Foreign server tales, part 1: Jen makes a druid
So, I made a new character.
People make them all the time, so what’s so special? Well, I was tired of some recent guild drama, and since a friend kept talking about the French server she joined, I figured I’d get two birds with one stone: get away from the stress and improve my language skills.
Thus Cinn was born, on the Spanish Exodar server.

She’s level 11 and so far I’ve proven two things to myself.
1. I can get by even without money help from my main/guildies. I made 2 gold in about 8 hours played and got some decent bags already (the thing I miss most of all is the 16-slot bags all my alts are equipped with from level 1…)
2. My Spanish is good enough to talk to people. My first successful “conversation” was actually an argument, but I can understand most of what’s said to me and can reply in a coherent way.
However, the major problem is… also the language. WoW has a lot of internal slang, and my Spanish classes didn’t include the proper way to call instances or how professions are translated. There’s no ‘LF’ since that’s an English abbreviation, I’m still trying to figure out what instance Murallas is, hell, I can’t even remember what Stormwind is called! (Ok, I do, it’s Vientormenta.)
And the main issue isn’t understanding. If I click a linked item I see the English name and most things are easy to figure out through translation, but it’s difficult to communicate. How do I tell a player I made money on the AH since I have no idea how to say “auction house” in Spanish?
But so far I’ve been ok. I’ve memorized the most important things and, being level 11, there’s not much interacting to do. I managed to land myself in a guild after I signed their charter, and the guild master is a nice guy who’s patient with my Spanish. Seeing as I know more about guild than he does, I’m useful to him too, so it’s a fair trade.
I’m downloading the Spanish language files as I type and I’ll give it a try, but I think having everything in Spanish will be too confusing.
This post has 2 comments
March 26th, 2009
Wow, that takes some guts, for sure!
I don’t have a second language that I’m strong enough in to even consider that, but you’ve certainly expanded my mind a little in considering what it might be like, as for the most part I’ve been in the Majority not the Minority in terms of language representation.
Looking forward to reading more about how this progresses!
Valdesta
My Player Blog
March 26th, 2009
It’s been quite an eye-opener for me too in regards to some of my (main) guildies who don’t know English so well. Especially about a certain Spanish girl who probably feels just like I do – I get the meaning but I don’t have the proper words to answer.