Re: Another little translation exercise

On Sat, 3 Apr 1999, Irina Rempt wrote:

>
>    Beginnen can ick, volherden wil ick, volbringhen sal ick
>
> In English:
>
>    I can begin, I want to persevere, I will succeed.
>
In Denden the parallellism gets lost too, due to to the
modal system:

do    fainor yindad.ini,    do    ilor     suru.ni, do    quelday.ju.ni
1sMGH begin  be-able-to.HAB 1sMGH continue want.HAB  1sMGH succeed.CRT.HAB

There's not much formal difference between verbs and nouns: both
can be pluralized, modified (and there's no formal difference between
adverbs and adjectives in Denden) and both can denote quality or state.

It would be entirely correct to give _fainor_ and _ilor_ the habitual
aspect <-ini> HAB too. The last phrase uses the certainty aspectivizer,
to indicate that success is, well, an undoubted certainty:

do    fainor.ini yindad.ini,    do    ilor.ini     suru.ni, do    quelday.ju.ni
1sMGH begin.HAB  be-able-to.HAB 1sMGH continue.HAB want.HAB 1sMGH succeed.CRT.HAB

A more idiomatic way of saying this would be:

fainor ilor       quelday ga  do    etand.ju.ini
begin  continuity success NOM 1sMGH be.CRT.HAB
Definitely there will always be to me beginning, perseverance and success.

Where the translation of _etand_ with _to be_ is not entirely accurate:
_etand_ is not much more than a peg to fit modality, tense and aspect on,
and does not have much meaning of itself.

More rethorically put, and more in the direction of the classical language,
den'wenray:

fainor ilor       quelday ga  do    yindad suru etand.ju.ni
begin  continuity success NOM 1sMGH able   want be.CRT.HAB
Beginning, persevering, succeeding I am able to, want to, will attain, certainly.

or:
fainor ilor       quelday ga  do    yindad.ju.ni suru.ju.ni etand.ju.ini
begin  continuity success NOM 1sMGH able         want       be.CRT.HAB

In these two examples _etand_ is needed merely to provide a perfect
parellellism between the first clause and the second clause: it would
not be good style to have three elements in the first and only two in
the second clause.

But these last few examples are getting difficult to translate into
English :-).