Re: Relay Interleaved in English

Paul Bennett <Paul.Bennett@...> wrote:
>=20
> Well, it appears that all the results are finally all in.
    Here is an email I sent to the relay minilist about some problems I =
had
in the translation from Valdyan to Gladilatian.  I guess now's the time =
to
restart this discussion on the list proper.

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    First of all, I realized after I had sent the translation to Nicole =
that
I had made a dreadful mistake.  Well, not dreadful really, but a mistake
nonetheless.  I had somehow missed the plural on the see/hear verbs.  I =
have
no real excuse for this; it was just a blunder on my part.

    As for unavoidable translation difficulties, there were four words in
the Valdyan which gave me trouble, _Donane_, _dolys_, _duyna_, and =
_ilone_.

    Irina included this note about _Donane_:
: Donane, "the Mother", is the goddess of fertility, abundance of
: nature, sexual love and family life.
    This has no equivalent in any gladifer culture, and was one of the
reasons I decided to translate the poem in such a way that it would be =
clear
to a gladifer reading it that it was an alien poem concerning alien =
matters.
I considered a calque on "the Mother", which would be _Fonatop_, from
_fonat_ "mother", and _op_ the proper noun suffix, but seeing that the
Valdyan included an augmentative I decided to include one also =
(especially
since I was trying to do a translation from the Valdyan and not from the
Eng. gloss of the Valdyan).  So I translated _Donane_ as _slfonatop_,
although to be consistent with the usual transliteration of Gladilatian =
into
the Roman alphabet I should have capitalized it, so "slfonatop" should be
"Slfonatop" and "Soslfonatop" should be "SoSlfonatop".

    _Dolys_ was the most difficult word in the poem to translate.  Irina,=
 in
her notes and on her webpage, glossed it simply as "good", but there is =
no
word in Gladilatian which corresponds to all of the meanings of the =
English
word _good_.  In what way are the wind and river good?  Are they moral?  =
Are
they good at their jobs?  Are they good in intention?  Are they good in
deed?  Are they good in the sense that it's good for the poem's readers =
that
they exist?  I figured that they're good for those about them and not =
good
by intent or by morals, so I translated _dolys_ as _vra_.  _Vra_ is =
usually
translated as "fitting", but can also mean "good" in the sense of "good
weather".  I'm still not sure if that's the best translation.

    Irina glossed _duyna_ as "'magnify, praise', ... with a strong image =
of
someone being carried on people's hands, above the crowd".  Although =
praise
is easily expressible in Gladilatian, it takes the form of verifying =
some-
thing's good qualities (for some sense of "good"), and the implications =
of
_duyna_ could not be communicated without making the line very wordy, so =
I
just translated it as _xrtnfu_nryxunuhu_, "[to be] verified by us as
efficient".  The translation certainly lost something there, but I felt =
it
was necessary to maintain the rhythm.

    Irina glossed _ilone_ as "spouses", another alien concept to the
gladifers.  I translated it as _fsumfeap_, "two contemporary family
members".  This, in isolation, could refer to any two members of the same
family at the same time, but the context of the line (specifically the
reference to sex) narrows it down, and if a gladifer knew that the poem =
was
about humans he or she would understand it to refer to a married couple.

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             Dennis Paul Himes    <>    dennis@himes.connix.com
             homepage: http://www.connix.com/~dennis/dennis.htm
        Gladilatian page: http://www.connix.com/~dennis/glad/lang.htm
=20
Disclaimer: "True, I talk of dreams; which are the children of an idle
brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance =
as
the air."                      - Romeo & Juliet, Act I Scene iv Verse =
96-99