Dothraki Bible Translation

[HoeriVezhof]

M'ath, eyak! [Last Updated: 02/20/2016]

I started this translation project a couple of months ago as a practice exercise to better my understanding of the Dothraki language. This was a continuation of my translation of the lord's prayer into Dothraki, and I thought it a good choice, as the lack of modern technological vocabulary in the text and that the ancient Hebrews started out as a nomadic people (albeit not horse-riding ones), would make a good text for translation into Dothraki. I'm posting it here in case anyone is interested in contributing to it, in providing  corrections and/suggestions, or simply having a look. I've provided my sources various documents explained below:

Sources:
My main source is the Newly Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible (the best English translation in my opinion). I am using a Hebrew interlinear Bible to try and create a translation as close to the original in essence as possible and the Latin Vulgate translation as a third point of comparison. All of which I will link bellow.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201&version=NRSV;VULGATE

http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm

Dothraki Bible: The document where I do the translations, it is split into four columns:
            1st column: the verse number of each row
            2nd column: the Newly Revised Standard Version in English
            3rd column: the Dothraki translation
            4rd colum: an English gloss of the Dothraki text

      Highlights:
            Yellow: new word derived from other word(s) and derivational affix(es)
            Green: uncertain grammatical construction or vocabulary usage
            Red: lack of proper grammatical construction or vocabulary

Timvir Vichomer Vojjori: This is the Dothraki-only text with the same highlights as the comparative text.

Bible Vocabulary: A list of words in three different sheets:
            Sheet 1- Derived: Words I derived from other Dothraki words with their definition, derivation, and citations
            Sheet 2 - Missing: Words missing in the Dothraki lexicon that the text requires with their citations
            Sheet 3 - Grammar: List o certain grammatical constructions lacking in my understanding of Dothraki, my guess, and their citations

Hebrew Names: The Dothraki translation derives the names of people and place from Biblical Hebrew, not English. e.g. Eve in not Eve or Eva, but Hawwah from Biblical Hebrew חַוָּה - ħawwāh. I have also provided more English-looking forms here for those who prefer them. the document contains 4 different sheets:
            Sheet 1 - Phones: the corresponding phonemes of Hebrew and Dothraki
                  Column A: hebrew letter
                  Column B: IPA symbol(s)
                  Column C: Corresponding Dothraki phoneme(s)
            Sheet 2 - Names: Names of People in the Bible
                  Column A: English name
                  Column B: Biblical Hebrew name
                  Column C: Transliteration of Biblical Hebrew name
                  Column D: Dothraki name derived from Hebrew name
                  Column E: Dothraki name derived from English and/or Latin name
                  Column F: Meaning, etymology, or folk etymology if any of Hebrew name
            Sheet 3 - Places: Names of places named in the Bible; columns same as sheet 2
            Sheet 4 - Misc.: Any other names or words for things listed in the Bible; columns same as sheet 2

My main goal is to translate Genesis and maybe Exodus; beyond that we'll have to see. I only work on it sporadically, line-by-line when I have time, so progress may be inconsistent; still, I'll try to update the texts with any additions, corrections, or alterations weekly on Saturday or Sunday, with a short post on what edits where made.

Hajas! Vatterates yeri vezorat lekhes Dothraki ma allayafates me yeri sekke!

[Khal_Qana]

All downloaded and ready to go! Btw which owl is that? I have the esperanto one 

[HoeriVezhof]

All downloaded and ready to go! Btw which owl is that? I have the esperanto one 

Awesome! The red one is a Roman owl with SPQR on it for Latin. I made it myself! Latin was the first foreign language I seriously started learning (technically the first was high school french, but I wasn't as invested in the language then and very little stuck). Lingua Latina est mater novercaque mearum linguarum nativarum et igitur est meus tertius amor post linguam hispanicam linguamque anglicam. - Latin is the mother and adoptive mother of my native languages and is therefore my third love after Spanish and English.

[HoeriVezhof]

M'ath!

Finals are over for me and winter break is here at last! That means two-ish months of free time to translate! I already did some serious work this Friday and Saturday to celebrate.

Dothraki Bible:
      I added a last updated date to the top and edited by in the header. I also made a lot of minor edits and few major edits, more below.

Timvir Vichomer Vojjori: I added a title page with translation by, edited by, and last updated date. I will also add any contributers and fellow translators here in the future.

Bible Vocabulary: A list of words I made up and words I need for tranlating. Read more about it on the main post.

Hebrew Names: A list of names of people, places, and things in the Bible I transliterated from Biblical Hebrew. Read more about it on the main post.

Aside from translating Genesis 3 & 4, I also went back and made some minor corrections to Gen. 1& 2 and found a system for documenting any newly derived words, any words lacking in the Dothraki lexicon for translation, and highlighting any issues in translation. Normally I would post any edits made to the text and their citation directly to the forum, but since I had to go back and make changes to two full chapters, the list got rather long and I decided to just attach it as a doc. Most (but not all) of the changes were minor and systematic, so you're probably best off ignoring it and just using the updated doc with all the changes made; but just in case anyone wants the list, here it is. I promise the list of edits won't be so long in future posts!

[Khal_Qana]

Gaeeeeeezo, I totally feel you right now. I got my last two finals on Monday and Tuesday (which is the main reason why I've been AWOL on this forum) and I'm so pumped for my month off. Next weekend will be mostly devoted to the Dothraki by writing the first drafts of my Dothraki culture book, helping you with the bibble, and submitting my video application to italki.

Wish me luck!

[HoeriVezhof]

Haha, yup! I'm pretty sure I put more work into this project the last two days than I did the previous two months! One thing's for sure, though: I don't plan on waking up before noon or sleeping before 2:00am for the next week or so and dedicating my free time to this project, my conlang, 3% on Netflix, and maybe finally getting to the A Song of Ice and Fire books

[Hrakkar]

Athdavrazar! Major Kudos to you zhey HoeriVezhof! I am really interested in seeing the Bible translated into conlangs, and for a while worked on such a program to translate the Bible into the Na'vi language. In that project, we were not creating any words except proper names. That made coming up with a lot of terminology tough to do, especially because the Na'vi are essentially hunter-gatherers. Dothraki on one had contains a lot more culturally appropriate settings for the Biblical world, but lacks a lot of the 'kind' language needed for much of scripture. Coining additional words is a great idea but with one caveat I think you are already aware of: We can't add any of these new words to the official lexicon becuse all words added there either have to come from David Peterson, or be approved by him (which has happened a couple of times in the past). However, this is novel enough that I will share this project with David.

In any case, I'm looking forward to looking over your work when I have more time.

Keep up the good work and God bless!

P.S. I stickied this thread!

[HoeriVezhof]

Thank you! I love translation in general, especially as it's generally a good learning exercise and boy is this one one!

Coining additional words is a great idea but with one caveat I think you are already aware of: We can't add any of these new words to the official lexicon becuse all words added there either have to come from David Peterson, or be approved by him (which has happened a couple of times in the past).

Yes, I completely understand that these new words are not official and shouldn't be added to the official lexicon without David Peterson's approval. All these new words are, however, derived from Dothraki words only using the derivational morphology listed here in the Wiki and inferences I've made based on canon examples. Most are fairly straight forward:

      mesilat [to be pregnant] + (s)o [dynamic] = mesisolat [to become pregnant]

others required a bit of creativity, but make sense (to me, at least) as a plausable gloss:

      hethkat [to be ready, prepared] + [causative] = ahhethkat [to make ready, prepare (the land), i.e. to till]

and lastly, some is just a placeholder or just the English in brackets if I see no clear derivation:

      athesinasozar gillosori [changing of the weather, i.e. season] placeholder

I just added the new words' derivations on to the Bible Vocabulary page which I'll update after this post.

That made coming up with a lot of terminology tough to do, especially because the Na'vi are essentially hunter-gatherers. Dothraki on one had contains a lot more culturally appropriate settings for the Biblical world, but lacks a lot of the 'kind' language needed for much of scripture.

The lack of 'kind' language is a problem, fortunately that hasn't been too much of a problem in Genesis for now. If I ever get to Psalms, though...*shudders* Dothraki also doesn't have a lot of agricultural vocabulary, which presents a problem as well.

...this is novel enough that I will share this project with David.

In any case, I'm looking forward to looking over your work when I have more time.

Keep up the good work and God bless!

Thank you so much again! Hopefully I will have already correct the countless errors I've caught having gone over what I have done so far!

P.S. I stickied this thread!

 

[HoeriVezhof]

M'ath! Footnotes, Hyperlinks, and a TON more corrections!

So, yeah, I lied when I said there wouldn't be so many corrections next time. Most were minor grammar and typo corrections, some were a change in vocabulary (e.g. Athevar instead of evo, drogikheya instead of rhoa drogikhi. The only major changes were to Gen1:26-27, which I changed to:

[26]Majin Vojjor ast, "Movelates kisha mahrazhes fin vena kisha, vekhates venikhi kishi mra mori;  javrathates?[to rein in; to rule, to reign] eshin havazhi, ma zir asavvi, ma drogikhey, ma ei ivezhe she sorfosor, ma ei filkakis fini filki she sorfosor." 27Majin Vojjor move mahrazhes venikhaan Mae, venikhaan Vojjores move me mora; mahrazhes ma chiories move me.

I'm still not sure if I'm satisfied with it, though.

I also added Footnotes to each chapter. the footnotes contain details about the original hebrew and other text (these taken mostly from my English source) and alternative translation either offered by the English source or provided by me. I've also added hyperlinks to the footnotes as well as to the chapter on a table of contents to make navigating the documents easier.

I think I'm done when it comes to formatting the docs, and I'll be translating each chapter at a slower and more careful pace from now on to avoid such a huge amount of corrections.

[HoeriVezhof]

Quite a few changes again, although this time most have to do with expressing purpose, something I've had a lot of trouble with in Dothraki. I'll be writing up a post on what I've found concerning expressing purpose in Dothraki, but for now everything I uncovered has been implemented in this translation.

Some of the more common or systematic changes were:

all instances of Khal > VEZHAK in small caps
Changed treatment of rhoa from inanimate to animate and changed bare stem from rho to rhoa in all words derived from it.
Removed all instanced of hash were not needed e.g. "Hash fin yer ray et?" [Gen 3:13]
Gen 5 - all instances of ei ashekhi fini X thir meshes > ei asshekhi atthirari X jadish; mra qora > yolish maan; me e avesaan X > X yol maan; irge athyolari X > irge X yol; makhalaleqel to mahalaleqel; Noah > Noakh

[Khal_Qana]

Would it be at all possible to just put this into a google doc and get updates in real time? I think that may be easier then trying to update and sync our two documents.

[HoeriVezhof]

Would it be at all possible to just put this into a google doc and get updates in real time? I think that may be easier then trying to update and sync our two documents.

I much prefer Word over Google docs but I'll give it a try. I update the docs attached to the first post with all the correction I make, though, so everything is up to date. I also won't be making so many changes hereon out. My next post will only have 6 corrections to ch. 1-5 plus the translation of ch. 6, which I have finish but have to look over for errors.

[HoeriVezhof]

Ma'th! Hatif sani kashi anha ray essa!

In Genesis 6 God get fed up with man's violent nature and decide to wipe them off the face of the earth! All but noah, that is, who "was a righteous man, blameless in his generation," commanding him to build an ark to escape the coming flood; Which brings me to some of the issues with translating this chapter:
missing were the follow words:
Gen 6:3 to abide, inhabit, live in
Gen 6:4 hero, giant, "great man" - mahrazhof - "great man"
Gen 6:9 descendent
Gen 6:9 righteous - jil - right, rightful, "righteous"
Gen 6:11 violence - verven > athvervenar
Gen 6:12 to be corrupt - rikholat - to rot; to be corrupt
Gen 6:12 to corrupt - rikholat > arriholat - to cause to rot, to corrupt
Gen 6:14 wood - id?
Gen 6:14 room
Gen 6:14 pitch(sticky, water-proofing substance)
Gen 6:15 length - neak > athneakar
Gen 6:15 width - voh > athvohar
Gen 6:15 height - yath > athyathar
Gen 6:16 deck(of a ship) - torga?
Gen 6:16 complete - malilat > ammalilat (realized the verb annakholat is a thing as I was writing this)
Gen 6:19 male - mahrazhven
Gen 6:19 female - chioriven

The rest are minor corrections to the previous chapters, in particular correctly conjugating verbs that should be in the negative and correcting the derived verbs sashekhihasolat > assashekhikhalat "to make covered in light; to light, give light" and assavevethat - "to cause to be covered in water, to flood." the details can be found in the attached document.

[Khal_Qana]

Gen 6:3 to abide, inhabit, live in

I would say that you could just use the common rule/pattern of augmenting the beginning of the root word, in this case 'thirat', to make it transitive.

Anha thirak = I live/survive (vint.)
Anha atthirak mra okre anni = I live/inhabit in my tent (vtr.)

Gen 6:4 hero, giant, "great man" - mahrazhof - "great man"

I like mahrazhof. I'll also be using this for a story in the Dothraki Atlas, where a giant fall in love with a mountain.

Gen 6:9 descendent

Either use the meronymic or the resultive of 'kim', ancestor. Kimikh che kimmeya, depending on how you want to portray the importance of ancestors. 

Anha nem allayafak ki kimikhi = I am pleased by my descendents
Anha kimmeya ki Valiraki = I am a descendent of Valyrians

Gen 6:9 righteous - jil - right, rightful, "righteous"

Ishish sajila akka.

Gen 6:11 violence - verven > athvervenar

Agreed.

Gen 6:12 to be corrupt - rikholat - to rot; to be corrupt
Gen 6:12 to corrupt - rikholat > arriholat - to cause to rot, to corrupt

Rikh adj. - rotten
Rikhat vin. - to be rotten
Rikholat v. - to rot
Arrikhat vtr. - to corrupt

Yot rikh = the rotten fruit
Yot rikha = the fruit is rotten
Yot rikhoe = the fruit rots
Yot nemo arrikha = the fruit is corrupting itself

Gen 6:14 wood - id?

Ido

Gen 6:14 room

Tricky, but I suggest okri: I little tent.  I'm thinking along the lines of a small, personal place for you to reside in.

Gen 6:14 pitch(sticky, water-proofing substance)

I think you could take a loan word from PIE: pik 'pitch'. Dothrakify it and you either get 'fik' or 'tik'.

Gen 6:15 length - neak > athneakar
Gen 6:15 width - voh > athvolhar
Gen 6:15 height - yath > athyathar

Agreed. Athneakar, athvolhar m'athyathar.

And hey, the Dothraki have now entered the 3rd dimension! I wonder if mathematics can be incorporated later. . .

Gen 6:16 deck(of a ship) - torga?

No that would be the stores and cabins under the deck. Essheya, "the top part", would be more appropriate since the Dothraki really would not have any specific nouns for the parts of a ship. You could also have "Erraeya", which would mean floor or ground.

Gen 6:19 male - mahrazhven
Gen 6:19 female - chioriven

Well what do you mean? Mahrazh and chiori are already the words for man and woman in Dothraki. However, if you're trying to express the idea of masculinity and femininity I get where you're coming from and agree with your translation.

[HoeriVezhof]

I would say that you could just use the common rule/pattern of augmenting the beginning of the root word, in this case 'thirat', to make it transitive.
Anha thirak = I live/survive (vint.)
Anha atthirak mra okre anni = I live/inhabit in my tent (vtr.)

Yeah, I'm still not sold on using any word derived from "thirat" to mean "to inhabit." That could be the case, but it could easily be something like vimithrerat or vinevarat (< nevalat + Durative). Plus I already used "atthirat" to mean "to bring to life." Until we see an example of thirat or any derivative being used that way I'm disinclined to do so.

I like mahrazhof. I'll also be using this for a story in the Dothraki Atlas, where a giant fall in love with a mountain.

Yeah, I was originally just going to use nefilim from the original Hebrew, but I really liked how mahrazhof sounded!

Either use the meronymic or the resultive of 'kim', ancestor. Kimikh che kimmeya, depending on how you want to portray the importance of ancestors. 

Hmm, yeah, the meronymic could work. I also like haesh - "spawn" and I really like the derivation of Romanian "urmaș", "urmă" - track, mark; imprint; footprint + "-aș" diminutive, (shorhaesh?). But while I like that for Dothraki, I wouldn't use it since it's too big of a metaphorical jump for me to feel comfortable using it.

Ishish sajila akka.

Oh, I like sajila better!

Gen 6:14 wood - id?

Ido

Hmm, so do you think ido can be used as both noun and adjective?

Tricky, but I suggest okri: I little tent.  I'm thinking along the lines of a small, personal place for you to reside in.

Yeah, I had trouble with this one too. okri or just okre could work, with okrenegwin being used to mean "house."

I think you could take a loan word from PIE: pik 'pitch'. Dothrakify it and you either get 'fik' or 'tik'.

Nah, I want to maintain any borrowings in-world, so if I were to borrow a word it'd be from Valyrian. Besides, I suspect the Dothraki would have a word for 'pitch' or 'tar' since it's so readily available. It'd probably be related to the name of whatever tree is used to make it, or related to the verb "to melt," or "sap," etc. so maybe fotthaya < fotha "sapwood" or ivisikh < ivisat "to melt."

Agreed. Athneakar, athvohar m'athyathar.

And hey, the Dothraki have now entered the 3rd dimension! I wonder if mathematics can be incorporated later. . .
 

Woops, I added a superfluous l. Considering there isn't even a word for "number" in the current lexicon,  I think it'll be a while.

No that would be the stores and cabins under the deck. Essheya, "the top part", would be more appropriate since the Dothraki really would not have any specific nouns for the parts of a ship. You could also have "Erraeya", which would mean floor or ground.

Considering how many languages I found that derived their word for deck from "roof," "cover," etc., I think you're right, "essheya" our best bet.

Well what do you mean? Mahrazh and chiori are already the words for man and woman in Dothraki. However, if you're trying to express the idea of masculinity and femininity I get where you're coming from and agree with your translation.
 

Yup, "Fichi ma yeroon ei rho fisa, ma mahrazhven ma chioriven ki fekh..."
"Take with you every clean animal, male and female by seven…"