Before i start, know that i'm a pretty new player of D&D and English is not my native language.

That said, i was browsing my new sorcerer spell list, and saw  fleece as a component. Wondering what it was i did a google search. I ended up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_fleece

Now i dunno about you, but i don't think plastic exists in the D&D universe, unless you're playing syfy campaign.

Now i know some of you would go. "That's wrong, you should look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleece"

So alright, but then it would lead me here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wool

Since that is in essence what is ment.

So why are so many spells referring to Fleece, when it should just say wool. I know the D&D books are in American english, but this website really is for an international audience right? And using the right words, so it can be translated right. For play in our local languages, is important. Is this a case where ascetics were chosen over accuracy, or was there never given thought to how confusing words can get when you start translating things.

So your thought. Do you agree that the word should be altered, for clarity sake. Or am i just a newbie that doesn't "get it".

Fleece isn't plastic, at least not historically. The technical difference between wool versus fleece is fleece is the stuff on the goat or sheep, and wool is the stuff off of the goat or sheep and turned into yarn. So spells that request fleece or wool are asking for either a chunk of the stuff from the goat or sheep, OR stuff made FROM the stuff from the goat or sheep.

Fleece and wool are two different things from the same source. Typically fleece is the "woollen coats of a domestic sheep or long-haired goat, especially after being shorn", Fleece didn't used to be a synthetic material and was very popular for rugs (search 'natural fleece rugs').

Quote from DBZVelena >>

Before i start, know that i'm a pretty new player of D&D and English is not my native language.

That said, i was browsing my new sorcerer spell list, and saw  fleece as a component. Wondering what it was i did a google search. I ended up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_fleece

Now i dunno about you, but i don't think plastic exists in the D&D universe, unless you're playing syfy campaign.

Now i know some of you would go. "That's wrong, you should look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleece"

So alright, but then it would lead me here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wool

Since that is in essence what is ment.

So why are so many spells referring to Fleece, when it should just say wool. I know the D&D books are in American english, but this website really is for an international audience right? And using the right words, so it can be translated right. For play in our local languages, is important. Is this a case where ascetics were chosen over accuracy, or was there never given thought to how confusing words can get when you start translating things.

So your thought. Do you agree that the word should be altered, for clarity sake. Or am i just a newbie that doesn't "get it".

Hi there, I work in the fiber industry, so I do have the answer for you. Modern “Fleece” garments are manufactured from plastic. Forget “fleece garments” as they are not fleece. 

When you shear a sheep, you get a big mass of raw, unprocessed wool. That is a fleece. Once that fleece has been processed (cleaned and combed/carded) you get something called a batt. Once the batt has been spun into usable fiber, that is called yarn. Fleece, batt, and yarn are all wool. But a batt and a skein of yarn are not fleece.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_shearing

Did that make sense?

none of you got the part about how to translate fleece into a language that might not have a word for fleece in it. did you?

I wasn't asking what fleece is.

I was wondering if, because this is international website. using THE WORD wool, would be smarter and easier to translate to OTHER THAN ENGLISH languages. than fleece.

Quote from DBZVelena >>

So why are so many spells referring to Fleece, when it should just say wool. I know the D&D books are in American english, but this website really is for an international audience right? And using the right words, so it can be translated right. For play in our local languages, is important. Is this a case where ascetics were chosen over accuracy, or was there never given thought to how confusing words can get when you start translating things.

So your thought. Do you agree that the word should be altered, for clarity sake. Or am i just a newbie that doesn't "get it".

 This website uses the same words as the books and changes as little as possible. It is part of their agreement with the publisher (WotC). When this site was made, they had no idea it would be as widely popular as it is and was not planned to be an "international site."

Needless to say, they have made new plans in accordance with their growth and Multilingual support is something they are working toward, but it is in the future, not the present (unless your language is Italian, that is in the present).

Quote from DBZVelena >>

none of you got the part about how to translate fleece into a language that might not have a word for fleece in it. did you?

I wasn't asking what fleece is.

I was wondering if, because this is international website. using THE WORD wool, would be smarter and easier to translate to OTHER THAN ENGLISH languages. than fleece.

Like DxJxC pointed out, this website has been written word for word how things are in the official material put out by the publishers of the game (Wizards of the Coast) by the terms of their exclusive contract with that publishing company. As to why WotC chose the word “Fleece” instead of “Wool,” there could be two reasons I can think of:

1) It probably never occurred to them that there would be a translation issue for a word for a thing that has existed in almost every culture in the world since before there was written language. 🤷‍♂️ It’s like, in Japanese the use the same word for “knitting” and “weaving,” how would something originally written in Japanese translate to English? Or viceversa?

2) This isn’t “a case where ascetics were chosen over accuracy,” they technically used the most accurate word available for the thing in the language in which the game was written. They were quite literally as accurate as they possibly could be. If they used “Wool” as the component, and you had a piece of wool cloth it could potentially be used as the component. They specified “fleece” because that specifies “fuzzy, fluffy, raw, unprocessed wool.” They specifically excluded finished textile as a potential component by specifying “Fleece” instead of “Wool.” It most likely has nothing to do with not thinking about translation, it most likely has to do with intentional game design.

Quote from DBZVelena >>

none of you got the part about how to translate fleece into a language that might not have a word for fleece in it. did you?

I wasn't asking what fleece is.

I was wondering if, because this is international website. using THE WORD wool, would be smarter and easier to translate to OTHER THAN ENGLISH languages. than fleece.

As has been explained, no, it would not be smarter to use the word wool, because the word wool means something different.

As for translating into languages that don’t distinguish between wool and fleece: that’s an issue for the localization team if the books are ever translated into such languages. It is literally such people’s job to figure out answers to these questions. But the original language of the books is English, which does have different words for these different things. The easiest-to-translate choice is to use the word they actually mean, so localization teams can make informed decisions about how to render words that may not have a direct translation.

Quote from DBZVelena >>

none of you got the part about how to translate fleece into a language that might not have a word for fleece in it. did you?

I wasn't asking what fleece is.

I was wondering if, because this is international website. using THE WORD wool, would be smarter and easier to translate to OTHER THAN ENGLISH languages. than fleece.

The content written in English is written so for English speakers, and thus it is likely not written to accommodate ESL players attempting to translate concepts into their native tongue. This is why (properly) translated localised books are important (and also why you should check out the feedback thread for the D&D Beyond localisation project. ESL player input is vital to that).

There are likely a lot of terms and concepts in the English D&D rules that, if translated without prior knowledge of the intent, would be difficult to translate, fleece being one of them.

Wizards of the Coasts is very unlikely to change the wording of the English (for English speakers) rules to accommodate 'on the fly' translation, but it would be worth checking to see if officially translated rules exist for your first language.

It might indeed be an international website-- I think you'd find that English, being the lingua franca, would convey that status on most website in the language. It might well indeed be so, but that does not mean it should be written impercise. If your language does not differentiate between fleece and wool, that's fine. However, we don't write things with Japanese grammar (or : "Japanese language (of) Grammar (with) setences (object) write." - 日本語の文法で文章を書く。) or explicitly spell out the gender of objects or otherwise use conventions of other languages. I am sometimes a language teacher. I speak four languages, more or less, fluently. I get the pain of dealing with foreign languages. However, it is not in French or Spanish or Italian or Russian or Turkish. It is in English and if we make allowances for what words exist in this language or that language, what we end up writing will be equally comprehensible to everyone: that is to say, completely unintelligible to everyone.

Just to add, since I am doing a Roman campaign and Latin comes up a lot: Fleece in Latin is vellus (pronounced "way loose"). (And wool is a different word - lana).

Si, in Italiano “wool” è “lana,” ma “fleece” se “pile di lana,” o “lana felpata.”