• splines
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    Making this must have been exhausting. I have a hard enough time coming up with one name in an RPG. I want to hear the story of the guy who had to come up with all of this.

    • _danny@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      What I’ve found helps me is picking three or four character traits I’m going to roleplay and run them through a translator twice (ex. English -> Hawaiian-> Czech turns ‘tenacious’ into věrnost. Then I’d judge how badly I’d pronounce it and English-ify it a little to Verno or Varnost)

      It helps to pick languages that have a few language barriers between where they originated. Like English -> German doesn’t work because they share a common root language and half of German speaks English as a second language now.

      • anti@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I use a variation of this to write music rounds for quizzes. Run lyrics through a translator then back to English and get people to name the song. My last round was called Korea Change (i.e I translated it to Korean and back).