Re: Translating from a conlang into a conlang

On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Irina Rempt wrote:
>
> This is where it becomes difficult. The normal Valdyan way to say
> "I'm fourteen years old" is either _iran zaran relyinen amran_ "I'm
> living in my fifteenth year" or _iran moch relyinan amrenan_ "I've
> lived fourteen years"; if someone says that she's lived fourteen
> springs, people will be tempted to ask what she did in summer, autumn
> and winter. _Farinas_ "spring" is a new compound, a use for the
> participle at last: "greening" from _farina_ "to become green", _lea
> farinat_ "spring is beginning". "I've seen fourteen springs".
>
Yes, this seems like a good way of translating the idiom - the
seasons are necessary for the song, of course.

> > Yan t'eheranmamen t'imti esero u?
> Ei! Culea i bastean a bychesat?
>
> I put the exclamation at the beginning, because at the end it would
> be too much like "..., eh?". _Culea_ "who" has no masculine form,
> even though it's perfectly obvious that a male is being looked for.
> _Bycha_ "to demand" has the inceptive aspect and present tense: she's
> expecting it to happen any moment. "Oh! Who is going to demand the
> heart from me?"
>
I wondered why _the heart_ instead of _my heart_, especially
since the original doesn't have an equivalent of _i_ 'from me',
but it turned out that this is a Valdyan idiom.

> > Galla esero ka chenam ye bangu
> Had in craz so cach
>
> Easy, though I couldn't do anything with the nominalizing particle
> ("topic marker", Boudewijn?) and had to get _cach_ "thick" from the

Um, yes. You're right. There are two particles I'm perpetually
confused about, _ka_ and _ga_. The first is indeed a topic marker,
while the second is ordinarily glossed as a nominalizer. I'm absolutely
not sure about the function of _ga_, while I'm merely confused about
the gloss of _ka_.

>
> > "Sero laya", Yudirza yetashmerzo
> Doparne ine cunie laynynat
>
> There's some ambiguity here: either the big sister says that she
> (herself) is pretty, or that her little sister is pretty. The
> Valdyan, unintentionally and fortunately, also has it. _Doparne_
> could also mean "big brother", by the way. _Cunie_ "pretty" is a new
> word from the Spare Roots File. "My big sister says I'm pretty".
>
Yes, the Den'naha punctuation is confusing. I had to have some
way of representing the original punctuation, but it is indirect
speech, if that's the term I want.

Tan te huwanan yan, yumir edo

--

Boudewijn Rempt  | www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt