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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 18th Dec 2020 at 5:02 AM
Default Any Filipinos? Translation assistance greatly appreciated.

This story is a machinomic I published a while back. It's a short story between 40 and 50 pages, depending on translation. Images were shot with GTA V in Director Mode, and edited with Photoshop Elements 2019. It takes place between Blood Over Water and Ciem: Inferno, and fills in some plot holes caused by the time skip of six years between the two larger stories. Mainly, it's there to explain what happened to Chris after Big Rapids, but before southern Indiana. And how he became a Punisher knockoff. So a little like what Rogue One was for Star Wars - explaining the plot holes between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.

Fair warning: Some strong language! I wrote the English version to be as hard a PG-13 as I could, while still technically avoiding it being rated R. Think Dark Knight PG-13.

I'm currently trying to translate this story to Cebuano. More specifically, to Bisaloglish, the native dialect of Cagayan de Oro. I have had a devil of a time doing it on my own. And when I try to compare the hybrid language I concoct using Google's idea of Cebuano, English, Spanish, and Tagalog, it reads nothing close to samples of actual Bisaloglish I've extracted off my one ex-girlfriend's Facebook page. Her version...completely breaks Google.

I need help with:

- exact words (because I don't trust Google)

- Idioms (because days of searching for proper idiom equivalents has only yielded frustration.) Sexual metaphors are especially tricky. "THOT" doesn't really translate, neither does "boy toy." Closest I can get, is to have a gal accuse her sister of "going through towels very fast" when trying to insult her sister's boyfriend. Anything else, and Google craps out useless gibberish. What is the Pinoy / Pinay version of saying "walk of shame"? Does this concept exist in the same form there?

Also, when a perverted criminal uses "golf course" as a crass analogy, do Filipinos regularly go golfing? Would the analogy / euphemism even make sense? "Pork" as a PG-13 F-bomb doesn't really work. But is there any other softer word besides "Kayasa"? Because that still sounds a little too close to the real word. The main characters are criminals with a mind and mouth like Duterte's, so they are incredibly rude to each other. Fair warning.

- "Frog snakes arrive" as a euphemism for "F* sakes alive!" Doesn't work on Google Cebuano. Any good alternatives that would be just as goofy?

- Proper ways to call someone "Machiavellian," that translate culturally.

- Purge-Flare at one point refers to Mike "the Pencil" Javelin as a "little crap-weasel." How would that translate? I'd prefer not to use that one popular portmanteau that begins with a P, as overdoing that would make the work very much R-rated. But Pencil is in the Epstein business. So you can imagine that Chris has a pretty low opinion of him.

- Do you have a unique word for centipede? Because no word seems to trip up Google worse than that.

Or does the species have to be listed very specifically? In order to avoid confusing Ciem with Mukade, I had to have the Japanese version say something like "Ishinomukade," or "Lithobius" (stone centipede), to indicate an acknowledgment that Ciem's "Grandma Centipede" meta origin was a Michigan garden stone centipede, rather than the Japanese mukade centipede. This matters later on, because the Japanese text would otherwise make it impossible to distinguish Candi Flippo from Charlotte Yamamura. But I can't seem to find any true Filipino word that works.

For those not familiar with Gerosha mythos yet, Ciem is that series' nearest equivalent of a Nightcrawler / Spider-Girl / Batgirl entity. However, even most of the villains just call her "that one centipede chick," because "Centhuen Prototype" sounds incredibly formal. (This is what "human centipede" meant, before Tom Six assigned that term a...very different meaning, culturally. If you don't already know, I'll spare you the gory details.)

"Ciem" is a shorthand for Spanish "ciempies." If I'd known more Latin before I assigned that name, she'd probably be "Lithoba." But "Ciem" makes for better branding. "Lithobara" is instead a variation of her many suits, along with "Variega," "Forfica," "Carbonica," and Proto. (For simplicity's sake, I'll skip the details on the Vanadium Centipede.)

- How to say "hacking," as in "hacking the embassy" or "hacking someone's phone"?

- How do you say a business is "a front," as in, just a cover-up for a criminal enterprise? Every language translation I've attempted, I've run into this problem.

- Do you have a word for "crackhouse"? Because the analogy makes perfect sense to English speakers; but the word never properly seems to translate to any other language. I couldn't even properly put it in Spanish, and I took two years of Spanish in high school!

- Chris uses pyrophoric pellet bullet armor, which causes a delayed reaction bursting into flames of his targets. Basically, it's like the incendiary ammo in GTA and Far Cry; except with purple fire. But how to describe his weaponry in Cebuano? I have no good idea, except to beat Google with a hammer until I get results that quasi-work.

Anyone who can help, I'd appreciate it. I still have a Korean and a Russian version to make, and I think I'll stop after that. Japanese almost broke me. And Polish? Don't get me started! Also, I don't have $2000 lying around to hire a professional service.

My target audience for the translation would be Cagayan residents between the ages of 16 and 30. Essentially, the girls entering the architecture school in the area, who tend to stan my Facebook pages. I want to do something nice for them.
Screenshots

You can find me on the Sims 4 Gallery as DozerfleetProd. If you have XBox One or PS4, please test out my creations, and let me know if / how well they work on consoles.
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