[Project] Accurate voice commands (Please share your knowledge)
 

Hello fellow Kaleuns :)
I've recently started a project to bring voice commands to silent hunter 3, specifically targeted at the German installation. This started due to the innaccuracies of SH3speech - which, granted is an awesome addon for an English installation - as it did not perform so well with the German language.

This is where my project comes in.
However, I have recently hit a bit of a brick wall in terms of commands. I am aiming to provice historically accurate commands - such as "drei mal äußerste kraft voraus" (Trans: 3 times massive speed ahead) instead of the 'Wahnsinning kraft voraus' (Trans: Insane speed ahead). The former is the command officially used by the Kriegsmarine, being equivelant to the English "full speed ahead".

However, I cannot find any more information in regards to the official (and perhaps even inofficial) commands Kaleuns used during Wartime. This is where you guys come in.

Please share any knowledge you have on the commands used during the war. Of particular importance are torpedo, submarine movement and flak/deckgun related commands.
Thank you all in advance :)

Well - there is a difference between the official - correct - orders to tell the engine room "all enginges full ahead", or the casual cool commrade tenor of "give us all we have".
On a U-Boot the official terms may have been used within the harbour area - under possible observance of any Kriegsmarine brass - but during the patrol it was common to ease and slang the commands.
In cases of insubordinance the superior felt back to the official terms, to stress the gravity of the situation.

I guess "three times full ahead" (drei mal aeusserste Kraft vorraus) relates to a vessel with three engines.
"Beide Maschinen/Diesel (or slang:Jockel) volle Kraft voraus!" would be apprpriate in our case.

Welcome aboard.

Thank you for your insight Mittelwächter. On that note, do you know any place listing either slang and/or official commands? I've been searching the web the past couple of days, and the most I could find was this on diving: http://www.uboatarchive.net/DivingRegulations.htm

You wouldn't happen to know of any other such documents? And please share some of the slang commonly used for commands regarding speed/diving/etc, or direct me to websites/articles.

Thank you again for your help.

Aren't these the correct orders?

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps669049d1.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps4f9f0696.jpg

I've been using the Das Boot Sound Mod since forever, and always thought they had it right.

Sorry, but I'm not aware of any listings of commands for use aboard a navy (Kriegsmarine) vessel - neither official nor slang.

Wikipedia has a listing of expressions and nicknames used in German soldier speek:
http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Verzei...ache#Wehrmacht

Watch "Das Boot" or "Duell im Atlantik" and maybe some German propaganda movies at Youtube. You'll catch one or the other command.

An old-fashioned public library will certainly have some nice readings about naval warfare - including used language and commands.

Aarnoman - am I to take it that you're a native speaker? If so just as a matter of interest I'd love to find out what some of the other speaking bits are, like for when the guns are being manned, not enough crew in the engine room, plot a new course, are etc. I'm learning German but can't really work out what these are saying.

As for the commands, as has been pointed out orders like 'all ahead full' by definition tend to be shouted in the heat of battle so there's some variance. I've noticed DBSM has some discrepancies. This is what it should be in the textbooks:

1/5 - Kleine Fahrt
2/5 - Langsame Fahrt
3/5 - Halbe Fahrt (think this is Grosse Kraft in DBSM)
4/5 - Grosse Kraft (Volle?)
5/5 - Äusserste Kraft (Wahnsinning)

Have a look at this.

Preceded usually by "Beide/Backbord/Steuerbord Maschine" and followed by 'Voraus/Zurück" as appropriate. Personally I'd like to see 1,2,3 and 4/5 with the proper speeds spoken as above. I like the sound for silent speed, where they whisper it and then go to 90 rpm - I think ripped straight out of Das Boot.

But perhaps a shouted "give her everything she's got, chief!" for 5/5 speed. Glad someone else noticed this.

Hello again, thank you all for the information :)

Sailor Steve, yes, that seems legit. Thank you very much for that picture, it clears up all the uncertanties with the speed commands (at least the official ones). Thanks again!

Mittelwächter, cheers for your input. I'm currently going through the list, and it's pretty informative. Already added a good 10 commands from it. And yes, I'll make a note of the movies - time to watch Das Boot again (here come another 3 and a bit hours well spent :) ). Thank you!

And finally, Gustav, thank you for the information and link, turns out to be very helpful! Love the vocabulary at the end, so I'll see what I can pull out from it. And yes, I'm a native speaker (although in all fairness it's been 7 years since I moved from a German speaking country to NZ...it's a tad rusty :P). And yes, I'm happy to help you with the German speech thing, just let me know what you want translated and I'll get to it as soon as I can.

Thank you all again! And if anyones has any other information on this topic, please don't hesitate to share!

I've had another look and it seems like (as usual) I'm getting mixed up. I've been mixing and matching sounds for so long that I thought I just had DBSM - when in fact I've got a mix of Thompsen's Sound Pack with a few from DBSM.

The engine room commands in DBSM (just re-downloaded, the ones from Das Boot) are the right ones Sailor Steve as you say. I had the 'stock' ones which are in Thompsen's pack which still have wahnsinning, volle etc.

So ignore my above post about the DBSM ones being 'off'. And 'off' or not, I'm still really appreciative of the time and effort people put in to improve the game with these mods. Hope no-one thinks I'm shimfing because they're not 'perfect'.

Aarnoman thanks for your kind offer of the translations. The two that really bug me are "NaO_K_Plotting_course" and "WaO_K_Secure_the_deck_gun", which are both in Thompsen's Sound Pack V3.2cg/Data/Sound/Speech/1. Think the latter involves something about getting a cigarette off the sergeant but it's too fast for my meagre German :oops:

Do you mean your German is rusty, or New Zealand is? :hmmm:

NaO_K_Plotting_course:

"Berechne Kurs" - Calculating Course
"Wir brauchen die Karten" - We need the maps
"Einen Moment" - One moment
"Wir sollten hier verschwinden. Das hier ist ja nichtmal unser Sektor" - We should disappear from here. This is not even our sector [as in, they are not at their assigned patrol grid]
"Konzentriere dich" - Concentrate!
"Bitte sage das du weist, wo wir hingehen" - Please tell me you know where we are going
"Ob dieser Krieg jemals aufhört" - [I wonder] If this war will ever finish...
"Wir können ja nichtmal in ruhe einen Kaffee trinken ohne das diese Schweine irgendwelchen Mist auf uns abwerfen" - We can't even drink a Coffee in peace without these pigs throwing some sort of **** at us. [I belive this is in relation to british ships impossing huge losses on U-Boots (as this is taken from Das Boot)
Also, this one is perhaps better translated to the english as "... in peace without these pigs flinging **** at us]. Yes, German is a beautiful language :P

On WaO_K_Secure_the_deck_gun, I'm just getting the standard "Deckgeschuetz sichern" (Secure the Deck gun). Maybe this one is from the DBSM instead? If not, I'll happily look at it if you can upload it :)

My German :P

Hope this is of use to you. Anyhow, please keep any information and links coming. :)

Wow ... brilliant! Thanks for that! No way I would have got that despite hundreds of re-listens :p

Damn, now I can't find the right deck gun file. I'll have to have a look when I get back to my computer and dig out the file from my data folder, wherever I got it from. I'll PM it to you when I get it.

Cheers for the help!

Hey again everyone.
Would anyone here know where to find any Kriegsmarine-related documents? Been searching for the past 4 hours now, with next to no results. Any related to UBoots would be particularly helpful right now. :)

And on another note, my avatar just got a tad scarry :P

I can pay you back for helping me with those translations :salute:

What specifically are you looking for? Period documents, or are transcripts okay? On what subject? The best site out there for archive stuff is U-Boat archive, which has an ever-growing collection of KTBs as its main attraction but a wealth of other info. http://www.uboatarchive.net/

Of course http://www.uboat.net/ is a good one for info on things like individual boats, commanders, dates, sinkings, tonnage etc.

If you can't find what you're looking for let me know, I've got a pretty big library of U-boat books I'd be happy to look some stuff up for you.