Localizing Scotland in northern Italy (and discovering an unacknowledged Ladin epic saga by doing so)


Play as a carefree party boy with a knack for easy promises and embark on a journey through Trentino castles and forgotten creatures, meet forgotten characters, and befriend quite peculiar familiars. Will you make it out unscathed and possibly not in debt?

Find out in "Avventura nel Castel Besen (?)"!


For once, we had decided to do something simple, to avoid spending the entire vacation at the computer. 

A quick project:
Chiara on the inclusive Italian version,
Davide - being a developer and not a translator - on a version in his regional dialect, trentino, from Northern Italy.

2 days into the translation, and the first seed of creativity creeps in, opening the door to more complications.

"Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of Loch Ness, we used Lake Caldonazzo? And then the Scottish castle could become Castel Beseno!"

How cool was that? A lot. 

But unfortunately, as pretty much with everything, we got carried away.

We innocently wanted to localize Nessie into a Trentino's monster, so we followed mythological links and pages deep down into the rabbitcreature's hole and...

...And we opened the Pandora's box of a a remote local community's ~3000 year-old legend that neither of us had ever heard of, despite a lifetime in the region and a fair interest in epic sagas and the fantasy genre (at least on Davide's part).

Thus, after another two days of staying up until 7 in the morning digging the depths of the internet seeking info about this legend, we drew inspiration from its places, characters, and events to completely transform the Scottish setting into the much more local land of the Ladin, to give you a taste of the ancient and almost forgotten Kingdom of Fanes.

We hope you'll enjoy the ride!

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.