Can someone translate to English what the Syrian Units are saying in the game?

[Itael]

I think the Title says it all.

Thanks!

Itai

[Sergei]

Arabic Casualy 9.wav means, roughly translated, "AARGH".

[missinginreality]

haha sergei that was funny man.

The guys that keep saying "a-shoof-a" - that's like, "look at" or "see". So it's like the "enemy unit..spotted" version.

[SgtMuhammed]

One thing that has always kind of bugged me is that when they get shot at the Syrians seem to yell, "Kaif Halak!" which is a greeting that means, "How are you?" I'm not sure if that is what they are actually saying but that is what I hear.

[Cambronne]

I don't understand a single Syrian word,but assuming they are saying the same as the US voices (with the corresponding file numbers),I replaced the Syrian voice files with the US ones and this way I taught the whole Syrian army to speak English in 5 minutes! And...oh boy...how fluently are they speaking English now!!! :cool:

[travcrouse]

How do you access the individual voice files? I've studied Syrian, Iraqi, and Egyptian Arabic and have always wanted to isolate each phrase spoken by the Syrians so I could more reliably interpret each one (I'm by no means fluent and I have to listen to a phrase a few times to figure it out).

A couple that I'm pretty sure of (don't know the file names):

1. 'ana bshuuf la(?) el-'aduww' / "I see the enemy"

2. 'erkod, erkod!' / "Run! Run!"

3. 'b ser'a!' / "Hurry!"

also, it seems like every few times I play I hear a new phrase that I've never heard in the game before! How many different phrases are there?

If someone let me know how to get to the individual phrase files I could probably interpret most of them...

[stoex]

travcrouse, check out the game manual p. 151 ff - the topic is called "Rezexplode"...it's all there

[travcrouse]

OK, got'em exploded!

I'm amazed at how many there are...

Now to put on my Syrian ear-goggles and figure out what they're saying...

[MikeyD]

...just thought of an anecdote. During filming of Laurance of Arabia Mexican Actor Anthony Quinn was playing an Arab Chieftain. Not knowing the language he'd shout Arab-sounding jibberish during the fight scenes. As the film dailies were reviewed Arab consultants would sit-in to check for historical accuracy. At one screening the consultants burst into laughter - Quinn, while shouting his Arab-jibberish, had inadvertantly strung together a particularly graphic insult involving someone's mother and a camel.

[travcrouse]

Dumb question: did they edit out the offending phrase? That's one of my favorite movies and one of the reasons that I first became interested in the language...

Battlefront surely made a script of phrases that they gave to an Arabic speaker to produce the voice files - could that be made available?

[missinginreality]

...just thought of an anecdote. During filming of Laurance of Arabia Mexican Actor Anthony Quinn was playing an Arab Chieftain. Not knowing the language he'd shout Arab-sounding jibberish during the fight scenes. As the film dailies were reviewed Arab consultants would sit-in to check for historical accuracy. At one screening the consultants burst into laughter - Quinn, while shouting his Arab-jibberish, had inadvertantly strung together a particularly graphic insult involving someone's mother and a camel.

haha, reminds me of a similar time when Peter Ustinov [i think it was] was giving a speech in Russia and at the last minute he decided he'd like to address his opening in their mother tongue; not knowing any Russion he copied the words for "Ladies and Gentlemen" off his hotel restroom doors.

Following his speech, which he felt went down very well, he turned to his local aide and asked him how he thought it went?

"Oh so very nicely," the aide replied politely, "though I am not sure we here are used to being addressed as 'urinals and water closets'

[MikeyD]

I've got another one! In the 1970s then-president Jimmy Carter was invited to the then-Iron Curtain state of Poland to give a speech. This was a very big deal at the time. The State Department searched high and low for someone in the bureaucracy who actually spoke Polish to do the simultaneous translation of the presidents speech. They eventually located a frail little college professor who's Polish was - at best - of the 'academic' variety. Well, during Carter's speech the president experessed his heartfelt love for the Polish people, which the little professor then translated as Carters carnal desire for the Polish people. Ooops!

[SgtMuhammed]

Another incident from before they started paying attention to such things:

Some movie in the 50's or 60's decided to have their natives speak some African dialect. The writer, who actually spoke the language, figured that no one in the audience would know what was being said so he wrote whatever he felt like. The big dramitic moment turned into high comedy when the film was released in Africa. A native extra warned the hero of an impending attack by running up and yelling, "I'm not being paid enough for this part!"

When Coke was beginning to market in China they wanted to see if they could find some Chinese characters that looked like their trademark lable. Unfortunately the closest they could find were some characters that loosely translated to say, "Bite the wax tadpole."

[SgtMuhammed]

Of course there is always Kennedy calling himself a jelly doughnut.

[Sergei]

Battlefront surely made a script of phrases that they gave to an Arabic speaker to produce the voice files - could that be made available?

That's just between Madmatt and the Syrians he keeps in his basement.