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Help me understand ingame houmor and names - proper translation


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Oxygen as well as some other Klei's games provide us, players, with a specific kind of houmor.

Some of the word bear emotional or humorous charge, that is easily understood by native english speakers, but also easily lost in bad translation. 

As I am not native english speaker, I am making a language pack, and what I want to do is to find what that charge is so I can capture its essence and use that in translation. 

But first I need your help in finding that humorous charge hidden in the game. 
 

I hope it will be useful also for other translators, and I encourage you to share your interesting semantic findings for many other things in game. 

 

So, I know what those words literally mean, but what i'd like to know is:

  • do they sound like any other existing word?
  • is it a 'hidden' word or a mash up of few words?
  • are they supposed to be pun?
  • are they mimicking known things?
  • if it is an Plant/Animal/Structure name, does the name is similar to Plant/Animal/Structure existing in real world?

The words/names are:

Wheezewort - wheeze is pretty simple, as it implies heavy breathing, but wort is a riddle for me. according to dictionary wort is liquid extracted during plant mashing in a beer brewing process.... what do i miss? 

Sleet Wheat - other that it rhymes, is it just that? I mean, is it just sleet wheat? just a regular wheat but sleet (rain with snow) implies a winter-y preferences of the plant? Does the name sound like something else you know? Is it a pun?

Mealwood, Mealice - quite basic and intuitive: meal and wood, but lice creates language conundrum. Since lice are the jumping parasites found in animal or human hair, its hard for me to relate that name to the image presented by game which is more like crawling larvae than jumping parasite. Does lice have a different meaning here? Is it 'copycat' of another meal found in real world?

Pincha Peppernut - the only Pincha i found was  pincha mayurasana an upside down yoga pose, which perfectly sums up the growing preferences of the plant (since it grows from the ceiling). But is there anything else about the pincha? Since in game this is used for spicing other meals, i gues pepper refers to a spice (small black dried balls) rather than vegetable (red bulb shaped juicy flesh, hot or mild), but how do you think? Nut is clearly a nut (as in peanut) rather than nut (as hardware). Interesting thing is i found that Pfeffernüsse are tiny spice cookies popular in germany, pfeffer indicates it is spicy but nuss actually indicates small size of treat, not the taste. The image in game resemble a half eaten grain, so maybe Peppernut is also referring to itself as small spice?

Thimble Reed - thimble is used in sewing things, reed is a plant growing at wetlands, plant is used for tailoring in game, thats why i think its called thimble. Also i noticed its very similar in sound to Tumbleweed. Any thoughts?

Bristle Briar - i could not find any other meaning than 'spiky' and general plant part, i also found that briar can refer to three species CrataegusErica and Rosa canina (aka dog rose or wild rose). The rose part is weird since Bristle Blossom look like rose, Bristle Briar is just some bush. Do you know any of these, do they sound familiar?

Bristle Blossom  - also spiky but now it has a flower that resemble a rose. Name does not look like anything I saw in real world. Help me here please

Bristle Berry, Gristle Berry - the fruit of a plant mentioned above, the berry part is simple, its also 'spiky', gristle may suggest method of preparing the food (grilling in this case), but it also sounds like grizzly bear. Does it have double meaning. Boy, I hope i do not over-interpreted it

Hatch - a big jawed creature that eats everything, the only meaning of a hatch i know is a small door or opening usually leading to a basement, thats why its hard for me to get this. The creature also burries itself so maybe thats it. I don't know. Can you help?

Morb - in french mort means death, and the creature spawns from dead corpses, other than does morb sounds like something you know?

Puft - i guess it refers to heavy breathing but also for being a little fat? , I found puft is used as a slogan "Stay Puft" for the marshmallow man in ghost busters movie  

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I'm going to start off assuming you're not a native english speaker. If I'm wrong, i apologize.

Definition of wort

  1. :  plant; especially :  an herbaceous plant —usually used in combination lousewort

Assuming sleet wheat is just as on the tin-cold wheat.

Look up mealworm.

A peppercorn is unground pepper... so... maybe it's something along those lines?

Personally don't see a connection with tumbleweed...

Bristle - pointy things. Briar - specific pointy thing. It's all around spiky.

A spiky blossom...

gris·tly
ˈɡris(ə)lē/
adjective
adjective: gristly; comparative adjective: gristlier; superlative adjective: gristliest
  1. consisting of or full of gristle.
    "gristly bits of beef"
    synonyms: stringy, sinewy, fibrous; More
    tough, leathery, chewy
    "a gristly pot roast"

Methinks you overthought it. Nothing with grilling. More of it's not the most appitizing.

Hatch-also used to talk about a mouth. "Down the hatch" http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/down+the+hatch

Morb...id. imo you got it spot on.

Puff+sound of a fart... i think.

 

 

There are likely several bits I'm missing as well, or maybe wrong about... but that should set some things straigh for you.

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Wheezewort is based on these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wort_plants

Bristle Blossom is assumed to be the flowering part of Bristle Briar but I feel this is just an early game name that stuck around.

Hatch is an idiom for mouth, which goes with their endless consumption of materials.
Look up "Down the hatch" for references.

Everything else looks like you understand them.

 

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Most of these are just guesses so they are not 100% accurate.

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

according to dictionary wort is liquid extracted during plant mashing in a beer brewing process.... what do i miss? 

I think it means wart, do not google image search it. It's basically a skin condition. And if you look closely at the wheezewort it does have warts.

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Sleet Wheat

Sleet also sounds like neat and pleat. Pleat kinda describes how it looks.

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Mealice

There are plant louse that feeds on plants, so it's pretty accurate to say those white larvae could be plant lice. 

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Pincha Peppernut 

I think you are right for pincha, for peppernut the description says "The bitter outer rind hides a rich, peppery core that is useful in cooking." so I'm guessing it's just a nut looking thing that has pepper.

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Thimble Reed

I think you are right to say it means a reed (the plant) that is used for tailoring

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Bristle Briar

Briar are thorny plants that look like bushes.

Bristle means fibers/hair/strands that stand upright (aka spikey), the leaves are pointing upwards and are spikey.

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Bristle Blossom

If you look carefully at it, the pink part of the plant does look like spiky hair

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Gristle Berry 

Gristle - tough cartilaginous, tendinous, or fibrous matter

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Hatch

Hatchlings are newborn animals that come from eggs. So it could refer to animals that are always hungry and poop a lot.

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Morb

Morb could also be short for Morbid. Abnormal and unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects, especially death and disease.

1 hour ago, Parusoid said:

Puft

Could also mean Puff. As in something filled with a lot of air.

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People above correctly pointed you in the right direction on most of these.  Just a few additions:

Wheezewort - Wort is simply an old english term they tacked onto a lot of plants (see Rizu's link).  It just means 'plant', basically.

Sleet Wheat just rhymes, with sleet being related to the cold conditions it prefers - Klei loves rhyme and aliteration.

Mealwood - as pointed out above, mealworms are a real life analogue to meal lice, visually.  I think Klei was trying to make them even more repulsive by terming them lice (and they do appear to be a parasite)

Pincha Peppernut - In english recipes, you might be directed to add a "pinch of pepper" which implies using the tip of your fingers to 'pinch' a tiny amount of pepper between them, and put that amount on the food.  Klei turned 'pinch of' into pincha, and used 'nut' instead of the more typical term for pepper seeds, 'peppercorn'. 

Bristle Briar - In a traditional sense, 'briar' is pretty much a generic term for a thorny plant.  Or more specifically a group of them, as in 'briar patch'.  You may want to check out the story of "Br'er Rabbit" to see a traditional African/American story relating to a briar patch. (note that Br'er is a contraction of 'brother', not 'briar').   As for bristle, it's similar to spiky.  Also Klei loves aliteration.

Bristle Blossom - this plant is basically a real-world thistle (rhymes with bristle,  also Klei loves aliteration)

Bristle Berry -> Gristle Berry - Did I mention Klei LOVES aliteration?  Also Klei loves rhyming.   We could even surmise that the blossoms are gristly (meaning tough and chewy) but that would be pure speculation.

Puft = puffed, relating to puffs of air.  It's a made up homophone.

My beef with with ONI plants is they're all heavily based on real world plants that would require sunlight. Despite being underground.  So I guess they added the light bug to try and justify that?  I wish they'd just gone full-on imagination and made up some gnarly weird new stuff.  Or used more fungus.  *shrug*

 

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