Des Ichtyoïdes ! Translating Darkest Dungeon II's Fisherfolk Into French
In May 2022, Darkest Dungeon II released major update “The Shroud of the Deep”, featuring a new final boss, as well as a brand new region to explore, the Shroud, with its own creepy-slimy faction to clash against: the Fisherfolk.
However, since the update released, French players haven’t been fighting mere fishermen, but “ichtyoïdes”. This term is a far-from-obvious choice. In fact, rather a very obscure word most people would not know and might even take as made-up. So, what lies behind this surprising translation choice? What even is an ichtyoïde? Let’s follow each step we (translator Marc Eybert-Guillon & editor Aurélie Perrin) took to arrive here.
Why No Literal?
If you follow some dark and gloomy subspaces of the Twitter Hellscape, you might feel like localizers should endeavor to translate as literally as possible to stick close to what was said in the original text. Although this is a method that is sometimes viable (although often very inelegant), life isn’t so easy and localization must often find less direct solutions to translation problems. Let’s take a look at why “Fisherfolk” cannot be translated literally in this context:
In French, “fisher” (someone who fishes) would be translated as “pêcheur” and “folk” (a group of people) likely as “peuple”. Following this, there are 2 options that come to mind as direct, literal translations:
Pêcheurs (literally just “Fishermen”) and Peuple pêcheur (“Fisher people”). Let’s explore why they do not work:
A problem with French (and many other languages) when it comes to localization is that it’s a gendered language. Words have an associated grammatical gender and nouns & adjectives are written differently depending on whether the subject is male or female (accommodations are being made for non-binary speech, but the language isn’t originally built for it). In Darkest Dungeon II, the one faction name is used to qualify all monsters under that umbrella, and thus we’ve been trying to use gender-neutral terms for the enemy factions, such as “Fanatique” and “Mange-peste”. Pêcheur, however, is a male noun (Pêcheuse would be its female variant). Since the name isn’t solely used as a group name (which would make use of the male term more justifiable per French grammar rules), but also for individual monsters, we must account for the potential presence (or later addition) of female monsters and find a neutral option.
Peuple pêcheur would be such a neutral option, as “peuple” simply refers to a group of people of unspecified gender. However, the problem becomes that it can only refer to a group and is thus a very clunky option when qualifying an individual monster. We also felt it was very descriptive and lacked flair. Fisherfolk is descriptive too, but it’s also snappy. Although Peuple pêcheur shares the alliterative quality, it lacks the catchiness. We also feared it might be too long. One must be careful in localization when translating terms that end up being used in UI, among other places, and prioritize more concise options to avoid text overflow.
Other Avenues
Moving away from these most literal options, we eschewed the reference to their occupation and focused more on their appearance and environment (Fisherfolk). We explored a few catchier options using “peuple”, such as Peuple des mers (“People of the sea”) or Peuple + a variety of sea-related adjectives, but they were dismissed for the reasons outlined above (clunky for individuals and likely too long).
One option I had come up with early on and really loved was Abysséens (“From the abyss”). This one is, once again, gendered (the ending -éen becomes -éenne in female form) and so it was heart-wrenching having to replace it because I felt it worked extremely well. It’s short, catchy, and describes creatures coming from the ocean while also adding a mysterious and frightening dimension reminiscent of Lovecraft. Speaking of which, Lovecraft had his own sea folk I thought we might be able to use or at least take inspiration from: the Deep Ones. Sadly, it turns out they were translated as Ceux des profondeurs, which is A. gendered, B. too long and C. doesn’t roll off the tongue at all.
Trying to find a descriptive-but-catchy name, another early option that was brought forth was Hommes-poissons (“Fishmen”), obviously immediately dismissed because it’s gendered, but interestingly shining light on a neutral option: Êtres-poissons (“Fish beings”). This one is interesting because there isn’t much wrong with it on paper (apart that it risks being slightly too long) and it looks fine in the written form, but it sounded bad to my ears, so I vetoed it. It’s one of those decisions that doesn’t really have an objective justification, it simply sounded bad to me…
Probing The Depths
At some point, we realized the most likely option to end up working would be to use adjective nominalization (using an adjective as a noun, like in classic title The Good, The Bad And The Ugly), something we’d already done with other factions (The Gaunts > Les Faméliques). As mentioned before, French adjectives change forms depending on the subject’s gender, but some adjectives are always written the same, which means they can be used neutrally! Using an adjective is also a good method to get a short yet evocative name (e.g. Abysséens) by bypassing the noun+adjective construction, going straight to the adjective and leaving the noun implied. All that was left would be to try out pretty much all sea and fish-related adjectives to see if they fit. There were quite a few options, like Pélagiques, Benthiques, Lacustres, Aquatiques… but none of them really fit. I think I was too happy with how good Abysséens sounded and wanted to find something that fit just as well, and none of these were it.
Art: Alberto Dal Lago
What Is An Ichtyoïde?
After I completely exhausted my thesaurus jumping from synonym to synonym and running in circles, I went back to reading about Lovecraftian gods, one of which being Dagon, the fish-God, star of the eponymous short story which had always been one of my favorites. This is how I stumbled, purely by chance, upon Dagon being described as “une créature ichtyoïde” (“an ichthyoid creature”. Yes, that word exists in English too!). I looked up the term in dictionaries and found it’s a very obscure, seldom used adjective (the kind you either already know or have to stumble upon) meaning “resembling fish”.
Ichtyoïde, despite ending up somewhat removed from the original “Fisherfolk”, works perfectly: it sounds ancient and alien, which is appropriate to the lore of the Fisherfolk and to Darkest Dungeon’s creepy, Lovecraftian vibe, while also being on point with its meaning by describing a people that have mutated into a form, well… “resembling fish”.
This search for the perfect translation took a few hours of reflection and research. Although we cannot put this amount of time behind every word choice (especially as we battle less-than-favorable work conditions), this gives you an idea of the thinking that sometimes goes on behind the scenes.
Darkest Dungeon II is available in Early Access on the Epic Games Store
Localization by From the Void:
French, German, Italian, Spanish (LatAm), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Polish, Czech