How do you say "Rome at War" in Chinese?

[AvivSharon]

Hi, my name is Aviv and I volunteer on a team called Wildfire Games.

We made a game modification called "Rome at War" and we noticed downloaders were mostly coming from China

Freetranslation.com gives this long string: 罗马处于战争中 .

Google translate gave this: 罗马战争.

I identified "Rome" (罗马) in both. I'm not sure it's the right "Rome" though - we want the Roman empire, if there's any difference, not the city. I also gathered 战争 means "war".

Google translates 罗马战争 back as "holy war", which is strange. Is that okay? Does Google's translation suffice, or do you really need any connectors like 处于 and 中 (which probably mean "in the middle of a state of...")?

What do you guys say?

[leeyah]

No need to worry about misunderstandings in the name of Rome in the given context, 罗马之战 is indicative enough. Or if you want to make double sure 罗马帝国之战.

[AvivSharon]

ok, I'll go with 罗马之战

罗马 - Rome

之- (possessive, modifying, or descriptive particle)

战 - War

Thanks, I learned a lot

[trien27]

Rome at War

Depends on how you want to translate it.

罗马之战 = War or battle in the city called Rome. 罗马之战 like 赤壁之战 [battle at Red Cliff] which is indicative of a certain location like a city, town or village, etc...

罗马帝国之战 = War or battle in the Roman Empire.

在战争中的罗马 = A Rome which is [currently] at war.

罗马 = Rome; Roman, derived from "Roma" in Italian.

帝国 = Empire

罗马帝国 = Roman Empire

赤壁 = Red Cliff

赤壁之战 = a famous battle in the Three Kingdoms period in ancient China across from a place called "The red cliff". Source: The movie Red Cliff

之 = possessive

战 = abbreviated from 战争 = war / battle

在 = in; on; at

中 = center; central; China; in the midst of

的 = possessive.

Edited August 1, 2009 at 10:29 PM by trien27
additional information

[AvivSharon]

I was aiming for:

• "Rome" (the empire, but really I just want the shortest way to put it - 罗马)
  
• "at War" as in "it fights", "it wages a war"
  

[BrandeX]

ok, I'll go with 罗马之战

better skip that one then, or people will expect a game where they are fighting inside the city of rome. Maybe a raid on the vatican or what have you, lol.

[chenpv]

战时罗马

[leeyah]

There was a movie about the Roman Empire called "Struggle for Rome starring Orson Wells, translated to Chinese as 罗马之战

http://www.wbmovie.cn/movie.asp?id=7641

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Struggle_for_Rome

战时罗马 sounds like "War-time Rome", which could be interpreted as a period during WWII.

罗马之战 IS about the Empire, not the city of Rome as capital of Italy, but anyway, I think you'd better go for 罗马帝国之战 or just 罗马帝国. No ambiguity there, besides there are one or two PC games with that name already, and all about Ancient Rome, which is what you need.

http://youxi.zol.com.cn/pc/index6451.html

[AvivSharon]

• Does "(State)之战" mean "War taking place inside (State)" or "(State)'s war"? If it is ambiguous I would rather not use 罗马之战 because it's not necessarily inside Rome, especially not the city.
  
• What about 罗马的战斗 or 罗马的战争, are those good translations for "Rome (empire) at war"?
  
• What's the difference between 战, 战斗 and 战争? Are the latter characters qualifiers for 战? (I know nothing about Chinese, sorry). I gather 战斗 is like "fight" or "struggle".
  

[leeyah]

AvivSharon, if you can't read Chinese, it will be difficult to explain. But, basically the characters 战 & 争 both imply some kind of fight/strife, but only 战 is defined as 战争，战斗 = war, so, for the sake of conciseness most words which use them are abbreviated to only 战. There are also a number of war-related expressions with 战 as the last character.

But if you want to be precise you may also want to consider 罗马帝国开战 where 开战 means wage (literally open, ie start) war upon: 匈奴人头领阿提拉与东罗马帝国开战 = Attila waged war upon the Roman Empire.

or even better: 罗马帝国作战 which, in fact is literally the closest to what you're looking for "Rome at War" (作 = "do/make" + war): 匈奴人与罗马帝国作战的故事 = the story of Rome at war with the Huns, & it means the same the phrases as 罗马帝国进行战争/战斗 or 罗马帝国在战争

Does "(State)之战" mean "War taking place inside (State)" or "(State)'s war"? If it is ambiguous I would rather not use 罗马之战 because it's not necessarily inside Rome, especially not the city.

Have a look at these 罗马 related sentences, they all imply the achievements of Ancient Roman Empire (law, science, commerce, etc) & even if you can't understand Chinese, have a look at: http://bbs.iask.ca/site/topic/6077 The title says: Yellow race and Rome at war, 黄种人与罗马帝国之战 , or Yellow Race at war with the Roman Empire. It does not imply war within the city of Rome, in fact it is a well known historical fact that the Chinese of ancient times never ventured that far to the West ;)

I hope this helps & now it's up to you to choose whichever you like best.

Edited August 5, 2009 at 01:32 PM by leeyah

[AvivSharon]

Thanks, leeyah, you've been a great help. I like "Rome does war" and I think I will abbreviate to 罗马作战.