[X] My Assistant

[Fatum]

Well, I guess if you have to nitpick, Arsenal has a sub Partisan built on "Krasnay Sormova" shipyards. The first word looks like a Russian adjective, but it's not in any form that exists in the language.
There is, however, a real shipyard, and one of the largest in ex-USSR at that, "Krasnoe Sormovo".
Also, Mostran KVP-27T seems to be produced by the descendant of Mostrans, which is the agency operating Moscow's public transit. But eh, who knows, now they service buses, 70 years forward, they build hovercraft, why not.

[Adarael]

Probably a case of someone not transliterating the names properly. That happens all the time, my ladykins assures me. I know in terms of Japanese names, I have often looked at them and gone, "That is not a name. That is a word, but not someone's name."

As for Monstran KVP-27T, I think it's probably a dropped S in terms of misspellings. I remember having a PC who had a Mostrans hovercraft back in 2nd edition; I suspect the KVP-27T is just the 4th edition version of whatever hovercraft that was.

[Fatum]

Probably a case of someone not transliterating the names properly. That happens all the time, my ladykins assures me. I know in terms of Japanese names, I have often looked at them and gone, "That is not a name. That is a word, but not someone's name."

As a matter of fact, isn't playing with the different ways the same hieroglyphs can be pronounced kinda traditional in Japanese naming? I remember seeing something about that when I read on Japanese ink artists.

As for Monstran KVP-27T, I think it's probably a dropped S in terms of misspellings. I remember having a PC who had a Mostrans hovercraft back in 2nd edition; I suspect the KVP-27T is just the 4th edition version of whatever hovercraft that was.

Yeah, I figured as much, it's just kinda surprising how they changed their profile. But eh, if MiG makes hovercraft (and no planes), why not Mostrans.

[Adarael]

Yes, absolutely. Without spending a lot of time getting into the whys and wherefores and hows, there's a lot of linguistic play that happens in terms of using the wrong kanji to call out homophones, so while you would literally read a phrase as "Purple Monkey Dishwasher" because of the kanji, phonetically it sounds like "Screw your mom." I have a jacket that's embroidered with ten tons of it, and it's incredibly strange to read until you start *saying* it.

But in terms of some of the Japanese NPCs and families having ... unusual names... it's not that kind of play. It's rather that they have words as names which would never be used as names. Equivalent to - and please forgive me if these aren't conjugated right - naming Russian NPCs things like "Igor Zaftra" or 'Oleg Panimayu". Words that would never be used as family names. For instance, the Shiawase family? I've never heard of anyone being named Shiawase. It's a good corporate name, but not a family name. Korin Yamana? That's an okay PC name, except Korin and Yamana are both family names, or at the very least Korin is a family name 99% of the time. There were a couple of others, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

Honestly, it's not as egregous as the German naming conventions seem to be, but I think some of that can be chalked up the fact that the problem with the Japanese names is that they're not correct names, while the German names are actually linguistically correct, but sound retarded.

[Kagetenshi]

Honestly, it's not as egregous as the German naming conventions seem to be

With a few exceptions, where it's actually much worse (the Kogeki and Jigoku, or Corporate Download's Ganbare Aerospace, Wakatta Software, and Ressha Corporation).

~J

[Adarael]

Yeah, numberically less instances, but where it's bad, it's just like, "Man, WHAT?"

[MYST1C]

There's an assault rifle that has been around since the good old Street Samurai Catalog - the Samopal vz/88V, described as "the assault rifle of the Czech mechanized infantry".

While the name of the gun is obviously modeled on the real-life Samopal vz. 58 it has a problem: "Samopal" is not, as one might think, a company name! It is the classification of the weapon - Samopal vzor 58 means "submachine gun, model of 1958" (by Eastern Bloc naming conventions assault rifles are SMGs due to the ammo being smaller than full-size rifle ammo). The actual manufacturer of these rifles was the state-owned Česká zbrojovka plant.

[Fatum]

There's an assault rifle that has been around since the good old Street Samurai Catalog - the Samopal vz/88V, described as "the assault rifle of the Czech mechanized infantry".

While the name of the gun is obviously modeled on the real-life Samopal vz. 58 it has a problem: "Samopal" is not, as one might think, a company name! It is the classification of the weapon - Samopal vzor 58 means "submachine gun, model of 1958" (by Eastern Bloc naming conventions assault rifles are SMGs due to the ammo being smaller than full-size rifle ammo). The actual manufacturer of these rifles was the state-owned Česká zbrojovka plant.

And there's a number of CZ-produced arms in the books, too.

Also, I don't know about your part of the Eastern Bloc, but in Soviet Union (and, thus, Russia) the SMGs using pistol ammo are named "пистолет-пулемет" ("pistol-machinegun", heh, as far as I am aware it's pretty much a translation of "Maschinenpistole"), and assault rifles are named "автомат" (with formal versions of "автоматическая винтовка" and "автоматический карабин", which translate to "autorifle" and "automatic carbine", respectively).

[KarmaInferno]

Yeah, there's a similar issue with the more recent AA-16. The author pretty clearly didn't bother to do even basic research on the weapon he was basing it on, the AA-12. Otherwise he would have immediately realized that the "12" in the name isn't a model number, it's a reference to the gauge of shot shell the weapon loads. And in Shotgun Gauges, a bigger number means a smaller shell.

Then again, Shadowrun historically has often had folks writing guns that really don't know much about the subject, given the glaring errors that abound in many firearms in the books. In previous editions, that might have been a bit more excusable.

But today? Come on, it takes two minutes of searching to get detailed info on any firearm you care to name, with extensive commentary on the background and history surrounding them. Getting the info right should be part of the damn job.




-k

[raben-aas]

Two minutes may actually be too much.

I just came across the new map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops – which, in comparison with CGL/Shadowrun, is like about a gazillion trillion billion phantastillion times more successful and has about the same times the amount of ca$h to burn on artists and guys that come up with foreign texts for foreign maps.

Behold and count all the crap German words and other (historical) mistakes there, and weep.
http://www.g4tv.com/videos/51077/Berlin-Wa...ke-Walkthrough/

What I found in this vid so far:
– The "Täglich Zeitung" (Daily Paper), which would actually be the "Tageszeitung"
– "Grausam" (Cruel) as a product name (or whatever commercial) on a wall
– "Berg Hirsch" (Mountain Stag, maybe a pun at Mountain Dew (Deer)) as name for a brewery
– Yellow 80ies style telephone booths that should not be in a 60ies setting
– ‎"Damensattel – Herbst Stilen sind jetzt im Verkauf" Uh. Yes.
– ‎"Aktuelle Mode von Nikolaus Pappas" – okay, I dunno why there's a reference for a greek basketball player in there, but what the hell... can be explained away as being an Easter Egg
– there's graffitti on the Wall. Not very likely at the time. Also: Not in 80ies/90is ghetto style.
– in the record shop: "DER Doktortitel und Freunds" (band name) with "stärke durch ordnung" (song name)

And that's just from the vid. Wait til I download that thing and take a closer look (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Well, the developers of Black Ops did not make their homework from the start or didn't even bother with historical accuracy in the first place.

laser dots in sixties? an israeli Galil assault rifle in the 60's when the weapon began production in the 70's? And that's just what I remember from the top of my head.

[raben-aas]

The difference being that guns are just a side aspect of SR, while they are about the only topic of CoD, and that CoD is about x times larger than SR and could easily hire professional translators (and should have some gun nuts on their payroll), and that the game STILL sells like crack no matter what errors there are.

Yes, that could be solid proof that SR fans aremuch more sophisticated. I'm not arguing that, neither am I implying that CoD should be the role model of game design for paper and pen RPGs (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Matter of fact: I don't know what I'm saying (it's my way). Maybe: Cool it a little. SR is still a fun game to play even with the Vogelhund, so let's all drink a Berg Hirsch, buy another Grausam and relax reading the Täglich Zeitung while listening to DER Doktortitel und Freunds.

[Sengir]

In PC games it might actually be be done on purpose, an in-joke alluding to the (inadvertently) crappy German in old games like Wolf3D or old WW2 movies. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Kagetenshi]

Ach! Mein Leben!

Edit: nothing to see here, move along.

~J

[Sengir]

Leben (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[sabs]

I AM jelly Donut!

[Sengir]

He's a Nazi, get him! [/grampa]

[sabs]

John F Kennedy was a Nazi?

[Sengir]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7CtI8nx1Wc (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[raben-aas]

OK, so crappy German names are actually by the same token an inside joke, as they are in reference to crappy German words in earlier SR editions? Yeah, that sounds plausible. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Go, Nachtmachen!

[Fatum]

OK, so crappy German names are actually by the same token an inside joke, as they are in reference to crappy German words in earlier SR editions? Yeah, that sounds plausible. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Go, Nachtmachen!

You don't get to complain, at least they got your alphabet right.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

You don't get to complain, at least they got your alphabet right.

Only because it is the same alphabet the whole ocidental world uses (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Fatum]

Ö really?

[Stahlseele]

Ö really?

yäh really!
edit: i hate myself for having written that <.<

[Fatum]

Öh dön't be ßüch a häter.

...and that is pretty much how Cyrillic is used in the popular media.