Sir John has also been hard at work on his translation of Ultima 7…both The Black Gate and Serpent Isle, as it turns out. In particular, he has been working on translating the manual for Serpent Isle of late:

just in case you wonder what I was up to lately: my time is quite limited lately, but nonetheless, I am almost done with the Serpent Isle manual.

While I picked up work based on the old German translation of 1993 this time, not only the layout but also the text severely needed revision. As only the manual was translated and not the game itself, the translators obviously disregarded existing translations and terms used therein. Quite a lot of awkward translations had to be reworked. (In)famous example I already ranted about in the German section is the Mongbat, that was translated as “Mungomouse”, and described as “little human with wings” instead of a “hybrid between a monkey and a bat”. OK, it does not make translators life any easier, if even the original version disregards existing definitions…

“Bat” in German reads “Fledermaus” – and while the second part of the word reflects the resemblance to a mouse, the first part is a contradiction of “F-lügel” (wings) and “Leder” (leather). So instead calling the creature “Fledermann” (approx. “leatherwinged man”) – the translators decided to go for “Mungomaus”. In English you know Mungo as people from Cameroun or as a prehistoric human from Autralia – sadly enough in German Mungo can only mean one thing: the “mongoose”. So what to make of a “mongoose mouse” in human shape with wings I leave up to you ? I changed that (amonst a lot of other mistakes and glitches) to the “well-known” “Flederaffe” (Leatherwinged Ape)

For the layout I chose to come up with something of my own as all manuals I found seem to lack any kind of design. Hope, you like it

You can get a sense of his custom layout for the manual above. It does look a bit different, but it has a nice style to it all the same.