As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Difference between revisions

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* Every Civ leader in ''Sid Meier's [[Civilization]] Revolution'' speaks in themed foreign sounding gibberish... Intentionally.

** The same thing happens for every governor in "[[Sid Meier's Pirates!]]". Notably, it's the '''''same nonsense phrases''''', just inflected differently for the various nationalities.

** On the other hand, the only main-line ''Civ'' game to incorporate talking units, ''[[Civilization]] IV'', has each of the units respond in the appropriate language. There was a little bit of [[Blind Idiot Translation]], but the fact that they bothered to come up with good translations—and find native speakers where applicable—is rather touching. On the other hand, it also reinforces—to some ~~degree--As~~ Long as It Sounds Foreign: for instance, the Egyptians, who are very clearly based on the ''[[Ancient Egypt|Ancient]]'' Egyptians, speak ''[[Modern Egypt|modern]]'' Egyptian Arabic. Similar situations are found with the Greeks (whose units speak modern Greek) and Persians (whose units speak modern Persian). The Vikings one-up these: modern Norwegian instead of Old Norse—and the faction leader, Sveyn Forkbeard, was ''Danish'' (so not only do they speak a modern version of the language, they don't even speak the ''right'' modern version). The Roman units, however, speak actual Latin—and remarkably well-rendered, with all the "c"s and "g"s pronounced hard, the vowel lengths and qualities properly distinguished, and a voice actor who really gave his all to creating a ''living''-sounding Latin (the end result sounded—surprise, surprise—like a particularly energetic Italian).

** On the other hand, the only main-line ''Civ'' game to incorporate talking units, ''[[Civilization]] IV'', has each of the units respond in the appropriate language. There was a little bit of [[Blind Idiot Translation]], but the fact that they bothered to come up with good translations—and find native speakers where applicable—is rather touching. On the other hand, it also reinforces—to some degree—As Long as It Sounds Foreign: for instance, the Egyptians, who are very clearly based on the ''[[Ancient Egypt|Ancient]]'' Egyptians, speak ''[[Modern Egypt|modern]]'' Egyptian Arabic. Similar situations are found with the Greeks (whose units speak modern Greek) and Persians (whose units speak modern Persian). The Vikings one-up these: modern Norwegian instead of Old Norse—and the faction leader, Sveyn Forkbeard, was ''Danish'' (so not only do they speak a modern version of the language, they don't even speak the ''right'' modern version). The Roman units, however, speak actual Latin—and remarkably well-rendered, with all the "c"s and "g"s pronounced hard, the vowel lengths and qualities properly distinguished, and a voice actor who really gave his all to creating a ''living''-sounding Latin (the end result sounded—surprise, surprise—like a particularly energetic Italian).

** ''Civilization V'' did away with the talking units. They just grunt now. Instead, they introduced talking leaders. Of course, the phrases the leaders say and the subtitles are completely different, even for leaders like [[George Washington]] and Queen Elizabeth I. There is still the problem of Rameses II not using proper Ancient Egyptian (this is justified by ''no one'' knowing what it's supposed to like) and other historical characters using modern-day versions of the languages. For example, [[Catherine the Great]] sounds like a modern Russian woman despite being born in a 18th century German principality (her subjects often complained at not being able to understand her heavily-accented Russian). Washington also sounds like he could be living in the 21st century. This troper can't speak for any others.

* Events of ''[[Half Life]] 2'' take place in an unspecified Eastern European location, so the game features quite a few inscriptions in Bulgarian.