New Relay Announcement

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Jan van Steenbergen

> They other relay takes place in a special Yahoo! group
> (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlangrelay). The current relay is
run by
> Natalia Laurila, and - like the Seventh Relay - seems to have died
prematurely.

In that case, I volunteer to start and run a relay, titled "The Other
Seventh Conlang Relay".  On 8 February 2003 the Relay will officially
begin.  If you have an interest in participating, please email me
with the following information:

Name
Language Name
Email Address
Preference for where in the relay you want to be (early/middle/late)

I would also like to know if your language is remarkably "alien"
or "symbolic" or "poetic".


The basic "Relay Rules" essentially from Sally Caves's web site:

I will collect and arrange participants into a list.

A participant will recieve a conlang text and supporting materials.

Said participant will have 48 hours to translate and send on the
sample they get to the next person on the list.  (I may extend this
to 72, depending on the number of participants.)  What they send on
shall consist of the following:

A copy of your text in your language.
A glossary of each word or idiomatic compound/phrase to be put in
list separate from your text.
An interlinear analysis (if you wish) of the grammatical traits of
the elements, words, or phrases in your text. Use English
translations as rarely as possible, here. The point is to avoid
providing a gloss that is almost a smooth translation.
Any other information you deem necessary for the person translating
your text: any special grammatical vocabulary you use, the structure
of your language. You can include links to your conlang's website if
you think this will clarify, but don't rely solely on this means for
explication. The point is to describe the features of your language
as CLEARLY AS POSSIBLE and to make the looking up of words and the
matching of syntax as easy as possible without actually providing any
kind of smooth translation. Remember, each participant only has 48
hours.  So if your language requires calculating Pi to 497 decimal
points using an obscure Estonian algorithm in order to get proper
word order, it is probably not suitable for the relay.

Likewise, send a smooth English translation to the moderator.  For
the sake of this relay, having seen what other folks might
call "smooth", I will take the time to define a SMOOTH English
translation for the purpose of this relay.  Let us start with the
following example:

German:  Guten Morgen, mein Herr.  Wie Geht es Ihnen?  Haben sie
dieser Morgen die Zeitung gelesen?

SMOOTH Translation:
Good morning, sir.  How are you doing?  Have you read the newspaper
this morning?

NON-SMOOTH, or really crappy, translation:
Good morning, my mister.  How goes it with you?  Have you this
morning the newspaper read?

Even worse:
Good morning, my lord.  How goes it you?  Have you this morning the
timely-thing read?


Yes, the latter two can be theoretically understood by a native
English speaker, but they are not smooth English.  A SMOOTH
translation is not a word-for-word rendering of the conlang text.
Thus, if to say "eat" in your conlang, one actually uses a phrase
that literally means "put mouth upon item food chew swallow" and has
that many words, one translates it as "eat" in English, not "put
mouth upon item food chew swallow".


I may split this into two relays, one for far-out languages that are
especially "poetic" or "metaphorical" or have "unique" or "special"
grammatical features, the other for mere mortals like me.

I would prefer direct email on this, since I may miss things sent to
the conlang list.

Replies