The Trials of Lore

The European Spanish localization of Baldur’s Gate 3 was made by eleven people who translated over four million words in five years (of which 2.5 million ended up in the final game and 1.5 million were ultimately modified or discarded), so keeping internal consistency was mandatory as well as demanding. Things like game mechanics, spells, monsters, items, places and characters needed to be translated in the same way; otherwise, the game would have been really confusing.

To that end, we used a number of commonplace tools and techniques like team discussions, shared glossaries, translation memories, and thorough revisions. But, since the game was part of a really popular franchise with half a century of published materials, we needed to pay attention to external consistency as well, so that whoever played Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, or Dungeons & Dragons TTRPG, in Spanish, would not find discrepancies between them and Baldur’s Gate 3.

One of the first things the team did was debating which canon we should follow, since there were important differences amongst all previous products. We decided to prioritize the Fifth Edition criteria, because it was the current edition when the project started. Besides, the first two videogames were almost two decades old and pretty much outdated. We also decided to use Baldur’s Gate 2 and 1 criteria as a secondary reference when they were not in conflict with the Fifth Edition.

We had one of the translators of the Spanish version of the Fifth Edition in the team. His ability to spot game terms and provide the very same word that was used in the handbooks boosted consistency to a near-perfect level.

As a result, gameplay terminology in Baldur’s Gate 3 matches that of the tabletop game, and city names are the ones used in the latest handbooks:

For instance, Waterdeep stays in English, as it does in the Fifth Edition, instead of being translated as “Aguasprofundas,” which was the canon in Second Edition and in the first two games. But Minsc’s barks are the same that fans heard and loved twenty years ago. He’s still yelling “?A los ojos, Bubú!” to his miniature giant space hamster.

In some cases, we needed to apply our own solutions when canons clashed: the roguish archetype Assassin was translated as “Asesino” in the Fifth Edition, and the Slayer of Bhaal was translated as “Asesino” in Baldur’s Gate 2; since one character could be both and two traits couldn’t have the same name, we decided to give an extra oomph to the Bhaalite title while trying to keep it recognizable. It ended up as “Asesino Supremo” while the archetype remained “Asesino.”

Some of the canonical translations of the Fifth Edition didn’t really click with our team. Here’s a highlight: the translation of the Underdark was “la Infraoscuridad” until the Fifth Edition, when Wizards of the Coast made an executive decision and turned it into an untranslatable toponym. From there on, it was “el Underdark,” although the language spoken by its dwellers is still named “infracomún.” But the rules for consistency were set and they took precedence over any kind of personal preference.

Most probably, the greatest challenge we faced regarding consistency were several puzzles that had clues in different places and, therefore, were assigned to different translators, particularly when those clues were in verse. Sometimes, the translation that worked in a book with clues didn’t fit the actual gameplay. And, sometimes, providing the information in verse resulted in ugly rhymes that could be improved. The Wyrmway Trials automatically come to mind when thinking about this:

With a lightning shock, a true hero's spark flickers.?

The torches alight!?

And wyrm's eyes shall awake aglitter!

This clue was found in a diary with a literary style, but made reference to the specific solution to a puzzle (using sparks to light torches and awaken a dragon), thus limiting creativity. In this case, all the team gathered for a brainstorming session in order to get a single poem providing all the information, matching all the situations where it appeared, and flowing how poetry should do in Spanish (for instance, using our own traditional verses instead of those belonging to English literature). The Spanish translation for the aforementioned instructions to awaken Ansur ended up being:

Cuando surja la chispa de un héroe bien experto,?

La luz cobrará vida en cada antorcha muerta?

Y del dragón los ojos por fin se habrán abierto.

where we used the cadence of the alexandrine verse, doubled the meaning of “chispa” for electric spark and human wit, played with the duality of life and death in the second verse (after all, Ansur is undead), and described the mechanic and the effect the players would get. In this kind of situation is where a translation team proves its mettle and where a good localization can make a game’s texts shine.

Poetically, the circle of consistency will close: some of Larian’s adaptations of the Fifth Edition have been adopted by Wizards of the Coast and will appear in One D&D, and parts of the lore of Baldur’s Gate 3 have been incorporated to other games like Magic: The Gathering. Some of our own creations will become the canon that other translators will have to follow in the future!

Dive Even Deeper Into The Lore

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons since the 80s and know quite well the lore of the Forgotten Realms; or, at least, good chunks of it, because it’s a vast, rich and ever-changing game world and no one can really claim to know it well as a whole. In fact, this was one of the main reasons that led the big bosses to invite me to join the European Spanish localization team.

However, I wanted to be in top form in order to tackle this translation - I was a bit rusty because these last two decades I’ve been GMing mostly in Eberron. So when I got the job I bought the basic handbooks and the Guide to the Sword Coast, read them thoroughly… and started to prepare a tabletop campaign in the Forgotten Realms (that is, Baldur's Gate 3 setting) with Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition rules (once again, Baldur's Gate 3 rules).

Since I had the Guide well in hand, every time a location appeared in the texts of the game I grabbed it to check the maps and review the lore, which made it way easier to get a general taste of places and nail the translation. This worked even indirectly: for instance, the description of the cult of Lathander smoothened a lot the translation of the texts related to Rosymorn Monastery, which wasn’t part of the lore until it appeared in Baldur’s Gate 3. The Monster Manual also played an important role in ambient immersion: races and creatures have pretty good descriptions that include their culture and psychology, and this eventually got reflected in how the militaristic githyanki or the sly hags expressed themselves in dialogues.

This effort not only helped me get a better localization, but also contributed to the game in its entirety: as I used the Calendar of Harptos to keep track of the passage of time in my campaign, I was deeply aware of the fact that faer?nians divide months in tendays instead of weeks, and this eventually led the writers to remove the word “week” in the first drafts of the videogame texts and to adapt all sentences to use “tenday”.

The pandemic halted my tabletop campaign a bit but, once we could get around a table again, the Swords of Hardbuckler began their adventures. Our history takes place in the Backlands, with some visits to nearby nations like Elturgard or Cormy; and, despite being set in a different place, I tried to maintain the spirit of Baldur’s Gate 3 providing all its elements of adventure, drama, romance, politics and a big underlying plot with a boatload of connected secondary plots. As of now, we’ve played over 100 game sessions, the campaign still goes on, and all of my players have enjoyed Baldur’s Gate 3 as well. And, although my story differs almost completely from the video game, sometimes characters like Auntie Ethel or Halsin the Druid have made guest appearances, because now they’re part of the game world as well. Enjoying other products set in the Forgotten Realms, like playing Dungeons & Dragons Online or watching Honor Among Thieves, surely helped as well, but GMing was undoubtedly the best and funniest way to delve into the lore!