Add Chinese dubbing to Han Dynasty units.

[hyperion]

14 hours ago, AIEND said:

Words like "sir" or "madam" were translated from European languages more than a hundred years ago when China was Westernized, and before that they did not exist in Chinese.
Old Chinese first, second, and third person pronouns do not distinguish between men and women.

Yes, and in this context it's an Americanism among maybe some others, translating acknowledging a command for my native language / military would be something like "understood" or "copy" which is also gender neutral.

[Sp00ky]

I don't think it's an americanism.

In spanish we also have "Señor", "Señora". Which is pretty much the same as Sir and Madam (as it was used to denote subservience in the past). Some older folk use "Don" o "Doña" which denoted higher ranks.

AoE2 used "mande" for acknowledge which is more neutral

 

But honestly that doesn't really matter, I think that we should listen to the people that have knowledge about the language and any suggestion would be welcome.

 

So having said that. Which  would be the words used to acknowledge the order of a superior in the chinese dialect used in han times?

Edited June 8, 2023 by Sp00ky

[AIEND]

6小时前，Sp00ky 说：

我不认为这是一种美国主义。

在西班牙语中，我们也有“Señor”，“Señora”。这与先生和夫人几乎相同（因为它在过去被用来表示屈从）。一些老年人使用“Don”或“Doña”，表示更高的等级。

AoE2使用“mande”表示更中性的确认

 

但老实说，这并不重要，我认为我们应该倾听对语言有了解的人的意见，任何建议都会受到欢迎。

 

话虽如此。汉代汉语方言中用来承认上级顺序的词是什么？

Old Chinese focused on differences in class status, and people of lower status did not necessarily address each other's positions or titles when responding to requests from higher status, but would use self-effacing self-designation.
Of course, this is not a problem for the dialogue we want to add, because according to modern Chinese, this dialogue is not necessarily between the person receiving the command and the person who gave the order, but can be a dialogue between the recipient of the command at the same time, and this dialogue does not need to mention the status level.

[Stan`]

Here are some voices  generated by @Yekaterina all of these tracks by typing the Chinese phrase into Luyinzhushou (a software that reads converts Chinese text to voices with selectable personalities). She is a native speaker of Chinese. The voices feature a range of accents and dialects to reflect the vastness and variety of Han Dynasty. A 21st century Chinese person should be familiar with these phrases.

@AIEND can you check them?

chinesevoice.zip

[AIEND]

在 12/06/2023 在 8：34 下午， 斯坦#x60; 说：

以下是 @Yekaterina 通过在Luyinzhushou（一种阅读将中文文本转换为具有可选个性的声音的软件）中输入中文短语来@Yekaterina所有这些曲目所产生的一些声音。她的母语是中文。这些声音具有一系列口音和方言，以反映汉代的广阔和多样性。一个21世纪的中国人应该熟悉这些短语。

@AIEND 可以检查它们吗？

中文语音.zip 196 kB · 9 downloads

The Chinese pronunciation of the software is very general, and it is better to let native Chinese speakers dub.

[Stan`]

Thanks for checking. Is it really so bad quality that it's worth waiting forever for actual historically accurate chinese dubbing?

[Yekaterina]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

Thanks for checking. Is it really so bad quality that it's worth waiting forever for actual historically accurate chinese dubbing?

All of the female units are speaking perfect Mandarin, the official pronunciation that you would see in formal news reports.

Half of the male voices have some North-Eastern accent. The other half also speak perfect Mandarin.

One might be able to tell that it was a software generating the speeches, however, it is not very obvious and I purposefully chose complete phrases that do not emphasise flaws of the software. This software is being used by many content creators to read out scripts and these voices are widely accepted on all Chinese social platforms.

I believe that a native speaker might not be able to generate voices as accurately as the software, because they would be subject to accents and mispronunciations; very few people can speak perfect Mandarin without any regional accent or dialectal influence.

The language spoken in the Han Dynasty was obviously not Mandarin, but it's difficult to know exactly how things were pronounced back then and it would make absolutely zero sense to most modern players. It might be closer to one of the southern dialects that most people cannot understand well; there are videos of theoretical pronunciations used in the Han Dynasty but the comments are always "this sounds so scary / frugal / discordant / confusing". On the other hand, if we use Mandarin, everyone can understand what's going on and they would feel more immersion and intimacy with the units.

In conclusion, I think the software generated voices are passable. It is the exact words and phrases that we need tweaking.

[Gurken Khan]

3 hours ago, AIEND said:

The Chinese pronunciation of the software is very general

I don't get how this is bad; I suppose the opposite would be a very specific pronunciation and I don't think that would be better.

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

Is it really so bad quality that it's worth waiting forever for actual historically accurate chinese dubbing?

Probably not.

31 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

if we use Mandarin, everyone can understand what's going on

Yeah everyone speaks Mandarin!

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

it would make absolutely zero sense to most modern players

That's the point. That's how most of the languages are designed, almost nobody speaks ancient chinese, ancient greek, meroitic, latin in a common fashion. That's one of the features of the game.

I personnaly loved the voices from Age of Mythology because of that. 

[AIEND]

5小时前，斯坦#x60说：

感谢您的检查。它的质量真的如此糟糕，值得永远等待真正符合历史的中文配音吗？

 

2小时前，古尔肯汗说：

我不明白这有多糟糕;我想相反的发音会非常具体，我认为那不会更好。

The problem is not whether it is "historical" or not, but that these sentences are not very fluent in the spoken pronunciation of modern Chinese and may sound awkward. In other words, I am considering the feelings of modern Chinese people, not as a A linguist goes to study ancient Chinese.
My friend and I try to do the dubbing by ourselves. I will find a few more people to dub and compare. Although no one is a professional dubbing person, I believe it will be more suitable than software.

[Gurken Khan]

52 minutes ago, AIEND said:

My friend and I try to do the dubbing by ourselves. I will find a few more people to dub and compare. Although no one is a professional dubbing person, I believe it will be more suitable than software.

I hope you are successful!

[Stan`]

It would still better to do some research and have ancient chinese pronunication and words if possible.

[Yekaterina]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

ancient chinese pronunication

 This is one  example: reading the same poem in ancient Chinese. Han Dynasty is looking at version one or two.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV15K4y1k7YD?

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y1L7Zn?

The closest thing to this is Klingonese

The biggest difference is that all modern Mandarin characters end with a vowel. You always hear a vowel at the end, just like French (you don't pronounce consonant letters at the end). We have to thank the Manchurians for this change. Whereas these ancient Han people add consonants at the end and that made it sound quite discordant.

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Yekaterina

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, AIEND said:

may sound awkward.

I think the point is it is supposed to sound awkward. I am a fluent english speaker, but when I tell my briton soldier to go chop wood, it is more interesting to hear an ancient language. If I hear "Would you like fries with that?" it would seem out of place coming from a 100 BC slinger.

Obviously its not always possible to do this accurately, but a close attempt is still awesome.

[Yekaterina]

11 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

fries

Chips

Brit units would ask you for chips and peas, not American Fries or French Fries.

 

Chinese word: 薯条 but they didn't have potatoes back then. Rice stick was more likely. 江米条 / 年糕

Edited June 14, 2023 by Yekaterina

[real_tabasco_sauce]

yeah I guess the britons were also without potatoes. Maybe an ancient incan 'easter egg' can be 'would you like potatoes with that'. A 1/1000 chance maybe.