Translations of Ultima VII

The Translations of Ultima VII are truly interesting. Ultima VII was the first time when Origin tried to make their games more accessible for foreign markets. The results are indeed, interesting, as seen below. Note that Forge of Virtue had never been translated, thus these translations are for the disk versions only.

The German translation


The game was fully translated by Origin to German.

The translation work was done in England, but this isn't apparent in the text itself. The text was wonderfully translated and fits perfectly the mood of Britannia. However, the translators were a bit sloppy. The text in the endgame sequence and the last message should the Avatar abandon Britannia, were not translated and are still in English.

The documentation was completely translated as well, The Book of Fellowship has the German title "Die Gemeinschaft" (since in English only "Fellowship" was the title). The title of the game itself was also translated to "Die Schwarze Pforte" and is seen on the game box.

The voice of the Guardian however is a topic on itself. It was clearly done by no native German and they also forgot to apply the needed filters. The result is that the originally intimidating voice of the Guardian now sounds rather bland. Also they had to remove some of his laughter to fit everything on the disks (since German needs more text).


 * Watch the German intro
 * The German Quotes (Yes, they translated them!)



The French translation


The game was also fully translated to French by Origin.

(It is sadly impossible to gauge the quality of the text, since this author doesn't speak French. An author how does so hopefully can add this information...)

The documentation was translated as well, and the Book of Fellowship has the French title: "La Confrerie" (It means the same as "Fellowship"). The title of the game itself was also translated to "La Portre Noir" and is also seen on the game box.

The voice acting of the Guardian... While here the correct filter for a deep voice was applied, they forgot the echo effect. Also, the Guardian here sounds more like a bored salesman than an extra-dimensional megalomaniac. It robs him much of his menace.


 * Watch the French intro



The Spanish Translation
The game was also fully translated to Spanish. The Floppy version was exactly as the others, map included, but the cd version was a budget one with all the documentation in PDF format. The title of the game wasn't translated, but all the spanish game magazines talked about it as "La puerta negra". There wasn't any translation of the expansion pack, but they perfectly translated the quotes.

As a cusiosity, we can say that the voice of the Guardian, unlike the other translations, was close enough to the English version, and the final credits were almost perfect.

Other Languages


Other languages where only the documentation had been translated are Polish and Chinese (in Taiwan). The Polish Book of Fellowship is called "Bractwo".

There is also a russian translation, made by fans, of The Complete Ultima VII.