Re: My first translation in Moten! Champagne for all!

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Tom Wier wrote:
> > Well, no one's forcing you to take part in a Babel translation project.
> > You can do whatever you want.  How about making up your own
> > scriptures to go along with your culture? I'd be interested to see
> > those, because that's something I've never seen before
> > for a conculture. :)
>
> I have already done so. While not about every god in the pantheon I've
> posted a little essay on, but there is a temple catechism and a few
> stories about the elder gods.
[...]

> Just as there isn't one God, there isn't just one Book.
Exactly. Valdyas also has books about the gods, as there are history
books, bestiaries, herbals, hunting manuals... but there's no *one*
book that's "The Book" that has absolute authority, like the Bible
(or if you're so inclined the Quran or whatever). Even mythology
that's written down doesn't get the status of canon, it remains
"stories" though one or more versions may be accepted as "true
stories", on the same footing as history or travellers' tales.

There are no written instances of "the" moral code, though specific
groups may lay down something appropriate for members of that group
(like the Charter of the Guild of Anshen).

There is no organized missionary work; Valdyans don't think that
people who have their own gods should leave them for the Valdyan
gods. Anyway, neighbouring peoples usually turn out to have much the
same gods under a different name, and perhaps showing a different
face. There may be some speculation among scholars who *really* made
the world if there's a different creation story in Iss-Peran or
Velihas or Solay, but most ordinary people aren't interested in
scholarly quibble.

> On the subject of the Bable translation - I'm encouraged to do it,
> and I wanted to make clear why I won't.
If I did the Babel story, I'd have to introduce it as either history
or mythology: a story about *all* the people in the world in the
distant past, that is, about "our" history. It's so obviously not
part of any tradition in the world where Valdyas is, that I don't
want to deliberately introduce it (this is what I meant when I said
that I didn't want the Bible to influence Valdyan culture).

The story about the woman saving an altar from being desecrated does
fit into the Valdyan corpus of storytelling: it's about one woman and
some other people, obviously in a foreign country where they have
different gods.


> But if there's a big project
> where I can show off my conlang, I want to be part of it!
Me too!

            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastinay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
       http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
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