Infinite variations of the “Steamed Hams” sketch from The Simpsons was a pretty popular meme a while back.
Shockingly, not many of them were actually funny.
However, this version was hilarious:
That’s a video by Youtuber Duplexer where the dialogue of the sketch was put through Google Translate across several languages and back into English.
Now, that’s such a good idea that I decided to do the same thing with Chapter 1 of Fryte’s Gold.
Specifically, I went English, Latin, Dutch, French, Simplified Chinese, Irish, Japanese, Icelandic, Slovenian, back to English.
With the one caveat that I did remove a few lines that ended up uncomfortably and inexplicably vulgar, here’s the results:
Gold Freite: The Realmguard Story
JB Norman
Copyright 2021-2022
Barkovic’s sister.
Chapter 1
Kat Darkstone, I want to tell you about her sister.
For the first five years of her famous life, Kate owned three shops and a small estate at Duxstone Manor under the tutelage and unrequited love of her parents. But ten years after one Felicity Dunstan Darkstone appeared, Kat had to share the Darkstone estate with her parents.
This is not bad in itself. Danstan, the boy of all the Realmgard sisters… Well, Kat doesn’t know exactly how to describe Danstan.
Dunstan is the best of the sisters.
Indescribable, sometimes frustrating, but always inspiring and moving. There’s no doubt that Dunstan Darkstone’s big sister life is still interesting to Kat. It represents as heavy a mandate as is entirely acceptable for proper use. Of course Kate loves her sister, but Dunstan is no ordinary girl. Normal girls don’t pretend to be pirates. But really, neither does Dunstan.
She was a very successful pirate.
Kate blames her father, the once fearsome Admiral Dorian Duxton, now a retired pirate and talented tea master.
The Darkstone family has a long history as a pirate clan. As a child, Kate was not interested in following family conventions, listening to stories about her father’s adventures and lineage.
As soon as he got on the boat, he felt sick, he couldn’t stand the smell of fish. She was an adventurous child and worked part-time as a saleswoman in her grandparents’ store, working professionally and very happy with the career she had chosen. As far as Kate knows, the admiral worked so hard to change the pirate Dunstan and ensure that the tradition of House Blackstone remained strong because he neglected the family business.
He decorated Dunstan’s nursery with pictures of ships, waves and treasure chests and hung a noble pirate mobile flag on his chest. it almost never falls. The admiral always looked surprised when he told the pirate stories, but Kate was sure 30,000 to 30,000 people had heard about it. Kate then asked if the Commander-in-Chief knew that Dunstan was his favourite.
That’s the only explanation he can think of, and Kat is a complete “hydrangea” nut. They say it’s a dark secret. Kate thinks she can’t live like Hortensia. For seven years, Dunstan was just a girl with a free imagination and a huge interest in pirates.
Every year in honor of the anniversary of the founding of Porthaven, the office of the Prince of Porthaven draws a confirmed name from a hat and awards all the fantastic prizes. Porthaven received one of the winning yachts three years ago. When it came time to sign the boat, the name Dunstan fell out of my hat.
Of course some wanted Dunstan to be a pirate as she was a pirate. Fortunately, Powers had at least hinted to the world that Dunstan could only steer his ship under the admiral’s direct command. A pirate worth his salt, Dunstan lives to be exploited. As the younger sister of an adventurer, Kate grew up in danger. And like any good pirate, Dunstan enjoys taking risks and laughs at death. Dunstan died laughing. Kite focused on the iron block. Dunstan looked back and took up the promise of riches and glory promised by these people who were always looking for whatever treasure they could find. Of course, treasure was not his main concern. He can buy whatever he wants in the store.
Princes are usually moonlighters.
Within three years, Dunstan and his family had found enough treasure and enough business acumen to cover every aspect of Princess Moonflower’s bedroom. Dunstan’s glasses were more rose-colored than Kate had imagined. Dunstan may only be 10 years old, but she is a constant source of energy and determination.
Plus, she has, at least in Kat’s humble opinion, the best older sister in all of Realmguard, watching over her every step of the way.
So, a couple things to note here.
Kat turned into “Kate”, which is not entirely unreasonable. Dunstana turned into “Dunstan”, which is also not shocking, I’ve only seen “Dunstana” as a name a handful of times in real life. She also turned into a he, even though “sister” stayed pretty consistent.
“Realmguard” is interesting. In context, the -gard in Realmgard is supposed mean something like “region.” But in Germanic languages, -gard can also mean “protection.”
For example, Midgard means something along the lines of “the middle enclosure” and the name Hildegard, depending on how the -gard is interpreted, means either “protectress in battle” (where -gard is ‘protection’) or “woman of the battlefield” (where -gard is ‘demarcated area’).
And, again, a couple of things ended up going to really weird, borderline inappropriate places for reasons I don’t entirely comprehend — so much so that I didn’t really feel comfortable including them here unedited and got rid of them. On the plus side, they weren’t really that funny, so their absence doesn’t really affect the overall thing.
For comparison, the real Chapter 1 is here:
And Chapter 4 goes live tomorrow.
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