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Germanizing Games - Hick Hack und Donnervorhang!

Posted by Christian Thomas Nonnenbroich

Germanizing Games

31 May 2022

Christian Nonnenbroich

(Harblnger)

Germany
Sprendlingen
Rheinland Pfalz

Here's a disclaimer: Even though this series of posts is called "Germanizing Games", unless further reinforced, I don't suggest that all of the games featured on this article have original English titles. "Germanizing" is just a handy word that doesn't one-hundred-percent describe what I am doing here. Also this list isn't meant to be comprehensive when it comes to box cover artwork and it's not supposed to focus on this. Excursions into this subject are to be understood rather as a bonus than the centerpiece of these articles, which is the differences and similarities between English and German titles of board games (no matter which one is the original). That said, I don't own all of the board games out there, I can't double-check everything, I have to work with what the Geek gives me. If there are factual errors in what I write here, I'll be thankful for corrections.

And it's going forward again. We're picking up where we left of, in the low 2000s. With some... interesting specimen this time.

Hey, we've got another one where the title itself isn't half as interesting as the changes made to the cover. Didn't have one of those since... Oh, yeah, right. Fucking Nightfall. Anyway, Iron Curtain is called "Eiserner Vorhang" in German. That's the correct translation of these words, no questions asked. Wanna know where the expression "iron curtain" originally stems from? It's a device used in theaters from the late 19th century going forward. It was a literal iron curtain used to prevent fire disasters in theaters, separating the stage from the audience room in case something caught on fire during a performance, which apparently happened a lot back then. At the beginning of the 20th century, it started to be introduced into the world of military and politics. The first documented usages of the expression have been uttered in response to the separation of nations during World War I, but it gained most prominence due to its appropriation during the Cold War. That's very interesting, isn't it? But let's get to the covers up there, shall we? Very interesting choice of... erm... adjustments for the German version. The ascription to designers Daniel Skjold Pedersen and Asger Harding Granerud remains in the German version, but all the allusions to both their previous games 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 and 13 Minutes: The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 have been removed, alongside those to the Cold War itself (kind of, sort of, it's not explicitly mentioned, at least). The general subject of the cover is also a different one. The English version features the Kremlin, plus a bunch of tanks in the foreground and depictions of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev (I think) in the background, while the German version features the Brandenburg Gate, plus the Berlin Wall and suspiciously no pictures of any politicians. Although the person who designed the game's title snuck a hammer and sickle into the logo. A subtle expression of beliefs? Who knows?

Less flashy is this semi-forgotten Knizia-game from 2005, Tower of Babel, which looks relatively similar in both its German and its English version. But like so often, the devil's in the detail. Because if you translated the words "Tower of Babel" literally, you'd get "Turm von Babel" (or "Turm von Babylon", as Google Translate users apparently voted as "the correct translation"). The German "Der Turmbau zu Babel" meanwhile means something along the lines of "The building of the tower in Babel". Then again, it's not a "problem" thought up by the translators of the game, one way or another (since the English version was co-published by German publisher Hans im Glück, it looks like this is another one that hasn't been Germanized but instead Anglicized) because in pretty much all (pseudo-)historic sources, the German equivalent to "Tower of Babel" is "Turmbau zu Babel" and vice-versa. It's still a bit weird, especially in the German version, because the subtitle (or tagline) of the game reads "...oder warum das Achte Weltwunder nie gebaut wurde", "...or why the eighth wonder was never built". I know, this is a cheeky hint to the game's mechanisms, where at most seven wonders can be built at once, but it still sounds very strange, because the title of the game explicitly mentions the building of what some consider the eighth wonder of the world, so then negating this in the subtitle feels strange. Maybe they should have gone with "...or why the eighth wonder was never finished"? Look, I don't know. Just a thought.

Pick Picknic is apparently the third game in the Zoch line of games featuring chickens in some capacity. It came long before both Pickomino and Sushizock im Gockelwok, which struck me as odd, because I was always under the impression that Pickomino kind of founded that line of games, but I've apparently been mistaken in that regard. Well, you never know, eh? Anyway, Pick Picknic is another one of those games that probably presented the English translators with a pretty hefty problem. Because originally, the game was called "Hick Hack in Gackelwack". Which rhymes and is therefore like poetry, I guess. It also doesn't make a lot of sense. It translates to something like "Squabble in Gackelwack", Gackelwack apparently being the name of the chicken yard where this takes place. It isn't really a German word, it does evoke the word "Gockel", a word for rooster used especially in the South of Germany, a bit and was then apparently expanded to make the whole thing rhyme. There's also something weird happening on the cover. The German version is kind of clever, because it has one chicken holding up a sign saying "Gackelwack" incorporated into the game-title-logo-thing. But it looks weird because the word "Gackelwack" is pushed to the left of the sign and there's a lot of empty space on the right. They "corrected" that for the English version, but since the name was changed to Pick Picknic, they didn't have to add anything to the title, so the sign just states the title again. Which is fine, I guess. This apparently takes place at the "Pick Picknic" in the English version, so maybe that's just what the chicken is advertising?

Board Game: Dice Throne: Season Two – Tactician v. Huntress

This one's weird. Many standalone sets of Dice Throne have been receiving German versions last year. Most of them were translated quite faithfully. Some of them a bit weird, but what can you do? In regards to Dice Throne: Season Two – Tactician v. Huntress, though? Hum. Weird. Because the German title of this is "Dice Throne: Staffel Zwei - Stratege v. Tiergefährtin". Which... well... "Stratege" is not the German word for "Tactician" and "Tiergefährtin" is not the German word for "Huntress". Like... in both instances, the German translations could be viewed as pretty much the direct opposite of the English version. The German word for "Tactician" is "Taktiker", the English word for "Stratege" is "Strategist". Likewise the German word for "Huntress" is "Jägerin", while the English word for "Tiergefährtin" is... "Animal companion"? That sounds a lot more like the animals accompanying the Huntress? I mean, usually animals shouldn't really accompany hunters and huntresses, right? I know that's an RPG-trope, but... hunters hunt animals, don't they? They don't get cuddly wuddly with them, right? Ah well. Maybe we'll have more of this in the future...

And the last one for today is... something that proved to be kind of pioneering in hindsight. This is Hera and Zeus, the original version of what nowadays is probably better known as Thunder & Lightning. Despite the fact that it was designed by prolific American designer Richard Borg, I believe that the German version was the original one, supported by its inclusion in the Kosmos Two Players line and Kosmos being featured on the cover of the English version as well. And that original German version, while similar in theme, named neither Hera, nor Zeus on the cover. Instead, the game was called "Blitz und Donner". Literally "Lightning and thunder". "Donner und Blitz" sounds probably as weird to German ears as "Lightning and thunder" sounds to Anglophones, so... I'll allow that switcheroo. But yeah, it's quite interesting, isn't it? How the game kind of "came home" after sixteen years by adopting a name closer to the original in its new version. At least I think so.

And that's it for today. Tomorrow: More games I played over the weekend. That's gonna be exciting, isn't it?

Also like usual, go check out my Bandcamp-page. Here's the link.

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Tue May 31, 2022 11:21 am

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