#pathologic fandom

I’ve taken a few philosophy classes in uni, I’m very aware that the first game especially is talking philosophy, so much damn philosophy. The dialogue is just like that? Everyone in the town talks like that? My god y’all who got through p1 are so much stronger than me I can’t even survive a 2 hour philosophy lecture without feeling like my brain no longer functions. That being said I know how important understanding someone’s specific wording can be to getting their philosophical views. And it just gnaws at the back of my head that philosophy in translation tends to not convey the exact intended meaning. I’m curious about the quality of the translations but I’m also aware some things might just translate poorly! It’s just a flaw of translation!

Then there’s this one specific point in my Pathologic obsession. It’s when I came across YouTube user Хаба and their video “Чёрный человек | pathologic”. And in case you aren’t already aware it is a breathtaking, atmospheric animatic about Daniil set to a. . . to a sung recording of a piece of Russian Poetry written in fucking 1926 I’d never heard of before. And my friends, my dear fellow fans. When I tell you this one animatic of a character from a video game I hadn’t even finished yet got me thoroughly obsessed with a poem written in another language in 1926 I am telling you nothing but the truth. I will spare you the real details but suffice to say I browsed translations for hours, tried in vain to find someone who had analyzed it in English, and ultimately just tried to do a close reading of it myself high school English class style.

And lastly and most simply. I can not communicate with a large portion of the playerbase without a shitty online translator who I know can not be trusted for what my beloved fellow fans want to say. And even if I could find a great translator I feel it would be a bit rude and maybe kinda anglocentric to reply paragraphs of English at them and expect them to translate everything in kind.