Let’s go fuck around (in Tartarus) and find out (how Zag adresses Olympians in French).
Cheers to Supergiant for just letting you changed languages from the menu, btw!

“La maison d’Hadès”
Well already that’s debatable isn’t it, what the hell is the rule for h again.

Hah! So you know it says “Crushed!” in tiny letters over enemies when a pillar collapses on them?
Well the French is “Écrasé!”, meaning it genders all the enemies as masculine.
French is great for genderqueers people have I mentioned

“Dash” becomes “Élan” which, yes, but that’s also the word for “moose”, which results in some funny sentences

I’m grabbing a few screenshots for detailed rambling, but Zag’s usage of registers is extremely inconsistent. It’s workable, but weird.

He uses “vous” for the gods, who (at least Athéna and Arès, yes the accents are there!) use “tu” for him. That’s the right choice.

It’s overall a very faithful translation, which is resulting in some seriously stilted speech.

CRÂNASSIERS, OH MY GOD

(It’s a pun with “skull” and “flesh-eater”)

Yeah as often it’s a mix of really great and natural sentences and stuff that reads... weird.
Shoutouts to the use of “molosse” for Cerberus and “capharnaüm” for Zag’s room in narrator text, that’s spot-on.

A key limitation tho, including in Greek mythology at large?
French uses the same word for “Underworld” and “Hell” and that’s... more loaded than in English!

“Tir de Phalange” for “Phalanx Shot”. Technically correct, but that word is used for finger parts more often in French so the result is accidental body horror

And no, I can’t read “Élan Divin” as “Divine Dash”, it’s divine moose now

Okay er. Hypnos’ “Maybe if you weren’t so tasty they’d leave you alone, and so would I!” get translated using “craquant”, which is MUCH STRONGER OF A COME-ON

“Wretches” becomes “Misérables”. Which. Yes, but kinda like “élan”, that’s going to bring other pictures into your head.

“Élan éméché” is kind of delightful and has less potential innuendo than “élan bourré”, so, good choice there.
(No, I will NOT explain)

Charon’s shop is a “boutique”. Not as loaded in French, but still a choice! The alternative would be “magasin”, and that has a different connotation. Neither are really as neutral as “shop”.

Okay so. Yes, Pomegranate is Grenade in French.
So is grenade. The explosive kind.
The resulting “Grenade de puissance”, is, well, also funny.
Did I mention French is a fabulous language for puns?

I’ll keep going until I run into Chaos, because I want to see how those pronouns get handled.

The tutorial prompt for nectar saying “Offrez [nectar] à un(e) ami(e)” is not filling me with confidence...

Oh. Right. Megaera is Mégère in French. Unfortunately that’s also a reasonably common insult thrown at women, so it reads weird. Woops.

Skelly is Thados (“tas d’os”, bonepile). Everyone is fired, or getting a raise, I’m not sure.

Backstab becomes “coup sournois”, which kinda means sneak attack?
And death defiance becomes “refus de la mort” which is considerably more dramatic.
Don’t much like those but they’re the type of construction that is a nightmare to translate to French.

... okay French Hypnos is so much sleazier URGH

“Guys” is so famously gender-neutral that it becomes “mecs”

“Vous” for Dusa is... not a choice I expected but probably a good one? She’s staff, so using “tu” would be EXTREMELY POLITICAL

There are some weirdly clumsy translation wonks tho? Like, “one-time queen of the Underworld” become “l’unique Reine des Enfers”. That’s... not what one-time means here? At all?

Oh, Athéna uses “vous” for Zag. Iiiiiinteresting.

Chaos Gate, yay!
Now to sabotage this run and see how Nyx calls them.

Having trouble triggering that dialog.
I don’t like that “fool” and “foolish” which Hades uses a lot get translated to “sottise”, “imbécile” and their ableist like.

Alright, got it, they wrote around the issue entirely.

Screengrabs and detailed commentary time!
I will not be alt-texting those, sorry. Too much to type, I know exactly how long that takes because I’m fresh off doing it for gigabytes worth of JRPG nonsense, and it’s all in French anyway.

So, why do I say Zag’s registers usage is a mess? Because he alternates between super casual forms and noises, and very formal sentences structures and fancy words.
Those are all what he says to himself when first meeting a god. Very casual, but “voué à” isn’t. Result sounds odd.

It would make sense if he was casual to himself and more formal in dialog, in which case “était voué à” should be a more casual form, like “allait”.
That might seem to lose the nuance of “bound to” in favor of a simple future, except it kinda doesn’t.
TRANSLATION

Elsewhere, when talking to people, he’s much more formal but still using casual forms in weird ways.
- Calling Hades “Père” but having “c’est gentil” which is a bit lower.
- Using “vous” for Achilles but having “Genre, “ which is WAY lower.
- His wonderful verbosity to Charon.

Charon is indeed translated. “Ggeuhh” is way more French than the English text.

Skelly is spot-on. Very casual register, shortenings, he’s great.
The name pun (which reads as a pseudo-greek version of “bonepile”) is either brilliant or cringeworthy, what’s for sure is that it carries on a proud tradition of making bilingual fandom confusing.

Minor fun things:
- The menu options are infinitives, but the help text describing them is imperative. English doesn’t have that distinction in this context!
- The comedic effect of “Noun, Adjective” at the Contractor is lost, because that’s generally the correct order in French.

As mentioned the skull enemies are horrendous puns. “Crânassier” is a skull + flesh-eater pun, “Crânalgame” is skull + amalgam/jumble.
Dégalite I’m reading as a damage + stone, it loses the “brimstone” connection to “fire and brimstone”.

This, however...
As people have discussed - notably Austin Walker on Waypoint Radio - Hades has a fat hate problem. As Austin said, “the roundest thing in this game is Bouldy.”
The lout becomes “Débauché”, which implies indulgence, overeating, etc.
It’s not nice!

Athena is actually inconsistent! She uses “tu” in some pieces of dialog, “vous” in others. This should have been caught in editing.
It’s not criminally bad, nothing really is, but it’s sloppy and causes inconsistent characterization.

Her first dialog is a great example of what I mean with “very faithful translation, not bad, but doesn’t sound natural”.
“À commencer par moi-même dès maintenant” preserves all the parts from the English but does not flow AT ALL.

Poseidon is the fucking worst and it’s kind of spot-on. “P’tit Hadès”, thanks I hate it.
Same confusion of registers, though. “Tu reconnais ton oncle, n’est-ce-pas?” is a twinge formal for someone who greats you with “Ohé” uses casual words like “bouillie”. I’d use “pas vrai?”.

Areas has the same problem: every element preserved, no flow.
“I’m a fellow student of death, you see” has fantastic flow.
It becomes “Moi aussi, je suis un adepte de la mort, vois-tu” which just hitches at every step.
It works but it doesn’t.

Also if someone non-ironically uses phrasing like “Voilà qui est tout à fait fascinant”, you should punch them in the face and run away fast.
I can imagine my dad saying that with a ridiculous grin on his face while talking about the most boring shit he’s ever seen, nothing else.

Speaking of creeps, Hypnos!
He calls you “craquant” as mentioned, which is harder to read as a joke than the original “tasty”.
He uses a low-ish register, which tracks. But Meg being “unstoppable” becomes “irrésistible”, which is much more romantically loaded, ew.

This is IMO a very very good suggestion for a replacement for “craquant”. “À croquer” keeps the eating joke, still has a minor come-on read, but is easier to have plausible deniability on because it’s used about cute babies all the time. https://twitter.com/marionnatik/status/1349000927164968960

Zag and Achilles: Achille uses “tu”, “lad” becomes “mon garçon”, which is very fatherly, and Zag uses “vous”.
Works well!

It’s “Oncle” and not “Tonton”, which is definitely more reasonable. Unnatural in most IRL contexts but we ARE dealing with gods after all.
Tho considering how Poseidon talks, “Tonton Poséidon” further down the line would be completely reasonable and an awful rhyme.

Featuring a bizarre use of present perfect, because “It’s been excellent to know you” becoming “j’ai été ravi de vous connaître” is a lot more... FINAL in French.
You’d say “J’ai été ravi(e) de faire votre connaissance” at the end of an event, talking to someone you met there.

Otherwise it sounds a bit like spaghetti western dialog as you’re about to pull a gun on someone.

This is worth noting! Hades says “alive or dead”, and it becomes “mort ou vivant”, which is the usual French order. Though typically it’s “mort ou vif”, notably on Wanted posters.

As mentioned the narrator text has some really good use of fancier words, like “capharnaüm”. Some of the humor doesn’t get through, but it’s mostly solid.
Zag addressing him as “le vieux” is more insulting than “old man”, though!

Dionysos is awful, as expected. Same slight clunkiness but the tone is there. “Mec” is absolutely the right address for him to use, though it ends up overlapping with Skelly somewhat as a result.

Zag and Meg: “tu” all the way. “Manière forte” is a good translation of her trademark “the painful way”.
Zag and Dusa: “vous” all the way. Not sold on the “ouah” spelling for “wow”.

Hermès is solidly written, his use of more casual speech and short sentences is nailed.
Some mild wonk in places, basically you can tell it’s a translation and not written directly? Hard to describe, probably mostly that more things should get cut, like that “tous les deux”.

Assorted wonks:
- “Je garde le compte” isn’t really a thing in French.
- “l’unique Reine des Enfers” is a complete mistranslation of “one-time queen of the Underworld”.
- “et en a voulu aux...” is a really weird conjugation choice, because it implies Hades is not pissed anymore.

Chaos. Also a mess registers-wise.
“Have all grown soft”: neutral. “Se sont tous bien ramollis”: EXTREMELY casual.
The rest of their language is mostly formal register / verbose words, but with semi-casual phrasing and the use of “tu” making it all flow weirdly.

Finally, they write around pronouns by using:
- “entité” (followed by feminine forms to go with it);
- “son” as a possessive pronoun, which isn’t gendered based on owner;
- “divinité” (also followed by a feminine form).

This is both good and bad.
Because it can absolutely be the right way to address some people, but it’s also how you dodge gendering someone.
I do it on the regular in French when I’m unsure about pronouns. It’s how /I/ would prefer people to discuss me until I figure my shit out.

So depending on whether Chaos is “no pronouns thanks, I’m a primordial force” or “actually I really like this they thing”, this is either perfect or quite offensive. Yay?
But at least they didn’t force them into a binary category and that’s something.

I am now done spamming and you may resume regular activities.

Okay one last conclusion-shaped thing.
Overall it’s an okay translation. Grammar’s correct, meaning’s mostly there. But there are some weird wonks, some arguably major character drift, and just a general stilted vibe to it all.

It feels like a strange mix of excellent professional translation work, and fansubs hellbent on keeping all the individual English parts instead of throwing half of it out to make it flow naturally.

OKAY, YES, BUT.
Mixing registers is absolutely a thing - I’ve discussed it before, it’s a key mechanism of some French humor, I do it all the time - but it has to be done a certain way to work. This... isn’t it. https://twitter.com/adrianovaroli/status/1349047036553916419

It was that way https://twitter.com/liasae/status/1313840075395026946

Proofreading to tell you how competent your French translation turned out to be is ACTUALLY something I’ll gladly do, though I do not have the range to do a full translation cost-effectively.
(For that, if Québecois works, hire @gersandelf, they’re great) https://twitter.com/worthless_bums/status/1349047590969503745