"Alchemist's Shop" - German translation

[Laserschwert]

With the help of StratosVX' wonderful scans of some of his material, I've started working on German translations of some of the material that has only appeared in US releases.

As a first test run I've translated the "Alchemist's Shop" pages from the questbooks of "Kellar's Keep"/"Return of the Witch King", "Barbarian Quest" and "Elf Quest". I'm not sure if there are already German translations of the potions that are regarded as THE translations agreed upon by the community, so I've just translated them myself. Also I've aimed at a paper size of A5/A4, so they are a bit smaller then the US booklets.

Here's a ZIP file with PDFs of the translated shop pages in B/W and color (at crisp 300dpi), plus transparent PNGs to tinker with yourself (the English shop sign is includes as well). Small previews:









To me these things were really important: Having all text as actual text objects (and not just graphics), using mostly the original layout (diverging only where some tidying up feels necessary) and fonts (although I'm considering using Clearface for most of the bodies of text - like in BQ and EQ - since it looks MUCH nicer than boring Aldine721). Furthermore I really despise compression artifacts, so all those JPEG compressed scans on the web simply aren't good enough. Sure, you can't get around using JPEG for more detailed images, like cover artworks, to keep file size in check. But all those single color drawings in the books? Use PNG with a limited palette! The drawings in my PDFs were all saved as PNGs with just 32 colors - more than enough for these types of images, and smaller than even 50% JPEGs. Also, my PDFs should be editable without too much trouble. I've tried opening them in Acrobat and Illustrator, and in both you can edit the text without problems (although the fonts are embedded in the PDFs, maybe they need to be installed for editing).

Ultimately I'd like to create German translations of the US questbooks - we'll see how time and motivation turn out

As a goodie, here's a little peek at the translation of the shop sign. First of all I had to remove the original lettering, but with Photoshop's healing brush, that just took a few minutes:


Then, using Adobe After Effects, I recreated the lettering (using the font "Primitive") by creating a carving pattern, distorting it a bit, stamping the letters out of it, and adding the outlines and shading with simple layer styles:


This way the text stays editable, so you can change it to whatever you want:

[StratosVX]

Thanks for telling us how you made the sign. I was wondering about that when I saw the images. As I said before, these files look great

[Anderas]

After this, I was looking at the German download section and indeed, the later quest books are there in English only!

I was working on German translations for each potion, too. I am not trying to copy the style of the original German potion cards as I think some of the German cards have questionable phrases and a somehow ugly choice of words.

[knightkrawler]

Laserschwert, your work is awesome.
Once you've decided whether and when you'll do the translations, remember there's a few German members here that are more active than the entire German forum.
Anderas and myself, I'm sure, are pretty eager to help if we have the time on our hands, especially with editing. His photoshop fu is strong...

Before you start that project, though, you should make up your mind if you want a 1:1 translation OR if you actually wanna improve those quest packs by eliminating known bugs, clarifying ambiguities and so on. The Frozen Horror and The Mage in the Mirror were not playtested and have many glaring weaknesses that - in my opinion - need ironing out if anyone wants to put in the work and effort anyway.

[Dreadaxe]

Excellent!
I want a "Alchemist's Shop" - French translation document like this!!

[santiagov94]

Hey this is so awesome, where can I find this file in English?

[Kurgan]

This is a translation, so the originals are in English already... check the main pages (and also Phoenix's pages for a variation) for KK, ROTWL, EQP and BQP.