French RWS titles

I guess this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find it. Does anyone know why the French language RWS uses TdM titles, like le pape, la papesse, le mat, la maison de dieu? It's a standard us games copyright deck. It just seems odd that it's female pope and house of god.

I suspect it is because of French conventions, Marseilles culture is very strong there. It's ironic because most people in English speaking countries don't automatically know what a Hierophant is, either; the nomenclature is as foreign there as it is in France.

closrapexa said:

I suspect it is because of French conventions, Marseilles culture is very strong there. It's ironic because most people in English speaking countries don't automatically know what a Hierophant is, either; the nomenclature is as foreign there as it is in France.

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That's logical, to maybe help people familiar with the TdM feel more comfortable with this deck . The pope isn't as odd to me, since his appearance is still pope-like, but the RWS high priestess is quite changed in my mind from the image of a female pope. I actually had this deck before I got my first TdM, so in effect it made me more comfortable with that unfamiliar deck.

You've piqued my interest, I have a Turkish version at home. When I get back I'll check out how the names are written. I never thought to look.

Well I have the US games Polish version, and those cards translate as I expected to the non-religion specific high priest, high priestess, and tower.

They didn't have to translate it in this way. I've seen French language divinatory Tarot decks using French language equivalents of RWS and Golden Dawn terms so these terms are evidently not alien to the French speaking public. It reminds me of how the Swiss 1JJ Tarot as translated from French into English with similarly absurd results. In my opinion it shows a lack of cultural sensitivity and the end user suffers for it by being deprived of experiencing a deck in its original cultural setting.

I don't know if I would call the Golden Dawn a "culture," exactly, but it certainly is misleading. Although one can assume that anyone who who would want to study the occult aspects of the deck would already know the proper terms, just seems a needless step. Hierophant just doesn't mean the same, either. It is a very specific word used for a specific purpose. The GD didn't change the name of the card for nothing.

On my Turkish edition they did something even stranger. Now, I don't actually speak the language, I'm just inferring here, but the Hierophant and Priestess are called Aziz and Azize, which I assume are the masculine and feminine forms of Priest or Pope. The actual translation is either "powerful" or "saintly." The Tower is called Kule, which I assume is just "Tower" or something similar without the "of God" part. So they kind of mixed a little of everything there.

True, the Hierophant is free from the Catholic Pope, a specific, limited figure. The new French labels just aren't a good fit. My translator is reading those Turkish labels as saint-masculine, saint -feminine and tower, which isn't awful.

I took out the mini New Vision, same card setup with 6 languages stuffed on each card border , just to see how those translations were handled. There are- 3 popes/3 hierophants, 2 popesses/4 high priestesses, and 6 towers/0 houses of god. Pretty haphazard.