A German Language Question

Meine Entschuldigungen - my command of the German language is utterly inadequate so I won’t even attempt to ask this question auf deutsch

In my mod, I want to create a secret service for Rheinland, just like Liberty has the LSF. It’s name should be Rheinländische Abschirmdienst

Would that be correct? Or should it be Rheinländischer Abschirmdienst? Or maybe even Rheinländischen Abschirmdienst?

I never really understood the whole declension thing, as in Dutch (my native language and similar to German in many aspects) the whole concept was ditched some centuries ago A pity, because German is a beautiful language, imho (especially when yelled at the top of one’s lungs - just kidding ).

Okay thanks in advance, and Krautrock über alles!

Aigle1707 wrote:
It’d be Rheinländischer Geheimdienst if it’s supposed to be a general secret service term you want to use. (= Rhineland Secret Service)

If you want to use a more real-worldish term, you could use Rheinländischer Nachrichtendienst. (Rhineland Information Service), the real equivalent is the Bundesnachrichtendienst.

Abschirmdienst by contrast means something like counterintelligence service.

Hope that helps ya

@ Aigle1707 - Thanks!!

I know Abschirmdienst would imply it’s a counter-intelligence service. But I did not know a scret service is simply Geheimdienst (very much like Dutch ‘geheime dienst’ ). Maybe that makes more sense, and sounds even cooler And hey - I can even have both, as they will just be auxillary factions anyway (merged into the Rheinland Authorities)

I would have guessed Nachrichtendienst would simply mean ‘news agency’. Uneducated translations can be deceiving sometimes.

@ Bobthemanofsteel - Thanks for the input. I’ll pick either Geheimdienst or Abschirmdienst though.

Of course, it is not absolutely necessary the name is in German, as e.g. the Rheinland Military has an English name, but for dramatic effect I thought it’d be cool Like the Landwirtrechtbewegung (LWB) 8-)

Btw, I’ve always presumed there exists a German language version of the game. Is that correct? And, if so, are all the voices in German then? I’d be cool to make a hybrid mod, having the Rheinland factions speak German. (But then, for completeness sake) we’d have to have the Kusari speak Japanese, and the Corsairs and Outcasts Spanish… and I doubt there are spanish and japanese releases available)

PS My orginal Q was just about the grammatical ending -e / -er / -en. I understand it is -er (I guess -en would involve a dative or accusative case or so? And -e is probably just bad German as one would expect from a Holländer)

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:
Don’t forget to make the Bretonians speak British.

:lol:

Taking this to the next level, the Manhatters (Manhattanians?) should throw in the occasional Yiddish phrase (“What a schmuck you are, Trent!)”. And we should invite Larry Hagman as a voice artist for the Texas system.

@ Aigle1707. Thanks fort the offer. I might like that But on the other hand it’s not very likely I will use any of it, so it’ll be just a piece of curiosa on my HD. It might not be worth your trouble.

Now, knowing there is a German version, I am curious whether the German players here on TSP prefer that one. Maybe that’d be a nice poll question… My guess is not, as all the Germans write perfect english, as far as I can tell.

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:
Bundesnachrichtendienst is what we planned to use fo FL10K, but is it referring to Germany in the name or does it simple mean ‘Federal Intelligence Service’?

It’s only know that I actually understood your question.

Aigle1707, as a native speaker of German, already answered it better than I can, but I must say that all the German words with Bundes- (though literally meaning Federal like Aigle1707 says) do seem to have some connotation of specifically refering to the BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschlands), just like words starting with Reichs- (literally meaning Imperial) specifically refered to the German Reich.

So, I’d say that to some degree Bundesnachrichtendienst does seem to specifically refer to the BDR - in the real world that is. In Freelancer it could perfectly refer to the Federal Republic of Rheinland. But don’t forget to change the name to _Reichsnachrichtendienst]/i] if you plan to have a Kaiser

Anyway, there’s no direct reference to ‘German’ or ‘Germany’ in one of the terms we discussed (which would be the case if it started with ‘Deutscher’)

Of course, everyone who’s better in German than I am, has a moral duty to correct me if I talked Quatsch._

Quarks wrote:

Moonhead wrote:
I am curious whether the German players here on TSP prefer that one.

Well, since I don’t have the complete english voices, I can’t really tell… But in the german version there are some gaps between the voice parts, expecially in the voices of the station people (e.g. I am working for…the Outcasts.). Is this the case for the english voices too, or is it just that they didn’t fix the lenght values when translating the game?

I think the English version is rather ‘gapsy’. The example you give could literally be taken from the English version!

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:
While sifting through some news articles in the dlls, I noticed that they make mention of the ‘Ministry of Truth’ in Rheinland, which presumably fulfills a role similar to the LSF, though seemingly with a more public and propoganda focus.

Just thought I’d let you know in case you didn’t, given the subject.

Cool, I’ll do a search on that.

First thing that comes to mind when I hear ‘Ministry of Truth’ is Orwell’s 1984, of course. Not so much fitting the Bundesrepublik Rheinlands, but rather the Rheinländische Demokratische Republik

I didn’t know the Weimar Republik was still officially called ‘Deutsches Reich’. Interesting fact to learn! An empire without an emperor - that’s asking for trouble!

Btw I found an oddity in the infocards too:

The Bundschuh are a populist political faction that has been declared “enemy of the State” by the Rheinland Reichstag.

‘Bundestag’ would be more appropriate, imho.

And I know for 99.99% sure that I (that is to say, Trent) encountered a Rheinlander who spoke of ‘when the Reich will rise again’ or something like it but I cannot find it with FLED-ids.

Oh well, that was years ago and back then I thought playing Freelancer and smoking pot combined very well (especially during those long trade routes), so maybe it was just my imagination * I also thought the commodity dealer at Planet Juno looked really like a human/fish hybrid (I wondered weather DA threw in some of HPL’s Shadow over Innsmouth)

*(I still wouldn’t argue against this opinion. It’s more that my girlfriend won’t allow it )

@ Aigle1707 - Again, interesting to learn! Didn’t know that (about the Reichstag).

Btw the prefix Reichs- also occurs in Dutch in the form of “Rijks-”, meaning (referring to or belong to) the highest national authorities: Rijkspolitie, Rijksweg, Rijksoverheid etc. Sofar I’ve never seen this exploited into a Godwin by the resident anarchist/leftwing protest scene I wonder whether this would change if the Netherlands would become a republic (again). I don’t think anybody feels ‘rijks-’ implies a monarch; at least I don’t.

Yeah Rheinland is indeed modelled after some Pre-WW2 version of Germany, and the other Houses are retro too. A bit weird maybe, but I think DA looked to the European colonization of the Earth, and how places in the new world(s) were often named after those in the familiar old World.

Except for Jupiter, Florida