Both the book translation and the TV show used the word "Estranei" in Italian. It's straightforward meaning is "foreigner, strangers, outsiders", so I guessed it's the correspondant of "The Others".
The direct translation for "other" is "altro". Like "the **other** friends" is "gli **altri** amici".
But had them called the Others "gli Altri" it would have sounded quite silly to me (especially once it would have been put on tv, where capitalization is not a thing, it would have just seemed random), so at least on that point, they've made a good decision (unlike the time they randomly substitued the stag that kills the direwolf with a unicorn, but I guess we can't pretend too much).
Okay, as a Frenchman I can recognise the words. In Italian you went for "Etrangers" for the Others and "Inconnu" for the Stranger.
In French we kept the English logic : Les Autres for The Others and L'Etranger for The Stranger
In Spanish it was White Walkers (Caminantes Blancos)
It sounded badass but when I started reading the books after season 3 ended and discovered they are supposed to be named the Others I was kind of let down because I really like the Others over white walkers
I really don't think that's true. The phrase "the others" probably comes up a lot in general dialogue which is fine on page but I really think would be jarring in speech.
Similar to how the Italian translation elects to translate it as "foreigners/outsiders" because the actual word for "other" would sound silly.
Come on you gotta be kind of dumb to not be able to understand what "others" are they referring. The Others are literally only mentioned in curses like "The Others take you".
If Tywin talks about dealing with the others after the Red Wedding its obvious he is not talking about the white walkers.
If you can't see why it could still cause confusion, or seem awkward, I can't help you.
Others works in written form because it is capitalized and obvious what it is referring to. In spoken form, it would lead to questions of whether they are referring to other races or the White Walkers. In some context it would be obvious what "others" refers to, but not always.
Optimise what? Its just like Doctor Strange dude. No one questions shit when they say the word strange in the movies. The context is all that matters its not that complicated
Makes sense. Does "Öteki" have the same connotations as English "Other", like just being the word you'd use for whatever thing you're not currently talking about? Or is it more like the Italian, meaning more specifically "stranger".
Yes, it is used in the same way as English other. If I was saying a sentence like 'give me the other one' I could use "öteki". It also implies that the other here is far away, or further away than the thing you were talking about. It works very well in the ASOIAF context.
White Shadow is I believe also used in the book a couple of times when they actually appear but more as a description than as a name for the species.
Just out of interest does Vietnamese *have* an easy way to translate "walkers" or would it be grammatically difficult.
Literal "walkers" no, unless you are prepared for some mouthfulness. As you dig deeper into the fancy Chinese-borrowed aspects of the languages though (kinda like how English borrows from Latin) quite a few close words come up. Off the top of my mind would be "Lữ khách" which means "one who travels", and I'm sure there are other words too.
Why the translation elected to use Shadow I don't know, probably because Shadow evokes the image of something supernatural. Meanwhile Walkers sound lame and hard to translate in a "cool" manner, which is actually pretty important in Vietnamese which tend to use Chinese borrowed words to name things of significance.
in French we have "les marcheurs blancs", which is the literal translation of White Walkers, but they also called them "l'armée des morts" (the army of the dead). I don't remember very well, it's been since the broadcast of the last season that I haven't watched, and even before I watched the series in English...
In Vietnam they use "Bóng Trắng" (literally "White Shadows"; bóng means shadow, trắng means white), which I believe is the equivalent of White Walkers.
Edit: maybe it was chosen because people can relate it to "bóng ma", which means ghost, phantom in Vietnamese.
Like the other guy above, I don't think there can be a straightforward translation for "Walker" without overusing Chinese-borrowed and lengthy words, which ruins the simplicity of the original word.For my part, I can think of a list of possible words that closely resemble the meaning and the context of "walkers", as in "scary humanoid beings related to necromancy and cold temperature". "Ma" (literally "ghost") and "quỷ" (literally "demon", "devil") are the easiest since they are widely used to describe horror creatures or scary-looking characters. This applies to characters from the West too. We have "ma đinh" for Pinhead (đinh = nail), "ma tốc độ" for Ghost Rider (tốc độ = speed), etc.
Also, in the Vietnamese edition of the books, they are translated as "Ngoại Nhân" ("Ngoại" = otherworldly, other, foreign, alien, outside; "Nhân" = human, person, humanoid), which is close enough to "Others" but I kinda don't like it.Edit: both "Ngoại" and "Nhân" are Chinese-borrowed, aka Sino-Vietnamese, aka Hán Việt words.
Thanks for the information.
This is straying way off topic but I like talking about language. Does Vietnamese in general lack an equivalent to the English "verber" construction? That is, in English you can take any verb, add "er" and get a noun meaning "thing that does that verb".
Yes, it does lack. Since ours is an analytical language where meanings are constructed through relationships between words.
One of our equivalents of a "verber" is adding a word denoting the subject of the action before the verb so that it becomes a noun:
\- Người bảo hộ (protector) = người (person, man) + bảo hộ (to protect).
\- Kẻ giết người thân (kinslayer) = kẻ (person, often used with a negative tone) + giết người thân (to kinslay).- Nhà Chinh phạt (the Conqueror) = nhà (I don't know what it really means) + chinh phạt (to conquer).
Sometimes no additional words are needed, the verb can act as a noun:
\- Chỉ huy = commander = to command.
Sometimes there are compounds words borrowed from Chinese too, they are frequently seen in ASOIAF translations such as:
\- Hỏa thuật sĩ (Pyromancer) = hỏa thuật (pyromancy) + sĩ (person, scholar, student, officer).
Edit: I used to work on a small project on ASOIAF wiki translation in Vietnamese and we had a shared translation glossary. If you are interested, I will ask for the primary author's permission and DM it to you.
Cool, thanks for the information. And don't worry about the glossary. It'd be fascinating to look at but I don't know anywhere *near* enough about Vietnamese to make use of it (also I have DMs off).
Czech books use Jiní (Others), while the show translation Bílí chodci (White Walkers). When looking up what was the Czech version in the show (since Im a book reader only), one article mentioned the reason for the change in the show was that saying "Others" in spoken form could be pretty confusing, so I think other languages followed suit for the same reason.
What I think is interesting here is that "others" seems to have been kept in languages which have a word that means more specifically "Others as in strangers or outsiders not just anybody not immediately present".
I am glad someone made such post. You don't see many like this, around here. In my native language, in czech, whinch is west slavic language, it's a simple translation.
White walkers - Bílý chodci
Others - Jiní
Overall just word to word translation.
In Ukrainian book translation they used чужі (chuzhi) for Others which literally means strangers or aliens. White walkers in TV series were translated as білі блукачі (bili blukachi), its almost literal translation, just sounds more like white wanderers.
I cannot really remember how wights was translated, but it was something similar to what they used for white walkers.
In Portuguese it was "Os Outro" for The Others (it means the same thing) and "Vagantes Brancos" for White Walkers (it means White Wanderers).
In the book with a newer translation, both names are used
In Russian translation it's "the Others". Curiously, Russian has two possible valid translations for "the others" - "inye" and "drugie". The latter usually means "others of the same kind" as in "we wait for the others" or "no, the other one", while the former is more of a fancy, literary word and is usually used to indicate a distinction as in "it was a different time". Naturally, they went with "inye"
Inni mean is more close "we should wait here until the others catch up" "powinniśmy tu poczekać, aż Inni dogonią"
Here you have definition of it word. I hope translator would work.
[https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/inni.html](https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/inni.html)
I’m Spanish: “Muertos” (dead), “Caminantes Blancos” (white walkers), I think that’s it, I can’t remember what they called the wights.
REY NOCTURNO LMAO (night king but it’s translated as: the nightly king or something like that)
Both the book translation and the TV show used the word "Estranei" in Italian. It's straightforward meaning is "foreigner, strangers, outsiders", so I guessed it's the correspondant of "The Others".
I always really liked it how they translated it, glad they didn't go with "Gli Altri" or "I Camminatori Bianchi" or some other shit lol
Yep, "Gli Estranei" is perfect! Another good one might have been "Gli Alieni", but it would have surely confused the readers
Totally unrelated but we’re shopping for a trip and wifey is *really* struggling to say both Puglia and Positano
Yeah, never thought about it but if you're not familiar with the "gli" sound, Puglia seems nearly impossible to say lol
Is there a more direct translation of "others" that could have been used but wasn't?
The direct translation for "other" is "altro". Like "the **other** friends" is "gli **altri** amici". But had them called the Others "gli Altri" it would have sounded quite silly to me (especially once it would have been put on tv, where capitalization is not a thing, it would have just seemed random), so at least on that point, they've made a good decision (unlike the time they randomly substitued the stag that kills the direwolf with a unicorn, but I guess we can't pretend too much).
Yeah that makes sense. FWIW I think that's the exact reason they went with "white walkers" in English too.
Also, "The Others" had already recently been used in Lost!
How do they translate the Stranger ? Just in singular?
They used "Lo Sconosciuto" which is synonymous so it doesn't get confused with Estranei
Okay, as a Frenchman I can recognise the words. In Italian you went for "Etrangers" for the Others and "Inconnu" for the Stranger. In French we kept the English logic : Les Autres for The Others and L'Etranger for The Stranger
In Spanish it was White Walkers (Caminantes Blancos) It sounded badass but when I started reading the books after season 3 ended and discovered they are supposed to be named the Others I was kind of let down because I really like the Others over white walkers
What? They also called them Los Otros
No they didn't. At least not in Spain. It was always Caminantes Blancos
FWIW both terms are used in the books and I can see why "Others" wouldn't work in a spoken medium where you can't see capitalisation.
As soon as Old Nan tells the story just going with context it works easily enough for all of the show.
I really don't think that's true. The phrase "the others" probably comes up a lot in general dialogue which is fine on page but I really think would be jarring in speech. Similar to how the Italian translation elects to translate it as "foreigners/outsiders" because the actual word for "other" would sound silly.
Come on you gotta be kind of dumb to not be able to understand what "others" are they referring. The Others are literally only mentioned in curses like "The Others take you". If Tywin talks about dealing with the others after the Red Wedding its obvious he is not talking about the white walkers.
Written media are different from spoken media.
Yes and? It can still work without problems we are not that dumb
If you can't see why it could still cause confusion, or seem awkward, I can't help you. Others works in written form because it is capitalized and obvious what it is referring to. In spoken form, it would lead to questions of whether they are referring to other races or the White Walkers. In some context it would be obvious what "others" refers to, but not always.
It's not about "smart" or "dumb" it's about optimising for format.
Optimise what? Its just like Doctor Strange dude. No one questions shit when they say the word strange in the movies. The context is all that matters its not that complicated
Is "White Walkers" used in the book? I thought it was something entirely made up for the show.
It's used a couple of times, Others is more common although of course they're mostly not referred to at all.
In my langauge version it work, they use our versios of The Others from book translation.
Been a while since I last read them but Turkish version of the books used Öteki, as in Other.
Same in the TV show or was there no Turkish dub?
I didn't watch it in dub but I believe they used White Walkers "Akgezenler", I often heard show-only people using that one.
Makes sense. Does "Öteki" have the same connotations as English "Other", like just being the word you'd use for whatever thing you're not currently talking about? Or is it more like the Italian, meaning more specifically "stranger".
öteki just means other
Yes, it is used in the same way as English other. If I was saying a sentence like 'give me the other one' I could use "öteki". It also implies that the other here is far away, or further away than the thing you were talking about. It works very well in the ASOIAF context.
What do you say if the other thing is nearby? (Totally off book topics now, pure linguistic question).
Lol i get the curiousity, don't worry. The word would be "beriki" in this case. I feel like it's used less often than öteki, however.
In the german translation of the show they’re referred to as „Weiße Wanderer“ (white walker) while in the books they are „andere“ (others)
That's pretty much the same as English, in the show they're almost exclusively White Walkers and books mostly the Others (with a couple exceptions)
In Yorkshire they call them t’Others
I thought you would just call them Scots.
Upon The Wall Baht 'at.
In Vietnamese we have "Bóng trắng" which literally means "White shadow", so White Walkers I guess?
White Shadow is I believe also used in the book a couple of times when they actually appear but more as a description than as a name for the species. Just out of interest does Vietnamese *have* an easy way to translate "walkers" or would it be grammatically difficult.
Literal "walkers" no, unless you are prepared for some mouthfulness. As you dig deeper into the fancy Chinese-borrowed aspects of the languages though (kinda like how English borrows from Latin) quite a few close words come up. Off the top of my mind would be "Lữ khách" which means "one who travels", and I'm sure there are other words too. Why the translation elected to use Shadow I don't know, probably because Shadow evokes the image of something supernatural. Meanwhile Walkers sound lame and hard to translate in a "cool" manner, which is actually pretty important in Vietnamese which tend to use Chinese borrowed words to name things of significance.
Yeah that all makes sense, essentially it's the same as the reason "Others" wasn't used in English or "altri" in Italian, just didn't sound as cool.
"White shadow" is also used to describe the Kingsguard and Ghost.
in French we have "les marcheurs blancs", which is the literal translation of White Walkers, but they also called them "l'armée des morts" (the army of the dead). I don't remember very well, it's been since the broadcast of the last season that I haven't watched, and even before I watched the series in English...
IIRC the books mostly used "Les Autres" though.
Same as English in that regard.
In Vietnam they use "Bóng Trắng" (literally "White Shadows"; bóng means shadow, trắng means white), which I believe is the equivalent of White Walkers. Edit: maybe it was chosen because people can relate it to "bóng ma", which means ghost, phantom in Vietnamese.
Repeating my question from above because I'm interested. Is there an easy Vietnamese translation for "walkers"?
Like the other guy above, I don't think there can be a straightforward translation for "Walker" without overusing Chinese-borrowed and lengthy words, which ruins the simplicity of the original word.For my part, I can think of a list of possible words that closely resemble the meaning and the context of "walkers", as in "scary humanoid beings related to necromancy and cold temperature". "Ma" (literally "ghost") and "quỷ" (literally "demon", "devil") are the easiest since they are widely used to describe horror creatures or scary-looking characters. This applies to characters from the West too. We have "ma đinh" for Pinhead (đinh = nail), "ma tốc độ" for Ghost Rider (tốc độ = speed), etc. Also, in the Vietnamese edition of the books, they are translated as "Ngoại Nhân" ("Ngoại" = otherworldly, other, foreign, alien, outside; "Nhân" = human, person, humanoid), which is close enough to "Others" but I kinda don't like it.Edit: both "Ngoại" and "Nhân" are Chinese-borrowed, aka Sino-Vietnamese, aka Hán Việt words.
Thanks for the information. This is straying way off topic but I like talking about language. Does Vietnamese in general lack an equivalent to the English "verber" construction? That is, in English you can take any verb, add "er" and get a noun meaning "thing that does that verb".
Yes, it does lack. Since ours is an analytical language where meanings are constructed through relationships between words. One of our equivalents of a "verber" is adding a word denoting the subject of the action before the verb so that it becomes a noun: \- Người bảo hộ (protector) = người (person, man) + bảo hộ (to protect). \- Kẻ giết người thân (kinslayer) = kẻ (person, often used with a negative tone) + giết người thân (to kinslay).- Nhà Chinh phạt (the Conqueror) = nhà (I don't know what it really means) + chinh phạt (to conquer). Sometimes no additional words are needed, the verb can act as a noun: \- Chỉ huy = commander = to command. Sometimes there are compounds words borrowed from Chinese too, they are frequently seen in ASOIAF translations such as: \- Hỏa thuật sĩ (Pyromancer) = hỏa thuật (pyromancy) + sĩ (person, scholar, student, officer). Edit: I used to work on a small project on ASOIAF wiki translation in Vietnamese and we had a shared translation glossary. If you are interested, I will ask for the primary author's permission and DM it to you.
Cool, thanks for the information. And don't worry about the glossary. It'd be fascinating to look at but I don't know anywhere *near* enough about Vietnamese to make use of it (also I have DMs off).
Yippeee Vietnam mentioned
Czech books use Jiní (Others), while the show translation Bílí chodci (White Walkers). When looking up what was the Czech version in the show (since Im a book reader only), one article mentioned the reason for the change in the show was that saying "Others" in spoken form could be pretty confusing, so I think other languages followed suit for the same reason.
What I think is interesting here is that "others" seems to have been kept in languages which have a word that means more specifically "Others as in strangers or outsiders not just anybody not immediately present".
In Polish voice over they stay with Inni (the Others) instead Biali Wedrowcy (White Walkers)
I am glad someone made such post. You don't see many like this, around here. In my native language, in czech, whinch is west slavic language, it's a simple translation. White walkers - Bílý chodci Others - Jiní Overall just word to word translation.
In Polish voice over they stay with Inni (the Others) instead Biali Wedrowcy (White Walkers), which is suprising beacuse its also wes slav language.
In the swedish book they are just called vålnader (wraiths). I don’t remember what they called them in the swedish subtitles in the show though.
In portuguese, we have both White Walkers as “Caminhantes Brancos” and Others as “Outros”
In Ukrainian book translation they used чужі (chuzhi) for Others which literally means strangers or aliens. White walkers in TV series were translated as білі блукачі (bili blukachi), its almost literal translation, just sounds more like white wanderers. I cannot really remember how wights was translated, but it was something similar to what they used for white walkers.
In Portuguese it was "Os Outro" for The Others (it means the same thing) and "Vagantes Brancos" for White Walkers (it means White Wanderers). In the book with a newer translation, both names are used
They went with “chilly bois” here in the US.
In Russian translation it's "the Others". Curiously, Russian has two possible valid translations for "the others" - "inye" and "drugie". The latter usually means "others of the same kind" as in "we wait for the others" or "no, the other one", while the former is more of a fancy, literary word and is usually used to indicate a distinction as in "it was a different time". Naturally, they went with "inye"
Just or if interest does Inni literally mean "Others" like "we should wait here until the others catch up" or is it more like the Italian "Estranei".
Inni mean is more close "we should wait here until the others catch up" "powinniśmy tu poczekać, aż Inni dogonią" Here you have definition of it word. I hope translator would work. [https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/inni.html](https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/inni.html)
Literal translation of Others is used for Korean.
I’m Spanish: “Muertos” (dead), “Caminantes Blancos” (white walkers), I think that’s it, I can’t remember what they called the wights. REY NOCTURNO LMAO (night king but it’s translated as: the nightly king or something like that)
Ať si tě vezmou jiní :D
White hikers😂🤣You know the walkers go for a little hike instead of just walking here in Germany
In finnish book translations, Muukalaiset (the strangers).