Re: Translation of the Babel Text

>Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>My question is: how did you do it?
>1. Literally / word for word
>2. Almost-literally - conceptually identical
>3. Loosely - replacing some metaphors (e.g. for understanding
>something or for building)
>4. Total replacement - e.g. changing some major aspects of the story
>to fit your culture, or some major assumptions (like the
>personification of Yahweh)
>This ties in to general translation issues, but scriptural texts
>particularly seem prone to be treated as requiring literal
>preservation of the original.
>(I've seen this in other translations also - where people, instead
>of translating the intention of a text, translate the metaphors and
>other items literally... and end up with a cognitive calque.)
When I translated the Babel story I went to the Hebrew text, hoping
to have a translation closer to the original.  When it comes to the
translation of prose, I am pretty much a literalist, Scripture or
other.  Were I translating something from another world, I would
have to either coin words or adapt the foreign word to Senjecan
phonetics.  Fortunately, the Senjecan culture was acquainted with
bricks and asphalt, so there was no problem in the translation.

Of course, I consider it necessary to stick as closely as possible
to the Senjecan grammar.  E.g., Hebrew often links sentences
together with the coordinating conjunction /w@/ or a variation of it.
This is not acceptable Senjecan grammar.  Sentences are not
connected by a coordinating conjunction, so I simply didn't
translate it.

sac' óngüaþ-dzêênüam = Merry Christmas
holy Christ-birth; acc. case with "I wish you a" understood.
Christ = ôngüaþus, anointed < ôngüa, anoint (also embalm)
The elision of "saca" is not standard, but it occurs because the
phrase is time-worn.

sîfa juun-mhêtam = Happy New Year
prosperous new-year; acc. case with "I wish you a" understood.

The Senjecans, however, celebrate their New Year at the winter
solstice.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/senjecas