Re: CONLANG Digest - 20 Oct 2003 to 21 Oct 2003 (#2003-297)

Dirk Elzinga palsalge
>This strikes me as a pretty drastic minimization of what we do. If
>anyone could do it and get a "quality replacement product", then, like
>tic-tac-toe, there wouldn't be much point to it, now would there?
Anyone can do it; some can do it well, and most of those can capture the
desired feel. Few people actually have any skill, and perhaps a tenth of
those are or have been on this list.

>As I recall, the conlanger in question (are we keeping his name secret
>for a reason?) asked something like $3000.00 for his expertise, time
>and trouble. He had used a standard consultant rate, and estimated how
>many hours it would take him to produce a language which was
>backwards-compatable with the original from the first movie and which
>could translate the necessary dialogue. I thought it was a quite
>reasonable figure, and that he had gone about it in a perfectly
>professional manner. But apparently the studio felt as you did (that
>any old slob could do it), and they turned him down.
Backwards-compatability is the special bit, isn't it? That's a reasonable
fee and hardly shocking to a film expected to be as successful as that.

Any slob can create that much of a language with sufficient motivation. Of
course, it takes time to learn to do it well, to avoid simple relexification
of an existing language.

When I said "cheap", I meant less than $5000, I think. For $5000, even my
roommate, who hardly knows linguistics from translation, would make them a
language.

I didn't intend to demean language creation. I know how horribly a language
can turn out in the hands of the uninitiated; I had half a dozen that I
scrapped immediately after starting because they weren't satisfying to me.
Only after I came here and learned how to describe language could I create
something worthwhile.[1] But it's easy to make something that merely make us
sigh rather than making us cringe, something that shows effort and
possibility, at least, if not true success.

[1] On the other hand, what should have been a cur tossed aside lightly has
attached itself to me; Sturnan, a language with no innovation, shall I never
leave.

>Dirk
>--
>Dirk Elzinga
>Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu
>
>"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
>its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie
Apt quote.