early history)?

      Really, the Italian language was a lingua franca for the peninsula even before the unification, widely spoken at least among the educated classes. It’s true that Florentine literature, particularly Dante, was widespread and popular, which helped spread that dialect. But Florence’s power and role in trade was probably important, too, in spreading the language, as well as spreading that literature in the first place.

      1. Dante says:

        I agree with everything he said.

      2. Joe says:

        I never said that what my friend told me was true, but I really wanted it to be. She also specifically mentioned that the dialect they picked (Florentine) was picked because it was the one Dante wrote in.

        I’m sure there was a lot of politicking, but isn’t it a better story if it was an aesthetic choice?

    2. Tse says:

      What the crap??? Bulgarians are NOT a former Yugoslavic nation! Bulgaria was founded in 681. The modern Bulgarian language is a mix of Bulgar and Slavic. It’s true that few Bulgar words remain after more than 14 centuries on the Balkans, but Bulgarian still has words no other Slavic country has. And we don’t argue with the Serbians about superiority!
      P.S. Maybe you’re thinking of Macedonia. Bulgarians and Macedonians argue a lot about the real origin of Macedonia. I’ll not go into specifics, I don’t want to start a flame war.

      1. X2-Eliah says:

        Bulgarians and Serbians will argue for days about their superiority to one another.

        Heh, there’s always someone to prove the stereotype, isn’t there. Gotta love the Internet.

  16. Jibar says:

    Thought I’d point out, the story of how the codex pages got thrown everywhere is explained in the Auditore vault downloaded from uPlay. If I remember right, the book is stolen and damaged by pirates unaware of how valuable it is, until what pages they still have are split between their Templar employers. It also explains that Marco Polo is an Assassin, and that the Auditores aren’t really nobles, their origin a lie concocted by Ezio’s great grandfather as cover to hide from Templars.

    1. Kyte says:

      I think Project Legacy (the Facebook game) elaborates on this.
      IIRC, Marco Polo was an Assassin, Altaà¯r gave the Codex to a disciple who traveled with MP, pirates attacked, he let the pages get scattered, laid low and infiltrated himself into italian nobility as the Auditore.

  17. Johan says:

    Here’s my question, so Desmond has the memories of Ezio, and also the memories of Al-Tair, does he then ALREADY KNOW the answer to this codex puzzle and just has to play it through as Ezio? I guess (I don’t know how their “genes are memories” science works) if Al-Tair had a kid and THEN started his Riddler phase then maybe he wouldn’t pass those memories?

    And I must be an anomaly, I much prefer accented English to a language I can’t understand :/.

    1. Entropy says:

      The genes are memories is simply that data for the memory is supposedly stored in the DNA. Since Desmond didn’t experience that bit of Altairs life in the Animus, he doesn’t know it.

      1. Johan says:

        So theoretically he could just go back to his Altair playground, get up to where the A-man travels to Italy and does his shebang, and then use it to cheat on his Ezio playthrough?

        1. Tzeneth says:

          Actually, later in the story we have a section of Altair’s life which leads to him having sex and us ending our connection with Altair, as we are connected through his genes

  18. A) can’t they just hack into altair’s memories as he’s making the thing
    B) That barred door in the basement looks like you could climb over it

    1. littlefinger says:

      as to B, a decent crowbar’d do the trick, I think.

      1. decius says:

        Or a good hammer and pick.

        No matter how adamantine the bars are, the walls are just bedrock.

    2. Jock says:

      Not if altair made the puzzle after siring Desmond’s great great…..etc grandparent.

  19. TM says:

    Being a student of Italian, this post was fun to read. I had also been certain the whole time you had gotten some Italian speaker to do this for you before I read that last line, so I have to say, Google Translate did a really, really good job.

    1. Sam Crisp says:

      This has been the first piece of Italian writing I have read since I stopped studied Italian two years ago. Shamefully, I could only understand half of it. I could follow the grammar, conjugation and structure fine, but I had just forgotten what a lot of the words meant. And, of course, I was reading it at a snail’s pace. I was also impressed by the translation; it seemed pretty native to me. I wouldn’t have guessed it was a Google Translate job.

      This latest Spoiler Warning series has made me finally play that copy of Brotherhood I’ve had in shrink wrap for a while. I’m playing it in Italian language, but since its spoken so quickly, I have no hope in understanding more than a word here or there. I guess I’ve discovered how much Italian I’ve forgotten.

      Although I must say, I love how how you can hit Select at times in the game to learn more about the history of the particular structures and areas of Italy they have resembled in the game world. I wish that educational aspect of the game were more than just a cursory feature.

  20. StranaMente says:

    @Josh: After thinking about it for a while it dawned on me a good way to help you spell “Monte Riggioni”, it’s like “Ridge-oni” (like in ridge racer).
    As far as I know the italian spelling of “gi” doesn’t have a proper counter part, so you can spell it as “dge”

  21. Eddie says:

    誰か言語一つの話すことがあったかな。ちょっと変な感じになった。

    Cependant, je suppose que la plupart du monde est monoglotte.

    1. tengokujin says:

      君の日本語がちょっと変な。どこで習った?

      한국말이라면 저도하죠. 근대 무슨 말할지…

      1. Eddie says:

        ごめん、韓国語分かりません。ですけど、そうだね、外国の大学でで習われます。そして最近関西で住んでいて、ちょっと関西弁を喋る異になりました。日本語のこと、変よね。上手ではありません。

    2. Zak McKracken says:

      Nu cred aşa. Cred că sunt mulţi oameni care vorbesc mai mult ca o limbă, dar nu sunt limbe care inţelegi tu.
      … I love this game :)
      And sorry if the above contains errors, I’m not as polyglot as I’d like to pretend to be.

  22. Dovius says:

    What I’ve never understood is how an Assassin can be relatively unknown, while at the same time playing real estate with an entire town, with nobody finding out.

    1. Knight of Fools says:

      Shhh! It’s a secret!

    2. Vect says:

      Well, the Templars do sack the place in the beginning of Brotherhood.

  23. Vect says:

    Personally I would’ve found it hilarious to see them try to dub it in the Vaguely Italian-sounding Gibberish that’s all over the Mario & Luigi RPGs.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj84qXDT8S0

  24. Daemian Lucifer says:

    About the codex pages:
    Well how do you know that those chests in banks werent left there by some rich dudes with the exact same sentiment Mumbles had?They were holding them to sell to someone for big moneys.

    Also,how many priceless text and mummies were destroyed by people who just stumbled upon them and didnt know what those were?Yeah,not everyone thinks that those things are worth a lot.

  25. Daemian Lucifer says:

    About the bars and armour:
    Yeah,that one bugged me as well.I didnt mind animus,nor the pieces of eden,those were all consistent in the story,but this armour that was there for hundreds of years,behind just one set of bars,and is still better than anything you can make with more advanced tools,and the bars werent breached for all this time?That was really lame.If they used a forcefield and said something about it in the codex,like altair used a piece of eden to lock this artifact he crafted with the help of its power,but no,its just ordinary bars holding an ordinary(if well crafted)armour.

  26. some random dood says:

    So if the name is silly because you switch the L to an N, does that mean we now need to call Mumbles Kenny?

    1. Zak McKracken says:

      They killed Kenny!

  27. CalDazar says:

    Yo no hablo espaà±ol budà­n esponjoso caballa!

  28. Alex the Too Old says:

    My hovercraft is full of eels.

    1. Methermeneus says:

      내 호버크라프트는 장어로 가득 차 있어요

    2. Zak McKracken says:

      What? My mother was a saint!

  29. Methermeneus says:

    τὶ οὗτις ἐν γλώσσᾳ Ἀγγχώρας οὐ λέγει; τὶ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἀλλόφωνον λέγει;

  30. Justin says:

    Forget about offending Italians, what do you have against Oklahoma? And why do you apparently think we have some bizarre regional accent? Most of the population actually has a midland accent, closer to Ohio or Indiana than Texas.

  31. Xpovos says:

    What other game, that I’m clearly supposed to know, but don’t, is Mumbles alluding to in this episode? And why does it make Shamus so upset?

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