To keep this short, I'm finnish and I'm planning to DM a campaign for a group of finnish speakers. The thing is that there are no premade campaigns in finnish. Should I A) translate an entire campaign, B) write my own or C) host the campaign in english and hope that my players understand?
Help!
EDIT: Thank you to everyone that has replied! Your input has been useful :)
I'm based in the UK, so have never had to grapple with this issue, but I have many friends who live in other countries around Europe and how they tackle this seems to vary. I just asked a Finnish friend of mine what she does when running D&D and she said that it varies, depending upon the group and what language they are most comfortable roleplaying in. With her home group, they usually play D&D in English, as a number of them also play online using discord/roll20 with other friends and English is a common language, so it's what they are used to. If running a game at a convention though, she'd run it primarily in Finnish. I asked her about doing that and she said that they roleplay in Finnish, but the game mechanics are almost always still in English.
I know that's not giving you an answer, but hopefully is of some help!
Im from Denmark and we used a sort of "mix-language" in the campaign we play.
We run the campaign in danish, meaning that all talk and roleplay is in danish, but we dont translate everything. Things like Class names races, monster names etc are usually not translated unless there is a specific danish word for it. (Like "Drage" is "Dragon", "Dværg" is "Dwarf", but danish dosnt really have its own word for "Goblin")
The english will ofc be needed for rules, spell descriptions etc.
I'm from the Netherlands. We usually start in dutch with only the name of places being in english. And we use "feet" for distance since it is easier in regards to squares used during combat. Height for doors etc I just use metres just as with any other description.
Ultimately, as the DM, how you want to handle any language barriers is up to you. There are shortcuts as well. If you see your group is struggling with English, you don't have to translate the whole campaign. You can read it, and then summarize what you have read in Finnish. I do this quite a bit when I have someone in my group that doesn't speak English as well as some of the other players. I will read the relevant sections to the current module/adventure/thing we're doing right now, and give the players a brief summary in Spanish.
To keep this short, I'm finnish and I'm planning to DM a campaign for a group of finnish speakers. The thing is that there are no premade campaigns in finnish. Should I A) translate an entire campaign, B) write my own or C) host the campaign in english and hope that my players understand?
Help!
EDIT: Thank you to everyone that has replied! Your input has been useful :)
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D&D Beyond FoundersHi there Saikkuks,
I'm based in the UK, so have never had to grapple with this issue, but I have many friends who live in other countries around Europe and how they tackle this seems to vary. I just asked a Finnish friend of mine what she does when running D&D and she said that it varies, depending upon the group and what language they are most comfortable roleplaying in. With her home group, they usually play D&D in English, as a number of them also play online using discord/roll20 with other friends and English is a common language, so it's what they are used to. If running a game at a convention though, she'd run it primarily in Finnish. I asked her about doing that and she said that they roleplay in Finnish, but the game mechanics are almost always still in English.
I know that's not giving you an answer, but hopefully is of some help!
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Im from Denmark and we used a sort of "mix-language" in the campaign we play.
We run the campaign in danish, meaning that all talk and roleplay is in danish, but we dont translate everything. Things like Class names races, monster names etc are usually not translated unless there is a specific danish word for it. (Like "Drage" is "Dragon", "Dværg" is "Dwarf", but danish dosnt really have its own word for "Goblin")
The english will ofc be needed for rules, spell descriptions etc.
How much English do your fellow players understand? If they speak it well, you may only need to explain a few words to them.
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Most are pretty okay at English, I'm just afraid they will miss something crucial. I'll talk to my players to ask for their opinions
I'm from the Netherlands. We usually start in dutch with only the name of places being in english. And we use "feet" for distance since it is easier in regards to squares used during combat. Height for doors etc I just use metres just as with any other description.
Ultimately, as the DM, how you want to handle any language barriers is up to you. There are shortcuts as well. If you see your group is struggling with English, you don't have to translate the whole campaign. You can read it, and then summarize what you have read in Finnish. I do this quite a bit when I have someone in my group that doesn't speak English as well as some of the other players. I will read the relevant sections to the current module/adventure/thing we're doing right now, and give the players a brief summary in Spanish.
Ongoing Projects: The Mimic Book of Mimics :: SHARK WEEK
Completed Projects: The Trick-or-Treat Table
My Homebrews: Races :: Classes :: Spells :: Items :: Monsters