The Dink Network

Hi,

I'm doing a better Dink translation in French and I also got contacted by Дамјан who is translating Dink in Macedonian

I need help from English speakers here for a couple things:

- "The Cast" - obviously this is the name of the group of villains that you have to defeat. However, the word "Cast" can have multiple meanings and is difficult to translate. What meaning do you give it in this context?

- Goblin talk - is hard to understand, but I figured out most of it.
However, I couldn't make sense of a few text (maybe they don't make sense at all). Could you "translate" those in English?

Gro'k ki owab dakis gedi!
Tig glock sigre!
Oston tewers inat'l meen o mistary!
Hoglim dack byork!

(They are found in Story/EN-GH.c Story/EN-GS.c Story/S3-GH.c and Story/S3-GS.c)

Thanks!

'Oston tewers inat'l meen o mistary!' I think is 'Austin Towers isn't at all (?) man of mystery!'
I haven't seen the Austin Towers films so I don't know what it means. The other three sentences are probably just gibberish, goblin language, so they could hide the Austin Towers joke in it.

As for the Cast, I've always wondered what it's supposed to mean

I've always thought of it as the list of actors in a movie. If I were to translate it to Finnish I'd probably call it "Kasti", though, which means caste. I think it's one of those words that's just going to lose something in translation no matter what.

Hard to see what they are. I can see the one Sparrowhawk got (after he pointed it out), but it's actually Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Man_of_Mystery )

I thought of cast as related to caste (i.e. a social class).

For the last one, both Hoglin and Bjork are Swedish family names.. Maybe just a coincidence. Bjork is also a famous Icelandic singer.

Heh, well, if one were to assume they're all lame pop culture references, that might be something like "Goblins dig björk!" and the first one is about Star Wars.

Coincidently I have lost all respect I might have had for those guys before. Anyone translating these lines should scramble them so there's no chance anyone would even think it could be something like that.

Austin Powers international man of mystery... Jesus.

You know, these would be good questions for Seth himself. Most of these have already been answered as to what they're supposed to be references to.

I would assume the Cast is a generic, yet ominous criminal group name, like: the Organization or the Syndicate.

You should leave "Cast" as "Cast".

From what I understood of the English language, a literal definition for "cast" is - more or less - sh!t

Then you either don't the English language very well or you're having an attack of lysdexia and actually mean scat.

le owned

Thanks for your answers

I think we can either leave untranslated, or find another generic name (I used "la Clique" in French which also has several meanings).

Leaving the Goblin talk as-is sounds good too

Sorry, a slight mistake; NOT dyslexia. I was referring to an Oxford Dictionary definition which defined Cast as:"Undigested food thrown up by hawk, owl, etc.; earth excreted by worm."

Well, by "Cast" I'm pretty sure the author meant "several crazy knights that were set loose upon the earth to do Seth's bidding".

Something like "Les Serviteurs" might be closer to the original meaning.

I agree that the goblin gibberish is probably better left untranslated.