Translating SWTOR’s Signs

Okay, I know. I really need to just make a SWTOR blog to post SWTOR stuff to (or perhaps just “a blog” where I can post whatever the crap I want.) Maybe now that I have hit level 50 on my Sorcerer I will find that I have time to spend on setting up a new blog somewhere. For now, here is where more people on the internet look at things I say.

Star Wars Language

In Star Wars: The Old Republic, they make use of the Star Wars language font all over the galaxy in signs, and in small details in the textures of screens, decals, you name it. (If you want to go looking, a google for “Star Wars language font” or “Aurabesh” will get you results. I have no idea what the legitimacy or legality is regarding any of the sites hosting the font are, so caveat emptor, and no direct links.)

At first, I didn’t really think much about it. It started somewhere around one of my forays through Dromund Kaas where I noticed that the big sign in the spaceport had the correct letter pattern:

And I noticed the same thing when I had to swing back to Korriban. “Okay, that’s neat” I think, but there’s a lot of stuff out there that really needs me to put lightning in its face, so I’ll worry about it later.”

And you keep going, and you end up on a planet like Nar Shaddaa, a neon-laden seedy underworld type planet. Somewhere between a Space Vegas and a Space Tokyo, with a side of reminding me of parts of the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC for Mass Effect 2, just without Liara yelling “TRUCK!” at you when you take a shuttle. There’s letter-ish stuff everywhere.

I Am A Nerd

Somewhere in the back of mind, it’s sinking in that yes, all the planet signs in spaceports have the right letter pattern. For at least the big obvious stuff, these letters say something. It’s probably just a straight character map. I’m a nerd. A Star Wars nerd, an internet nerd, a graphic design nerd, a font nerd. I know there’s a font for the Star Wars language. In fact, I am so aware that there’s a font for the Star Wars language and it’s been so over-used by nerds wanting to be nerdy and put “alien” letters on stuff that starting out I had to quash down that twitch I get every time I see a terribly inappropriately over-used font. Call it, the Papyrus Twich. Comic Sans nausea. SWTOR gets to use the Star Wars font. It’s THEIR font. They made it.

It was finishing up the quests on Corellia when I began to consciously realize that I was going to have to chase this down and figure it out. There’s signs, billboards, lettering everywhere. There’s this one sign I keep seeing everywhere, and I haven’t been able to guess at what it says.

A couple nights ago, I pull out a notepad, write down A B C, all the way through, and start writing the characters I’m sure of after each letter. Every time I pass a new spaceport sign, I doublecheck the characters. My alt stops on the way in to Balmorra to check the sign and so I can be all “Yes! Got the M, gotta catch ‘em all.”

The Translations

I’ve reached a point where I’ve passed enough signs that I’m only missing a few characters, so I head to Nar Shaddaa, land of a thousand neon signs. I can use what I know, find sensible words, and fill in the blanks.

The first sign I see out off my ship is this one:

And this is where I start to realize that it’s not quite that easy.

First off, this sign has sort of stylized lettering, as seen in orange in the circles. That’s easy enough, I can still tell what the characters are.

I dig in and end up with _ E L _ O M E. Welcome! Welcome to… wait a minute.

But the rest of the letters are causing me issues. There are characters here that I recognize, but then the lower line in pink/orange is showing some of those characters reversed.

It’s at this belated point in time where I decide to finally go get the Star Wars font and check to see if it matches the characters in game. It does. I use the font to fill in the missing spots, and then come to the realization that the pink line is upsidedown and backwards.

This will be a recurring theme.

There seems to be some (assumed?) convention where some letters will be mirrored or upside-down to connote emphasis or capitalization. I am not the only nerd trying to figure out these signs. There’s inconsistent application of this usage. I figure out, though, the upside pink/orange line above seems to say “Nal Hutta”.

I still haven’t figured out the upside-down 7 with the dot character, but I have seen it elsewhere.

So, I’ve got a sign that says:

“Welcome
to Nar
Sha _ _a
Nal Hutta”

Moving on, I see this sign:

That, kids, the green sign above the elevator says…

ELEVATOR.

Flush with logical success, I take said elevator and see this sign:

Once again, this sign is backwards. Hold on.

Much better. It reads:

“Travel
FD
to the outer rim”

I have no idea what FD means.

Cool Story, Bro

Then I come to this sign, and I am highly amused.

It’s upside-down, but those triangles next to the girl are the symbol for X. So we’ve basically got a sign for a Space strip club, complete with the XXXs. (Oh god, I’m gonna get some interesting spam for writing that.) The tiny characters at the bottom are part unknowns, like my upside down embellished 7, so I set to work on the lower sign.

I figure out that the characters are backwards, and start parsing it out.

This is serious business, folks.

And I arrive at this translation:

“EVIL! That’s a word! This says evil!

“Cisuum.. what the … OH! MUSIC! This says EVIL MUSIC!” I laugh, this is funny. Do you remember Orinfoo from Dodge, Parry, Block? He’s part of my SWTOR crew too. We’ve been talking about the sign writing a bit. I share my results, and we work on the mirroring/upside-down conundrum. I share it with my SWTOR buddies on Google+, and explain the picture with the following:

“Also note that are is apparently some sort of convention for mirroring or upside-downing letters in use. And it’s not like I’m talking inconsistent between one use and another, like Bob made the sign that goes on the spaceport wall that says welcome and Steve made the sign that advertises the space titty bar. I mean, literally inconsistent IN THE SAME SIGN.

For example, the sign above, the characters in “EVIL MUSIC” are all mirrored.

But reading left to right, the top word says E-V-I-L
the second line says C-I-S-U-M

Conclusion:
BIOWARE IS FUCKING WITH THE NERDS WHO WILL TRANSLATE THIS SHIT

I AM THAT NERD”

(Note: I use even more profanity when I am not trying to write semi-respectably, as in these blog posts.) No other alternatives have occurred to me. A smart friend of mine, who has done level design before sets me straight, amidst the people who are telling me I need mental help:

It’s probably supposed to be LIVE MUSIC. Since it’s a transparent sign, one side is going to be backwards, and the level designer screwed up and made the sign face the wrong way.

Somewhere around here, I have a good old hearty, belly laugh-out-loud at myself.

And you know what? The backwards texture issue is entirely believable. The “LIVE MUSIC” sign is used in other places, with other graphics:

In the second photo, the texture is transparent and sticks out perpendicularly to the wall. From one side it’s backwards, from the other, rightways.

Also, the theory that a level designer could unknowingly slap a resource into the world backwards, is not only an entirely plausible supposition, but this scene exists:

I was not able to see the forest for the trees in the piecemeal way I translated the sign, but with that little tidbit of understand, I was no longer trying to understand backwards or upside-down characters as mechanic of the language but literally a function of stuff just being used backwards. My chains were broken. The Force has freed me.

More Signs

So, here’s some other stuff I spotted in the world and have translated for you (Okay, me):

On a wall in Dromund Kaas, definitely one of my early curiosities:

“Be on Alert
Report suspicious activity to the bureau.”

 

Elsewhere on Dromund Kaas:

“Long live the Empire”

The small text in the upper right says “Dromund Kaas”

 

In the Promenade on Nar Shaddaa:

The braille-esque stuff seems to be used in places where numerical characters would make sense. The rest of the lines are abbreviations. This seems to be some sort of stock market type display, with the lines being the following, in order:

“BWL, KTL, PKL, JML, LPL, WGF, MVF, BLA, TAA, BAS”
the smaller ones at bottom: “YLM, INP, QER, KOP, ZOP, GGP”

 

On another side of the same screen pillar in the Promenade, there were some shopping displays:

This one reads:

Top line: “Arge power-cell [numbers] at full power”

Between helmet and.. bracer?:
“All syste…
approval. R…
scheduled
…rad
loading of”

All the horizonal text lines above each of the four sections are the same, so here’s the bits we can see:

“resources
will proceed

proceed aft..
power-cell”

“as schedul..
rechar
ources to

ed after s”

“e power-ce..”
ding approva
r shut-dow
scan ro..”

So the conclusion we can draw is that even if it doesn’t necessarily make contextual sense, even the long strings of smaller text do actually say something.

 

Another screen on the same pillar:

“Purchase
Qty   -####
Price -###
Thank you for
your business”

 

This sign, and variations thereof with the same text appear all over Corellia:

“Moonlight
Transit”

This sign is interesting because there are a few situations where we see variations of letters used. There are two forms of the letter “O” the sort of ( ) look as seen here, and the sort of trapezoidal form as seen in most other places (see the Dromund Kaas spaceport sign at the beginning). “()” as “O” makes sense here, and in other signage on Corellia designating the Zoo.

There are also two forms of the letter N as well seen in a mix. The straight front edge seen here in this sign, like a |/\, and with a curved front edge, sort of like a (/\. (Again, refer to the Dromund Kaas sign.)

The R also has two forms. In most places, R is used like a 7, but here it’s used as smooshed together 71. That is also upside-down, because…

The other interesting thing is that the whole mirroring-upside-downing issue crops up again here, and it makes somewhat LESS sense to see this as a texture being used improperly because of the way it’s part of this overall sign design, much like the “welcome” sign from Nar Shaddaa earlier in the post. “Moonlight” appears rightways, but if you look, the world “Transit” is writting upside-down. But not in a flippy way.

If you look at the sign from the perspective of the characters being oriented right side up, it says: “TISNART”

 

This was.. I believe from the spaceport on Corellia:

The blue pennant, under the picture of the gun says “Blaster”. The red and white sign says “Quality Arms”.

 

These screens are seen in myriad places in every spaceport and docking port and hangar bay…

 

The small green text scrolls by, while the text at the top changes between two strings:

“Resources to” and “After Shut-do”

The small, stationary blue text is a repeat of the “Arge power-cell #### at full power.”

In this screenshot, the green text reads: “fuel system monitoring holonet u…”

 

This is one of the taxi shuttles on Dromund Kaas. Guess what the four letter word on it says…

…taxi.

Another from Nar Shaddaa, some giant writing (mirrored, upside-down) appears like this,  against the skyline:

When flipped for my sanity;

SRIAPER

… which is REPAIRS backwards, and may be some strange texture flipping.

 

Stuff I’m still working out:

There’s this, from many places around Nar Shaddaa which is somewhat of a struggle to figure out:

With the letters both being curved around the… credit chips? and being mirrored, my best guess is this:

Left chip, which seems to have the letter “B” on it: “?rin?s
Right chip, unknown: “ecna?

I have seen the symbols on these chips elsewhere in apparently nonsensical things, and haven’t yet figured out what they mean.

 

There are also a lot of signs and neon lights around Nar Shaddaa that appear to be yet another language, with more of an asian script sort of style, or just almost-Aurabesh looking symbols that don’t seem to say anything.

Hey you know what, looking at these two side by side, that’s the same string of… stuff.

In Conclusion…

Holy shit, am I a giant nerd with too much time on my hands OR WHAT?!

Anyway. If you want to know what something says, I’ve become semi-fluent at this in my unravelings. Here’s also a handy chart: