Sir John has some big news for us this week: his long-running effort to translate the Ultima 6 Project to German is finished!

As most of you have probably already noticed, I’ve tried in the translation to make a point, just the little things that stand out as Ultima, to save in the translation from English into German over. I really hope that I have managed to convey the unique atmosphere of this game and the Ultima world in general.

The translation I have so faithfully and accurately maintained (the original), as it was hopefully useful. Deviations there wherever puns could not be translated to one, or alluded to things that are unknown in German or in Germany. For all others, ie, also known in Germany things, of course, the existing German translation was used (Examples are here the theme song from Mr. Ed and various Monty Python called citations). English songs that appear in the game and for which there was no German equivalent, have been translated by hand. It should be able to obtain in all cases, the meaning of the lines, the meter and rhyme schemes.

For recurring concepts, I have to the existing German Ultimas U5: Lazarus oriented, U7 and U9 (in that order). Where there were discrepancies in the terminology, I have tried this through in-game explanations to bridge (in the dialogues with NPCs) (As an example: in U5 is “dead marsh” the speech in U7 of “dead marsh” – in U6P explains Hob to demand that the “dead marsh dries out more and so slowly to a ‘dead mire’ converts’)

To map the many dialects of the game also in German, Swiss German and high Kölsch were among others Dutch, Bavarian, French, used.

In contrast to the English version, the German version is already fully modded, because the existing mods all are also language dependent. Similarly, all subsequently submitted patches and hotfixes are pre-installed in the German version since version 1.1, so that NO other mods, patches, hotfixes or other must be installed (and should not)

There are some screenshots of the translated mod as well:

And just how much effort did this all take?

• The total duration was 6 years: from 2008 to 2014 (with a break from 2009 to 2012)
• Since 2012 has been working for 15 months on average about 6 hours a day at this translation
• over 1000 graphics were new (and in German) created
• all in all, more than 1,300 typewritten pages in A4 translated text to come together (not counting new translations and reformulations) distributed in about 1080 files

You can find the installer for the German translation at either Sir John’s website or the Ultima 6 Project project entry here. If German is a language that you are comfortable with, I would encourage you to download the patch and give it a try. And if you do, please give feedback (by leaving a comment here, for example) to Sir John, so that he can make adjustments and improvements where needed…or just enjoy a kind note of congratulations on a job well done.