In Which Finds-The-Way Recovers the Crown of Barenziah

Returning to catching up on my Finds-The-Way playthrough in Skyrim! This post covers territory I’ve written about before, namely, running Ansilvund and stealing the horse Frost from the Black-Briar Lodge, then getting the Crown of Barenziah. So this post will mostly be German language commentary.

Play by play

Play date: 8/4/2024
Session number in this run: 50
Trained in Alchemy with Babette at the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary
Then boinged to Shor’s Watchtower to mark the location for Ansilvund
Ran into two different Vigilant vs. dremora encounters
Also went by some Stormcloaks, all of whom stopped to kneel next to one of the dead dremora, LOL
What’s wrong, you guys never seen a dead dremora before?
Then finally made it to Ansilvund—and realized I was pretty damned overloaded
So I boinged out to Riften instead to sell stuff
Invested in the Pawned Prawn as well as Balimund’s forge
Then headed down into the Thieves Guild and sold as much stuff as I could to merchants and Tonilia
Came back topside, talked to Louis Letrush in the Bee and Barb, and got quest to go steal Frost
Headed over to the jail to talk to Sibbi Black-Briar
Got past the guard with the Amulet of Articulation
Snerk, Sibbi still flirted with me, so I guess he’s totally cool with flirting with Argonians 😉
Passed Persuade check (again, thank you, Amulet) and got Sibbi to tell me where the treasure he’d hidden in the house was
Then headed over to the Black-Briar Lodge
Went on foot just because I didn’t want Shadowmere getting aggro at anything
Yet more dremora and Vigilants near the bridge, and dead wolves as well
Reached the house and dropped into Sneak
Made it past outside guards and broke into the basement as per usual
Got the papers and the treasure, and made it upstairs to steal the Stone of Barenziah
Made it safely past all of the guards, then got back outside and stole the horse
Rode off without having to fight anybody!
Reached Louis without any trouble and turned over the horse
Didn’t bother to try to claim the horse myself, just because I already had Shadowmere
Then boinged back to run Ansilvund
Conjured a lot of dremora lord while in there, and ran the place mostly without any trouble
Had some issues getting across the bridge with the traps, it took me three tries just because I kept getting knocked off the damn bridge
Leveled up to 59; took Magicka boost, and the Apprentice level perk in Illusion
Killed once by Lu’ah in the boss chamber, but took her out at range the second time through
Claimed the Ghostblade and put the risen lovers back to rest
Was surprised to realize that I had not gotten the Transmute Mineral Ore spell yet!
Looted everything else in Lu’ah’s bedroom on my way out
Returned to the Thieves Guild and sold a bunch more stuff
Checked in with Vex, and told her I had all of the Stones of Barenziah; got quest from her to go get the crown
Got five rounds of Pickpocket training from Vipir the Fleet
Boinged to Lakeview to drop things off
Boinged to Bloodchill Manor to drop more things off
Boinged to the College of Winterhold and sold staves to assorted mages
Boinged to Shor’s Watchtower again and aimed for Tolvald’s Cave
Found yet another more Vigilants vs. dremora fight, and also more dead wolves thanks to Shadowmere going aggro
Found and marked Tolvald’s Cave
Overloaded yet again, so boinged back to Riften and sold more stuff
Decided to pick up Iona so I could have her at my back running Tolvald’s Cave
Tweaked her inventory a bit to get her to re-equip all the gear I’d previously given her
Then boinged back to Tolvald’s Cave and started running the place
Mostly had no problems, though at one point I had to stop and stock Iona up with healing potions
Finally made it to the crown and fought the final Dunmer ghosts
Got out again after fighting the rest of the Falmer
Returned to Riften, turned in the crown and all 24 Stones with Vex, got the Prowler’s Profit perk, and resolved the quest
Boinged to Hendraheim, and dropped off the dragon priest mask and the claw from Sovngarde
Finally boinged back to Lakeview, and got a red mage robe gift from Lucia, aw <3
Spent a little time trying to do some crafting, but realized I was not going to be able to make myself dragon weapons yet
Also couldn’t make better Smithing or Alchemy gear, Enchanting wasn’t quite good enough on perks yet
Stopped and saved there for the night

Commentary

Pretty much all of this session was familiar territory, so not too much for me to comment on. But I do want to call out the surprising number of dremora vs. Vigilant encounters I had! I know that encounter becomes possible once you finish The Cause. But I am not finding any info on the UESP about whether there’s any known issue with the encounter sometimes being too common. Because having it four times in one session is a little much.

So since I didn’t have much else to say about this session, I’ll just cut straight to the language geekery!

Language commentary

Interesting terms observed:

Entscheidung: Decision, used in Bersi’s and Balimund’s response dialogue when I invested in their businesses
Zuchtpferde: Breeding horses
Abstammungsurkunde: Lineage papers
Erlaubnis: Permission
Geschäftspartner: Business partner/associate (used by Louis Letrush to describe Sibbi Black-Briar)
Kerkerwächter: Dungeon guard (used to describe the guard I had to talk to in the Riften Jail)
Augenweide: Feast for the eyes (used by Sibbi Black-Briar to flirt with me, LOL)
Übervorteilen: To take advantage of (used by Sibbi Black-Briar if you threaten to tell his mother what he’s up to)
Ausgrabungsstätte: Archaeological site, excavation (used for the first zone at Ansilvund)
Kryomant: Cyromancer
Aufstrebender Totenbeschwörer: Ascendant Necromancer (I think, see below)
Körperlose Stimme: Disembodied Voice (how Lu’ah Al-Skaven addresses you at first in Ansilvund)
Lu-ahs Tagebuch: Lu’ah’s Journal
Grabkammern: Burial Chambers (second zone of Ansilvund)
Auferstehen: Raise, rise from the dead, resurrect (i.e., in the necromantic sense, used by Lu’ah regarding raising her husband from the dead and raising an army to avenge his defilement)
Schneckengesicht: Snail-face (used by the Dragonborn as an insult when using the Throw Voice Shout)
Mineralerz umwandeln: Transmute Mineral Ore (the spell)
Arnskar Glut-Meister: Arnskar Ember-Master (the blacksmith in the Ragged Flagon)
Unglaublich: Unbelievable (used by Vex when you come back and give her all 24 of the Stones of Barenziah)
Satz: Set (used by Vex to describe the collection of the Stones of Barenziah)
Glanzstücke: Crown jewels (the term used by Vex in German as the equivalent of paragon in English)
Diebestertigkeiten: Thieving skills
Tolvalds Höhle: Tolvald’s Cave
Tolvalds Kluft: Tolvald’s Gap (second zone in Tolvald’s Cave)
Tolvalds Kreuzung: Tolvald’s Crossing (third zone in Tolvald’s Cave)
Krone von Barenziah: Crown of Barenziah
Juwelengespür: Prowler’s Profit (the ability granted by acquiring the Crown of Barenziah, lit. “jewel sense”)

While working on stealing Frost at the Black-Briar lodge, I saw this line get thrown as random bandit dialogue:

… wenn er mir noch mal so kommt, er eins auf die Mütz’ bekommt … hol ihn mir im Schlummer … und mach’ ihm großen Kummer … oh süße, süße Rache, wie schön ich mit ins Fäustchen lache …

This seems to be the German equivalent of this bandit line in the English game:

…kill ’em, he talks to me again like that… get him when he’s sleeping… or poison his meat… see how he likes that.

But it doesn’t seem to be a direct translation. Here’s what Google Translate thinks the German line translates back to, in English:

If he comes to me like that again, if he gets a slap on the wrist… I’ll take him from my sleep… and cause him great grief… oh sweet, sweet revenge, how beautifully I laugh in my sleeve…

And here’s what my browser’s built-in translation engine does (this is via Vivaldi):

…if he comes to me like that again, he gets hit in the face … get him in my slumber … and give him a lot of grief…oh sweet, sweet revenge, how beautifully I laugh in the fist …

I think in both cases, though, the translation engine attempts to translate back to English are losing how the original English line was the bandit talking about killing his target in that person’s sleep, not in his own.

Google does a better job with the phrase “wie schön ich mit ins Fäustchen lache”, though. That’s definitely a German idiom there, translating back to “laughing in my sleeve” or “laughing all the way to the bank”. (Source)

Vivaldi’s translation does a better job I think with the first part of the line, too, with the translation of “he gets hit in the face”, as opposed to “if he gets a slap on the wrist”. That seems in better keeping with the original English line.

Overall, though, this strikes me as a good example of the translation team needing to do some finessing of the original English to get something that works in German, even if it’s not a direct translation. The German version of the line is definitely more focused on the speaker taking pleasure in revenge, whereas the original English just makes him come across as pissed off.

And it’s this kind of nuance of change that makes it fun for me to analyze language changes. This is why I like playing Skyrim in other languages!

I’m not a hundred percent sure that “Aufstrebender Totenbeschwörer” translates back to “Aspiring Necromancer”. When I look up the various kinds of necromancer NPCs that can appear in the game, the English page for this and the German page on the Elder Scrolls wiki don’t have them listed in the same order. But I know enough German that by process of elimination, “Aufstrebender” does seem like the closest match for “Aspiring”. As always, though, any German speaker is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong!

I note with interest that “Lu’ah’s Journal”, even in the English version of the game, actually shows up as “Lu-ah’s Journal”, with a dash instead of an apostrophe in her name. So this is not a translation error on the part of the German team. Kinda wonder if they had to put a dash in there to keep from breaking things, if there was already an apostrophe there because of the possessive? I will now have to keep an eye out for examples of anything else in the game with more than one apostrophe in the object name.

It amuses me deeply that you can call somebody “Schneckengesicht” with the German version of the Throw Voice Shout. This translates to “snail-face”! But given that this does not appear as one of the insults when you use Throw Voice in the English game, I don’t know which of the English insults it replaced.

Vex’s response when I returned to the Ragged Flagon with all of the Stones of Barenziah is another example of a line that did not get a direct translation. Here’s what she says in English:

Unbelievable! You must be the first person to set eyes on all twenty-four of them in… well, the last two eras.

In German, however, she says this:

Unglaublich! Oh- Seit Generationen hat sie niemand mehr alle auf einem Hauten gesehen.

Which translates back to English as:

Unbelievable! Oh- no one has seen them all in one place for generations.

This gets across a similar idea, to be sure. But it’s noteworthy to me because it loses the in-game specific context of “era” in the original English. And it makes me wonder if the translation personnel that worked on this part of the game, at least, actually knew that “era” has a specific in-lore meaning. It’s certainly possible they did not. Translation teams to work on a software product of any kind, not just a game, are not guaranteed to be users of the the product being translated!

Here, though, it really does make me wonder. Just because while the translation into German is not necessarily inaccurate, it definitely does leave out how “in the last two eras” means something specific in an Elder Scrolls game.

I knew the German word “Satz” already… but I knew it to mean “sentence”. I did not know it could also mean “set”. (Source)

There’s a bit of indirect translation going on later in the same conversation with Vex, too, when she tells the Dragonborn that the Crown of Barenziah is a “paragon” that can enhance the Guild’s thieving abilities. This does not translate over directly in German. (Source)

So it looks like the translation team had to choose a different term: “Glanzstück”, plural “Glanzstücke”. This means “crown jewel”, or “pièce de résistance”. Which I think still gets across the idea that the crown is a very important object.

Next time

Finds-The-Way’s next post will feature a bit more minor assassination action, some fishing, and the unceremonious end of Louis Letrush, who did not last long after I stole that horse for him in this session!

And also: Finds finally starts Dawnguard!