Translations are done!

The translations are done! Forty-six odd lines of dialogue which took sixty-ish hours over a month to translate into a language I was more or less constructing on the fly. Let’s have some more numbers while we’re at it:

• A hundred and nine affixes of various and assorted uses – inflections for aspect, diminutives, relative clause formation… a rich and varied morphology
• Fifteen free adverbs and conjunctions
• Forty nouns
• Seventy-four intransitive verbs (including adjectives)
• Fifty-four transitive verbs
• Fourteen interjections and stock phrases (including one swear word)

Here’s some of today’s translation notes just to give you an idea of what’s involved. They are presented more or less unexpurgated. I’m not sure how much sense they’ll make to non-linguists, but here goes…

001-17: “I can try to reconstruct her words from the soundtrack using your language and her lip movements as probability guides. One moment.”

This is a long one. Well, except for the end – that’s just good old ts`ikla. It is, for the record, my favourite line in the whole episode. The coolness of such a thing makes me squee. Also it’s probably the hardest line left to translate.

So. “I use your language and her lip movements as probability guides.”

“I use..”
téh-ngih.. – tone sandhi, V1hV2h = first V decreaks and becomes a rising tone.

New stuff: “try” modal affix, “reconstruct” vt, “soundtrack” n, “language” n, “motion” n, “mouth and lips” n, “guide” vt, “probability” n.

Try => statement of future intent, so léé.
Reconstruct => reconstitute, remake… we have `oko.. so “shape” “form” “build”. Building will probably be one of those t- verbs because they tend to involve hand stuff. Also probably short. So.. tïl for build, giving tïl`okoléé-ngih X – “I will rebuild.. X…”

“I will rebuild what she is saying..” – although.. rebuild? Isn’t it more like discovering? Eh. Translation so far:
tïl`okoléé-ngih kadyéé+nyi-rdzah-k`éé`a…

Soundtrack.. sound.. sound from the transmission.. stuff it, yaslkadyadyé-dyurtu – from the transmission.

And now we need grammars:

“using..”
téh-kséTé

Sketching the next part we have..
language-NDiye motion-also lips_and_mouth-rdza (guide-PURP probability)

her lips and mouth: Toka-rdza
move: `ayé
motion of her lips and mouth: `ayérre – -rre is probably going to be -tion in some ways

language: kadyakadya – reduplication FTW

Also possible: `aye-rdzah-k`uunh`a-t`unh Toka-rdza = and how her lips move

So..
“…using your language and how her lips move…”
…téh-kséTé kadyakadya-NDiye `aye-rdzah-k`uunh`a-t`unh Toka-rdza…

And now.. “as probability guides” which I’ll render as “for the purpose of guiding probabilities…”

trhoole = guide vt
probability = something that is probable to one extent or another = `iduunartirtetyeh

…trhoole+léé-ngih-nyïrde `iduunartirtetyeh

So, all together now:
“I intend to rebuild what she says with using (both) your languages and how her mouth and lips moved to guide probabilities.”
tïl`okoléé-ngih kadyéé+nyi-rdzah-k`éé`a téh-kséTé-kuTh kadyakadya-NDiye, `aye-rdzah-k`uunh`a-t`unh Toka-rdza trhoole+léé-ngih-nyïrde `iduunartirtetyeh. ts`ikla.

So. Imagine doing that kind of thing for sixty hours over four weeks, except for the first thirty or so hours you end up throwing away to varying degrees. Bit painful. Yet at the end of it all, I have a writing system, useful dictionaries, lots of usage examples cross-referenced to words in those dictionaries, a rich and productive morphology, and a working functional language complete with a rude word or two.

A useful production asset, then. 🙂

But anyway, that’s a project milestone hit right there. Hopefully I can record and time the rest of the dialogue by this weekend. Then I think I’ll leave sound and dialogue for a bit to tackle some art direction. (And by tackle I mean a sort of oafish rugby tackle that leaves the art direction with broken ribs and a permanent limp. Maybe.)