Polyglot Adventures
By Matthieu on Sunday, October 2 2016, 13:56 - Permalink
This week I've got some ideas about playing cards to stimulate multi-lingual workshops! The principle is basically to tell stories using several languages..
It is played with "Story cards" showing pictograms suggesting several ideas and words, "Language cards" indicating the tongues to be used, other "Mode cards" indicating tense (past present future) or focus (work jargon, emotions, slang, formal, etc.), and "Action cards" consumed to switch languages and modes.
Several playing styles came to my mind as i was crafting the first items:
- Circle of Interpreters: players form a circle, languages are chosen as link between each player of the loop. Each has 3 story cards in hand. One by one, they lay a story card, and tell the scenario to the player on their left according to the required idiom. The next one adds another story card to the sequence and translates the whole narrative again to his neighbor. This game is rather collaborative, but we may give penalties to incorrect interpreters! This playing style only requires each player to speak 2 languages.
- Free for All: players sit around 3 central decks of cards showing Languages (those that all players can speak), Modes, and Story. Each player has 5 story cards and 3 action cards. A first speaker is selected randomly, and starts telling a (logical!) scenario by laying down his story cards on the story deck. At least one sentence must be made for each card. At any point of time, another player can raise one of his story cards, and will take over the speaker at the end of his sentence. Logical junctions and grammatical correction are necessary, but complains from other players must be made in the same language! If the contribution of the contender is proven incorrect, he takes back his card. Any player can use action cards to switch tongues and modes, even in the middle of a sentence! The winner is the one using up all his story cards.
Practically speaking, printed paper was fixed on beautiful poker cards with tape. Kings Queens Jacks are kept to serve as "Action cards". Jacks and Queens switch to the next language of the pile, while Kings allow to select any tongue directly.
Here are all the graphics !
Comments
Interesting concept
! I may have to choose the players though... not everyone around me is polyglot!
I have a few remarks reading your proposal:
- Some story cards may be biased towards a particular culture. I am thinking for instance to the fork/knife/spoon combo or the caduceus. Does it really matter? We may think of it as an opportunity to learn new things about other cultures. It may even be a feature add more cultural content into the linguistic one, but may also be an obstacle for some people.
- The fact to represent languages by flags is always delicate, because of the political connotations involved. In my company, where we have to deal with this sort of things, we decided to use the language names in their native writing. It may not be that important, but I was just wondering.
- You may want to leave a few blank cards for people to add new languages
I guess you took some of the symbols from the Internet. At some point, if you want I can help you with redrawing them as custom vector images, which could be the opportunity to enforce a common style across the whole deck.
Thanks for the feedback Thomas!
Yes this game is a bit odd and not for any Saturday night chill out..
Pictograms generally bear cultural connotations, especially those pointing at abstract meanings (dove, scale, toilets, crown, etc.) Players can say whatever comes to their mind as long as there is some sensible connection
We had the "slip" and "dance" cards turned into "quarrel" and "reconcile", which helped us learning 吵架 and 和解. The point is to stimulate creativity rather than restrict the story. However once the idea is formulated, it should be translated accurately.
Flags for languages... yes, tricky and arguable, especially for Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese, etc. But it's convenient, elegant, and colorful! For Arabic, it is actually common to use the flag of the Arabic League. I should add a responsibility waiver about any political overtone!
For creative people, i can even give away the DOC file with the original pictures (all cherry-picked from google image last Tuesday, as you guessed!)