Here's a disclaimer: Even though this series of posts is called "Germanizing Games", unless further reinforced, I don't suggest that all of the games featured on this article have original English titles. "Germanizing" is just a handy word that doesn't one-hundred-percent describe what I am doing here. Also this list isn't meant to be comprehensive when it comes to box cover artwork and it's not supposed to focus on this. Excursions into this subject are to be understood rather as a bonus than the centerpiece of these articles, which is the differences and similarities between English and German titles of board games (no matter which one is the original). That said, I don't own all of the board games out there, I can't double-check everything, I have to work with what the Geek gives me. If there are factual errors in what I write here, I'll be thankful for corrections.
On a sidenote, I just noticed that the BGG database has cracked the 100000 entries so... if I continued in the current tempo, I'd be done in roughly 3846 years. Oh boy.
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I have already talked at length about Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure and its German equivalent of Klong!, in fact, this was one of the games that originally convinced me to undertake this whole project. So... yeah, Klong! That's not really a German word, as you might have gathered. It's just an onomatopoeic expression to signify something that... well, clanks. So nothing especially exciting here, moving on.
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So Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is called Battlestar Galactica: Das Brettspiel here in Germany, no big surprises there. They could have gone for Kampfstern Galactica: Das Brettspiel, returning to the name of the original series (and providing a rather fitting, faithful translation, although "Schlachtstern" would have been a bit better if you asked me, "Kampfstern" would be closer to "Fighting star"), but since the new series was called Battlestar Galactica instead of Kampfstern Galactica as well, I think that that'd have been a bit misleading, so yeah, no problem there. The cover is kind of interesting, however. For one, amidst the original version's publication and the release of the German translation, the Sci Fi Channel rebranded itself as SyFy and with that, the logo also changed and can be already found on the first German edition. But I find the translation of the tagline a bit more noteworthy. See, literally translating "A game of politics, betrayal and survival" would give us "Ein Spiel über Politik, Verrat und Überleben". But no, that's not good enough for the guys and girls at Heidelberger. They changed it to "Ein Spiel um Misstrauen, Verrat und den Kampf ums Überleben", "A game of distrust, betrayal and the fight for survival". The poetic veneer of the last part aside, I wonder what the reasoning behind changing "politics" to "distrust" was. Ah, well, those things closely related, I guess...
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Depending on your viewpoint, you could perceive multilingual versions as making my life easier or harder. So yeah, Mombasa was originally released in an English/German-multilingual version and even though there have been separate English-only and German-only versions to this day, there's hardly anything to say about those, since the game is language independent anyway. So how about this one: There's the "Cooked books mini expansion" (which hasn't been released in German but why would it have to, being also completely language independent?) which in Germany would be called a bit differently. See, the English idiom "cooking the books" can be translated to the German "die Bücher frisieren", literally "coifing the books". No idea how any of this came into existence, but... well I find it interesting.
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You're also not helping, Heidelberger... Well, you are kind of. But... not really. The Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game is called Star Wars: X-Wing Miniaturen-Spiel in Germany and (except for the fact that whoever took the photo of the German box first removed the miniatures) there's hardly anything noteworthy about the cover-differences. Except for the fact that Heidelberger once again kind of bungled the tagline, because that's what they do. "A miniatures game of tactical space combat for 2 players", the original cover tells us, "Ein Miniaturenspiel um taktische Weltraumkämpfe für zwei Spieler" would have been my translation. But no, they tweaked it ever so slightly to "Taktischer Raumkampf in einem Miniaturen-Spiel für zwei Spieler", "Tactical space combat in a miniatures game for 2 players". That sounds like they are kind of embarassed about the fact that there is tactical space combat in the game and they want to kind of handwave it away, being too afraid to commit by saying "Yes, this game is about tactical combat", instead going for a wishi washi "Oh, yeah, I guess there's some tactical combat in this miniatures game"-tone.
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I admit that back then, when I originally talked about the differences between the German and English version of this game, I hadn't really picked up on the kind of clever pun in the original title. Yeah, sure, Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game is called that way because there's zombies out there and because it is set in the dead of winter. Got it now. Don't know how I managed to miss that all of the time. Anyway, we don't have a fitting expression that would make for a good pun to translate this to, translating it litteraly would give you "Im tiefsten Winter" ("in deepest winter") or "Die Toten des Winters" ("the dead of winter"). So they went with "Winter der Toten" ("winter of the dead") for the German version, probably owing a bit of this to the late George A. Romero. Also the subtitle... "A Crossroads Game" is also something that can't really be faithfully translated. You could go with "Ein Wegscheiden-Spiel", but that sounds incredibly stupid. So here in Germany, it's called "Ein Spiel mit dem Schicksal", "A game of fate". Again, not as cleverly amibuous as the original, but good enough, I guess.
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This one is strange. Like, really strange. And by the way, I'm only talking about the title this game was originally published under here, because I'm sick and tired of games suddenly changing their titles here on the Geek, but I've already talked at length about that. So... Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. Neat, clean, descriptive... Kosmos could have gone with "Sherlock Holmes, beratender Detektiv" way back when, that might be considered a bit clumsy, but it would have been a lot better than what they settled on. As you can see above, in Germany, the game was published as "Sherlock Holmes Criminal-Cabinet". None of those words exist in the German language. I mean, we've got the word "kriminal", which is an archaic word for your English "criminal", and we've got the word "Kabinett" which can under very special circumstances be translated to "cabinet", but even then, this hardly makes any sense. I tried to investigate whether this strange translation stems from something that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote way back when and that had originally been translated to German a long time ago (and therefore with a different sprachgefühl - on a sidenote, wow, you anglophones are borrowing the strangest words from us Germans - than our modern one) but I couldn't find anything conclusive. So yeah, until someone inevitably proves me wrong and stupid in the comments, I'll declare this German translation as pretty harrowing.
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And more multilinguality. The Gallerist has been published in an English/German version so nothing of note here. A German version could be named "Der Galerist" (mind the missing l) but I'm not Schwerkraft-Verlag, I can live with an English title now and then.
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And even more. Then again, what else should a German version have been called? I mean, Troyes is the name of the capital of the department of Aube and us Germans call it Troyes as well (if we can't circumvent the neccessity to vocalize the name of that place at all, because it's another one of those that hardly anyone over here can pronounce correctly). The expansion Troyes: The Ladies of Troyes is called "Die Damen von Troyes" in Germany. That's what those English words mean in our language. Next.
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Quite a lot of covers up there, right? Well, with Tigris & Euphrates, better known as "Euphrat & Tigris" here in Germany, tracking the history of the game is kind of interesting. First of all, the title... Here in Germany, we have a pretty poetic paraphrasing for Mesopotamia, calling it "das Zweistromland zwischen Euphrat und Tigris". English speaking people might be more familiar with the designation "Tigris-Euphrates river system". That's the origin of both the original German title as well as the more widely known English one, I guess, so yeah, the reversal can be explained that way. The history of the differing covers and taglines however... The first German version coined the "An den Ufern der Macht"-subtitle ("on the banks of power") that was retained for the Pegasus-version (who thought to themselves "Nah, that Hans Im Glück cover is far to exciting, let's just have a guy holding a bowl, that'll have people buying the game in droves"... oh Pegasus...). Mayfair meanwhile went with "A Game of Culture, Crisis Conflict and Civilization" ("Ein Spiel um Kultur, Krisen, Konflikt und Zivilisation"... see, the alliteration kind of breaks down in the translation...). Apart from the fact that there should probably be another comma between Crisis and Conflict, they seemingly noticed that this isn't snappy enough, so for the next version, they shortened it to "Culture Conflict Civilization" (I think I can overlook the missing commas since this isn't supposed to be a complete sentence, I hope) which has stuck until today. The FFG-version expanded it back to a complete sentence, going with "A Game of Culture, Conflict and Civilization". For the German version, Heidelberger duly conformed and translated the tagline to "Kultur, Konflikt und Zivilisation in einem Brettspiel" (this time I really don't know whether it's just insecurity or supposed to be a Kinder-surprise like slogan, trying to point out that you get "Culture, Conflict and Civilization, ALL IN ONE BOARD GAME!"). Anyway, they also weren't content with just having the cover say "A game by Reiner Knizia", no, the German version is quick to point out that this is "Ein Spieleklassiker von Reiner Knizia", "A gaming classic by Reiner Knizia". That's nice.
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And the last one for today, Russian Railroads, another German game, peddling an English name. Well, can't blame the authors, an English name is probably the better choice if you're aiming at an international audience. Also "Russische Eisenbahnen" doesn't have the same ring to it. It's mostly a syllable-thing, I guess. Still, when your first experience is called Russian Railroads: German Railroads, it feels a bit strange to call it by its English name even if it is set here in Germany. Well, the title is pretty stupid anyway. I mean, there's no expansion to Mombasa called "Mombasa: München", is there? Ah well, brand recognition is something, I guess.
And that's it for today. Thanks for reading, thanks for correcting all of my stupid mistakes in the comments, hope to see you next time, even though that one promisses to become a decade with very few noteworthy entries. Ah well, that's not gonna stop me, is it now?
On a sidenote, I just noticed that the BGG database has cracked the 100000 entries so... if I continued in the current tempo, I'd be done in roughly 3846 years. Oh boy.
I have already talked at length about Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure and its German equivalent of Klong!, in fact, this was one of the games that originally convinced me to undertake this whole project. So... yeah, Klong! That's not really a German word, as you might have gathered. It's just an onomatopoeic expression to signify something that... well, clanks. So nothing especially exciting here, moving on.
So Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game is called Battlestar Galactica: Das Brettspiel here in Germany, no big surprises there. They could have gone for Kampfstern Galactica: Das Brettspiel, returning to the name of the original series (and providing a rather fitting, faithful translation, although "Schlachtstern" would have been a bit better if you asked me, "Kampfstern" would be closer to "Fighting star"), but since the new series was called Battlestar Galactica instead of Kampfstern Galactica as well, I think that that'd have been a bit misleading, so yeah, no problem there. The cover is kind of interesting, however. For one, amidst the original version's publication and the release of the German translation, the Sci Fi Channel rebranded itself as SyFy and with that, the logo also changed and can be already found on the first German edition. But I find the translation of the tagline a bit more noteworthy. See, literally translating "A game of politics, betrayal and survival" would give us "Ein Spiel über Politik, Verrat und Überleben". But no, that's not good enough for the guys and girls at Heidelberger. They changed it to "Ein Spiel um Misstrauen, Verrat und den Kampf ums Überleben", "A game of distrust, betrayal and the fight for survival". The poetic veneer of the last part aside, I wonder what the reasoning behind changing "politics" to "distrust" was. Ah, well, those things closely related, I guess...
Depending on your viewpoint, you could perceive multilingual versions as making my life easier or harder. So yeah, Mombasa was originally released in an English/German-multilingual version and even though there have been separate English-only and German-only versions to this day, there's hardly anything to say about those, since the game is language independent anyway. So how about this one: There's the "Cooked books mini expansion" (which hasn't been released in German but why would it have to, being also completely language independent?) which in Germany would be called a bit differently. See, the English idiom "cooking the books" can be translated to the German "die Bücher frisieren", literally "coifing the books". No idea how any of this came into existence, but... well I find it interesting.
You're also not helping, Heidelberger... Well, you are kind of. But... not really. The Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game is called Star Wars: X-Wing Miniaturen-Spiel in Germany and (except for the fact that whoever took the photo of the German box first removed the miniatures) there's hardly anything noteworthy about the cover-differences. Except for the fact that Heidelberger once again kind of bungled the tagline, because that's what they do. "A miniatures game of tactical space combat for 2 players", the original cover tells us, "Ein Miniaturenspiel um taktische Weltraumkämpfe für zwei Spieler" would have been my translation. But no, they tweaked it ever so slightly to "Taktischer Raumkampf in einem Miniaturen-Spiel für zwei Spieler", "Tactical space combat in a miniatures game for 2 players". That sounds like they are kind of embarassed about the fact that there is tactical space combat in the game and they want to kind of handwave it away, being too afraid to commit by saying "Yes, this game is about tactical combat", instead going for a wishi washi "Oh, yeah, I guess there's some tactical combat in this miniatures game"-tone.
I admit that back then, when I originally talked about the differences between the German and English version of this game, I hadn't really picked up on the kind of clever pun in the original title. Yeah, sure, Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game is called that way because there's zombies out there and because it is set in the dead of winter. Got it now. Don't know how I managed to miss that all of the time. Anyway, we don't have a fitting expression that would make for a good pun to translate this to, translating it litteraly would give you "Im tiefsten Winter" ("in deepest winter") or "Die Toten des Winters" ("the dead of winter"). So they went with "Winter der Toten" ("winter of the dead") for the German version, probably owing a bit of this to the late George A. Romero. Also the subtitle... "A Crossroads Game" is also something that can't really be faithfully translated. You could go with "Ein Wegscheiden-Spiel", but that sounds incredibly stupid. So here in Germany, it's called "Ein Spiel mit dem Schicksal", "A game of fate". Again, not as cleverly amibuous as the original, but good enough, I guess.
This one is strange. Like, really strange. And by the way, I'm only talking about the title this game was originally published under here, because I'm sick and tired of games suddenly changing their titles here on the Geek, but I've already talked at length about that. So... Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. Neat, clean, descriptive... Kosmos could have gone with "Sherlock Holmes, beratender Detektiv" way back when, that might be considered a bit clumsy, but it would have been a lot better than what they settled on. As you can see above, in Germany, the game was published as "Sherlock Holmes Criminal-Cabinet". None of those words exist in the German language. I mean, we've got the word "kriminal", which is an archaic word for your English "criminal", and we've got the word "Kabinett" which can under very special circumstances be translated to "cabinet", but even then, this hardly makes any sense. I tried to investigate whether this strange translation stems from something that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote way back when and that had originally been translated to German a long time ago (and therefore with a different sprachgefühl - on a sidenote, wow, you anglophones are borrowing the strangest words from us Germans - than our modern one) but I couldn't find anything conclusive. So yeah, until someone inevitably proves me wrong and stupid in the comments, I'll declare this German translation as pretty harrowing.
And more multilinguality. The Gallerist has been published in an English/German version so nothing of note here. A German version could be named "Der Galerist" (mind the missing l) but I'm not Schwerkraft-Verlag, I can live with an English title now and then.
And even more. Then again, what else should a German version have been called? I mean, Troyes is the name of the capital of the department of Aube and us Germans call it Troyes as well (if we can't circumvent the neccessity to vocalize the name of that place at all, because it's another one of those that hardly anyone over here can pronounce correctly). The expansion Troyes: The Ladies of Troyes is called "Die Damen von Troyes" in Germany. That's what those English words mean in our language. Next.
Quite a lot of covers up there, right? Well, with Tigris & Euphrates, better known as "Euphrat & Tigris" here in Germany, tracking the history of the game is kind of interesting. First of all, the title... Here in Germany, we have a pretty poetic paraphrasing for Mesopotamia, calling it "das Zweistromland zwischen Euphrat und Tigris". English speaking people might be more familiar with the designation "Tigris-Euphrates river system". That's the origin of both the original German title as well as the more widely known English one, I guess, so yeah, the reversal can be explained that way. The history of the differing covers and taglines however... The first German version coined the "An den Ufern der Macht"-subtitle ("on the banks of power") that was retained for the Pegasus-version (who thought to themselves "Nah, that Hans Im Glück cover is far to exciting, let's just have a guy holding a bowl, that'll have people buying the game in droves"... oh Pegasus...). Mayfair meanwhile went with "A Game of Culture, Crisis Conflict and Civilization" ("Ein Spiel um Kultur, Krisen, Konflikt und Zivilisation"... see, the alliteration kind of breaks down in the translation...). Apart from the fact that there should probably be another comma between Crisis and Conflict, they seemingly noticed that this isn't snappy enough, so for the next version, they shortened it to "Culture Conflict Civilization" (I think I can overlook the missing commas since this isn't supposed to be a complete sentence, I hope) which has stuck until today. The FFG-version expanded it back to a complete sentence, going with "A Game of Culture, Conflict and Civilization". For the German version, Heidelberger duly conformed and translated the tagline to "Kultur, Konflikt und Zivilisation in einem Brettspiel" (this time I really don't know whether it's just insecurity or supposed to be a Kinder-surprise like slogan, trying to point out that you get "Culture, Conflict and Civilization, ALL IN ONE BOARD GAME!"). Anyway, they also weren't content with just having the cover say "A game by Reiner Knizia", no, the German version is quick to point out that this is "Ein Spieleklassiker von Reiner Knizia", "A gaming classic by Reiner Knizia". That's nice.
And the last one for today, Russian Railroads, another German game, peddling an English name. Well, can't blame the authors, an English name is probably the better choice if you're aiming at an international audience. Also "Russische Eisenbahnen" doesn't have the same ring to it. It's mostly a syllable-thing, I guess. Still, when your first experience is called Russian Railroads: German Railroads, it feels a bit strange to call it by its English name even if it is set here in Germany. Well, the title is pretty stupid anyway. I mean, there's no expansion to Mombasa called "Mombasa: München", is there? Ah well, brand recognition is something, I guess.
And that's it for today. Thanks for reading, thanks for correcting all of my stupid mistakes in the comments, hope to see you next time, even though that one promisses to become a decade with very few noteworthy entries. Ah well, that's not gonna stop me, is it now?