English translation of the Knowledge of the World

[PluMGMK]

Occasionally here on this forum (though not as much recently), a discussion about the lore of the Rayman universe starts up. There are certain reference texts used in these discussions, most notably the Knowledge of the World. This being an English forum, the English translation of this text tends to be the version used. However, it came to my attention in recent months that this translation contains a few errors. At this point, even though they are quite minor, reading the official translation almost makes me cringe because it can be misguiding. Therefore, I decided to do my own translation. Here it is, with the most important differences from the official one underlined:

Naïve:
The Yellow Lums are the 1000 fragments of the Heart of the World, broken by the Pirates. They contain the universal knowledge. The more of them you collect, the more of it you will know. At any time, you can access the secrets of the world by keeping F1 pressed.
You must first know that the universe is made of energy. Everything that moves around you, everything that lives, everything that thinks is animated by little magic lights known as "Lums".
There exist four families of Lums. The most important are the Yellow Lums. There are 1000 of them in total. They give knowledge to whomever collects them and they open unknown places…
The Red Lums are full to the brim of concentrated vital energy. They have the power to extend life… The Pirates are crazy about them. Destroy them [the pirates] and you will be able to get back the Red Lums that they have stolen.
The Purple Lums assure the cohesion of the world. Without them, there would be nothing solid, nothing visible. With your fist, you can grab onto them and jump through the air from one to the other.

Neophyte:
The Blue Lums contain the first breath. They are at the origin of all life. Every creature receives at birth its Blue Lum and keeps it until death.
One day, the Lums set about thinking, and their consciousness became incarnate in a strange and marvellous being: Polokus. Polokus is so powerful that the least of his dreams or desires becomes reality.
Polokus decided to use his power to populate the world. He started with the magical beings, and dreamed the fairies. They are his emissaries. From the first four Lums, they fashioned the Silver Lums which give you your powers.
Polokus then imagined the Teensies. Their role is to untangle the roads of the world. They know the secret passages and can lead you to the Hall of Doors where all the paths intersect.
Then, he created simpler beings, the people. The first was Clark. His incredible strength was revealed to be precious when the landscapes needed to be sculpted, the monotonous planes needed to be plied into hills, or the overly violent rives needed to be redirected.

Enlightened:
Afterwards, it was the turn of Globox and his family. They're adorable, aren't they? The sages still don't know what Polokus had in mind when creating them, but one thing is sure: never had he so clearly demonstrated his sense of humour! (That last bit was quite hard to translate, so I don't blame Ubi for chickening out!)
Polokus finished his work of creation by conceiving a multitude of fantastical creatures, like Murfy, the flying encyclopædia in one volume, or even the terrible Eig, who spends his time getting drunk with the fermented liquids of the marsh.
Unfortunately, Polokus didn't control all his creations. His dark ideas and negative thoughts, at their turn, gave birth to strange beasts. Also, take good care not to meet with his nightmares.
After giving the world its inhabitants, Polokus was left with the most difficult task: to create time. He made his way to where the gods of all the worlds meet up, and, together, they undertook to dream the future.
So that he can be warned in the event of a problem, Polokus prepared magical masks at the four corners of the world. Before leaving, he explained to the fairies that all it would take to bring him back is to reunite the four masks.

Sage:
Because he did not want to be brought back by just anyone, Polokus got fierce guardians to protect the masks, endowing each one with weak points that only a pure-hearted warrior could discover…
The period following Polokus' departure was one of the most delicious. A wind of freedom blew over souls. The inhabitants learned to speak and live with nature. All was harmony. Until the day the Pirates landed…
As you know, the Pirates made the Heart of the World explode. They want to reduce us to slavery and pillage the [our] wealth. They are nothing more than soulless monsters, only good for stealing the dreams that they can never have themselves.
You absolutely must bring back Polokus. Only he can allow you to defeat the Pirates. Therefore, quickly reunite the four masks, lest the world and its inhabitants end forever.
Here you are now, very knowledgeable. The moment has come to reveal to you a mystery for which no sage has an answer. This mystery is you. Nobody knows who you are, and nobody knows who your parents are.

Omniscient:
Of all the inhabitants, you are the only one whom Polokus did not dream. And you are also the only one to receive powers from the fairies. Some see you as the chosen one of the gods of all the worlds. Who knows…

[Master]

Wow, I just skimmed it through, but there is some interesting stuff in there, in particular, silver lums being the combination of energies from the other types. Reminds me of Light Eco from the first Jak and Daxter game.

[PluMGMK]

Also, that bit about creating time could also be translated as creating weather, but since it mentions dreaming up the future, that's probably not what it means!

[Haruka]

Interesting thing about the Silver Lums. Are there other translations from other languages?

[The Jonster]

Bump.

Great translation!
I knew about the one blue lum, but interesting note of the silver Lums, I definitely wouldn’t have known this from looking at the official one.

[Aaron]

I didn't know that about the silver lums either, interesting!

[The Jonster]

Was going back through some of my older posts and noticed this, and i wonder: What is the neophyte rank in comparison to novice (the name of the rank in the game)

Also, I still wonder why they never covered the purpose of green lums in this lore.

[PluMGMK]

Dammit, six replies in ten years? This thread deserves more love, for the work I put into it

Was going back through some of my older posts and noticed this, and i wonder: What is the neophyte rank in comparison to novice (the name of the rank in the game)

Well it's called "néophyte" in French, and since that word is used in English too I just left it as-is. But I guess the official translators rightly felt that "novice" was a more usual word to use in English…

Also, I still wonder why they never covered the purpose of green lums in this lore.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the idea of using Lums as checkpoints came late in the development, after this text was already written and incorporated into the game… Before that, checkpoints might have been indicated some other way, or even invisible like the one at the end of the Woods of Light…

[The Jonster]

Oh that's right, one of those few checkpoints that was never explained why it was there and only could be reached if Rayman fell through the hole before breaking the Teensies' cage. The only other one I could possibly think of is that one area in Tomb of the Ancients.

Also, I still wonder why they never covered the purpose of green lums in this lore.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the idea of using Lums as checkpoints came late in the development, after this text was already written and incorporated into the game… Before that, checkpoints might have been indicated some other way, or even invisible like the one at the end of the Woods of Light…

Of course, thinking about it now, perhaps green lums were newly discovered shortly before the robo-pirates invaded and the knowledge of the world had been written long before that which could explain why they aren't talked about, as there were only 4 types/families of lums at the time.

[Master]

Considering that each lum seems to embody its own aspect, perhaps Green Lums embody the aspect of memory, it seems thematically correct.

As for checkpoints as a mechanic, I did bring this up on Robin's video, I noticed that in that beta build there did appear to be set respawn points, but no green lums, so could that possibly be an indicator that they were indeed something that weren't added until later on?

[The Jonster]

Yea that does make sense, when we think of what green lums actually do in the game. So if looked at it that way I could conclude this:

Yellow lums knowledge/wisdom
Silver lums power
(Imagine if there was a lum that granted courage lol)
Red lums life
Green lums memory
Blue lums air
Purple lums uhh structure??

[Hugo]

Wow, it annoys me a bit that they changed it. Thank you, PluMGMK. I may be a decade late but I appreciate it! Saving this to my Rayman 2 folder.

(Eventually I'll get round to analyzing the Japanese version)

[DaveRattlehead]

I must admit that, at first, I didn't understand very well what did you really translate. Reading the text, there wasn't anything different from the text I know in Spanish (in fact, it seems almost a literal translation). So well, thanks to Plum I just found out almost 25 years later that the translation of the game is made from French and not from English! This is quite unusual nowadays, and errors are often seen in the translation when the original work is in French. Thinking about it, it makes a certain sense, people used to study French as a foreign language instead of English, so it was probably easier for them...

[The Jonster]

Well it's called "néophyte" in French, and since that word is used in English too I just left it as-is. But I guess the official translators rightly felt that "novice" was a more usual word to use in English….

I can understand that to be honest. I didn’t even know neophyte was even a word until I read the translation, which probably would have confused me as a kid if the word had shown up in the game.

[PluMGMK]

(Imagine if there was a lum that granted courage lol)

Who needs Lums for that when you've got Plum Juice?

Purple lums uhh structure??

Yeah, structure I guess. Or solidity, or coherence. You could also think of it as being like the Blue Lums represent the element of Air, and the Purple Lums represent Earth. But then the Red and Yellow Lums would have to be Fire and Water, which doesn't really work

Wow, it annoys me a bit that they changed it. Thank you, PluMGMK. I may be a decade late but I appreciate it! Saving this to my Rayman 2 folder.

Ah great! Thanks for your kind words!

(Also, they didn't "change it" as such, they just didn't do sufficient quality control on the translations. It happened in a few other places as well, notably in the description of Murfy in the Rayman 3 manual…)

I must admit that, at first, I didn't understand very well what did you really translate. Reading the text, there wasn't anything different from the text I know in Spanish (in fact, it seems almost a literal translation). So well, thanks to Plum I just found out almost 25 years later that the translation of the game is made from French and not from English! This is quite unusual nowadays, and errors are often seen in the translation when the original work is in French. Thinking about it, it makes a certain sense, people used to study French as a foreign language instead of English, so it was probably easier for them...

Ah, I didn't realize that was so unusual! Surely it makes more sense to translate French directly to Spanish if they're both Romance languages…

I can understand that to be honest. I didn’t even know neophyte was even a word until I read the translation, which probably would have confused me as a kid if the word had shown up in the game.

Well I didn't know either word when I first played, so…

[The Jonster]

You know, reading through all this again, it’s kind of interesting to me that everything in the world is a product of Polokus’s dreams. But it’s not actually him, but the Lums themselves who are the real “highest entities” of The Glade of Dreams.

(Imagine if there was a lum that granted courage lol)

Who needs Lums for that when you've got Plum Juice?

But that only works for Globox though! Could Rayman drink plum juice and get drunken courage like that too?

[PluMGMK]

I don't think Rayman needs any more courage though. He's one of the most courageous individuals in the Glade after all!

[Sabertooth]

(Also, they didn't "change it" as such, they just didn't do sufficient quality control on the translations. It happened in a few other places as well, notably in the description of Murfy in the Rayman 3 manual…)

Could you explain this?

[PluMGMK]

The description of Murfy? The original French reads "* Ubi Soft tient à préciser que ces propos n'engagent que la responsabilité du manuel." I.e. these are the opinions of the Manual, and nobody else. This makes sense, because the game makes it obvious that the Manual hates Murfy. Whereas, the English translation says "* Ubi Soft would like to state that the manual does not accept responsibility for these comments." Which means the exact opposite.

[The Jonster]

So in other words, we should blame Ubisoft for the manual's comments in the English version!

Wow, it annoys me a bit that they changed it. Thank you, PluMGMK. I may be a decade late but I appreciate it! Saving this to my Rayman 2 folder.

(Eventually I'll get round to analyzing the Japanese version)

Oh now I'd be curious to see the results on this.