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Re: Round Robin Transcreation

From:Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 14, 2004, 21:06
Gary, did you or someone else suggest this before on CONLANG, about a year
ago?   Because this sounds very familiar!  Several of us pursued a game like
this for about a week.

Sally

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Shannon" <fiziwig@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 3:35 PM
Subject: Round Robin Transcreation


> Here's an idea for a conlang "game": Round Robin > Transcreation. > > The moderator has a list of graded sentences starting > at the most elementary level (e.g. "See the girl." or > "John has a book.") and working up, over the course of > a few hundred sentences, to a more spohpisticated > level (e.g. "Are you seriously suggesting that we just > sit here in the dark until somebody gets around to > rescuing us?") > > Participants sign up to join the game and once a month > or so, when their turn comes around, they get a single > sentence to translate, so the burden of participation > is not exactly onerous. But what do they translate > that sentence into? > > The first player gets a single sentence and nothing > more. That player may create any translation > whatsoever that he or she thinks fits that sentence. > (e.g. "See the girl" -> "Suve kiru.") But the > translator does not get to say anthing beyond that > translation. It's not allowed, for example, to say > "kiru means girl", or to give any hints about how the > grammar works (like saying "Stuve is the imperative > form of stuvin"). > > The second player gets the first sentence with it's > translation and the second sentence (e.g. "I see the > boy."), and nothing else. This player's task is to > translate his sentence in any way he sees fit, as long > as it is reasonably consistent with the translation of > the first sentence. > > The third player gets the entire corpus up to that > point (i.e. two sentences and their translations) and > is called upon to translate the third sentence (e.g. > "The boy has a book."). > > Each subsequent player receives the entire corpus of > translated sentences and is called upon to translate > only one more sentence and add that translation to the > growing corpus. When every player has translated one > sentence the next sentence goes back to the first > player again, and so on around the circuit. > > Players are not to discuss grammar rules or vocabulary > among themselves. Instead, it is up to each player to > make what they will of the grammar and vocabulary > entirely from the existing corpus and to apply that to > the translation of their own assigned sentence for the > month. > > What makes this "game" interesting (in my warped > opinion) is the task of figuring out the grammatical > and lexical rules from the corpus, creating something > new to fit within those rules, and finally, to see > what kind of novel conlang emerges from such a joint, > but non-colaborative process. No one player has the > power to dictate the direction the conlang takes, yet > each contributes something to the mix. In the end it > would probably become a conlang that no one player > would have created on their own. > > Finally, when the game had gone twenty rounds and each > player had translated his or her 20 sentences over the > course of a couple of years, and the two hundred or so > sentences were completed, then it would be interesting > to sit down with the corpus and describe the grammar > that had emerged. > > I have a hunch the resulting conlang would not be > particularly "exotic", and in fact, due to having 20 > players pulling it in 20 different directions, it > would probably end up being a semi-Germanic, > semi-Romance-with-a-touch-of-Slavic, Frankenstein > monster that was, in spite of being somewhat ugly and > unpleasant to the ear, very ultilitarian and easy to > learn. > > P.S. The competative version would assign the same > sentence to two players at a time. Then the remaining > players would vote on the two contributions to decide > which translation to admit into the corpus and the > winning transcreator would be awarded the point for > that round. > > --gary >

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Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>