quake 2 monsters, i think they are supposed to be speaking Stroggic, not English. But, those random gibberish syllables eventually turned into real phrases in my brain: "and now you die!" was one, and "it's nice to knock on wood" was another one.

I did similar things to the German phrases in Wolfenstein, such as "I'm leavin'" (mein lieben i think), and "Shoe shuffle!" (not sure what that is supposed to be.) 

The Q2 hammer guy's line sounds like "trespasser".
Q1 Enforcer says things like "you there", "stop" and "freeze".
The other monsters just grunt and growl. The vore yodels.

Wolf3D: "Shoe shuffle" = Schutzstaffel (SS)
"Mein Leben" = My life! (who would say that when dying?!) 

... But, what does the Gladiator say? 

Covert advertising. 

"Overwatch!" 

I thought it was "Tah-bee-tah!!!" as if he was calling for his ultra catholic cousin caught behind the stable with the delivery boy... 

Apparently, hard drives say it too:
http://www.bash.org/?24262 

And who could forget those creepy robots in Berzerk?

...

...

Alright. Who can REMEMBER those creepy robots in Berzerk? 

 

that the ... I think the Archfiend in Doom said "Funky fries!" when he died. Maybe it was the Revenant. 

all id monsters sayings sound kinda unintelligible because in this case you don't need to localize them for different versions of the game. of course if u know english rly well u'll recognize something, but generally it's just evil barks that one doesn't need to translate ;) 

Well, the enforcer goes against that idea. Did id not localize the first Quake? 

 

A modern thing. 

Are you telling me that you actually froze when commanded? 

Uhuh. 

And bent over. I need punishment. 

Only the game manual was translated. Monsters and items names and so on.

Hilarious.

Read like a drunk 7 years old wet dream gone wrong. 

I alwaus thought the grunt shouted something like: "why?". This made a real biological sense in my first gameplay with Quake.
Later it changed to "Dad?" which made it a more Odipousical adapture. 

what was the first id game to be localized, anyway? (i.e. in-game menus and text)

Their earlier code was definitely not designed to easily localize, there are strings all over the place (quakec, bsps, engine) instead of one replacable string table, plus the 256-char font doesn't lend itself well to some foreign languages.

Actually, have they ever localized? 

in germany, maybe rtcw? 

I know that has an external string table in multiple languages... 

isn't an id game, is it?