Hahh. My brother and I just discussed the traditional test texts for different languages - and especially conlangs. It seems Lord's Prayer is rather popular. I think that might be almost doable.
Of course, the questions are almost doable too - probably somewhat easier than the Lord's Prayer.
I'm bone deeply unreligious, so it does not make much difference, which religion the translation candidates belong to. Even some unreligious texts would be quite alright, though I wonder if there are any as prominent.
The Lord's prayer could be very interesting in Dothraki!
Zhey ave kishi fin she asavva... "Our father who is in heaven"I too would have started with "Zhey ave kishi". The latter part.. even though Dothraki does not use copula ("to be" in sense of "to equal", "to have an attribute" etc.), you can't, AFAIK, go without a verb when speaking of location. So to say "x is in place y", you must use vekhat, "to be", "to exist". So:
maybe: hake shafki nem chomo "thy name be honored" ?Where does the /-o-/ come from? Even with the nem particle, the verb conjugates normally, agreeing with the subject n' stuff, so as best as I can translate, your line means "Your name grew respected", chomo being the past singular of chomolat, conservatively hypothetical word for something like to grow respectful, to begin to respect.
Well wouldn't Chomo be the formal imperative? Giving us "be honored!". I think that's quite close.
From here I'm a little bit lost. Do we have a word for "daily"?
Well wouldn't Chomo be the formal imperative? Giving us "be honored!". I think that's quite close.
From here I'm a little bit lost. Do we have a word for "daily"?
Its reasonable, as the use in the prayer is kind of past-tensish, anyway.
Keep up the good work!
Well wouldn't Chomo be the formal imperative? Giving us "be honored!". I think that's quite close.Well, kinda, but not really. I had to check the formal imperative myself, to be clear on this, but this is how it goes: for consonant ending stems /-i/, nothing to vowel ending. In negative grade the /-i/ or otherwise the final vowel of the stem changes to o. So for chomolat 'chomo' would be a correct formal imperative, but I don't think that was what you were going for. For chomat 'vos chomo' would be a correct negative formal imperative. That wasn't what you were going for either.
QuoteWell wouldn't Chomo be the formal imperative? Giving us "be honored!". I think that's quite close.Well, kinda, but not really. I had to check the formal imperative myself, to be clear on this, but this is how it goes: for consonant ending stems /-i/, nothing to vowel ending. In negative grade the /-i/ or otherwise the final vowel of the stem changes to o. So for chomolat 'chomo' would be a correct formal imperative, but I don't think that was what you were going for.
Actually yes, yes I was going exactly for that.Alright. Sorry for not getting it. Why chomolat and not just chomat?
khalasar shafki jadiWe have a word rhaesh, which is pretty good approximation of kingdom, IMO, but I think I like khalasar better. It's a good culturalization. I'm less sure about jadat. It's a literal translation, but sounds too concrete to me. Especially since khalasars can travel and thus don't need to metaphorically "come". Of course you might think of it literally even in English: the kingdom descending from the heaven, ie. moving here. I've always thought of it more as "to come into being", "to begin to exist". I might go with yolat.
dirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?Tat should conjugate regularily save for the past singular, where there's that curious irregular epenthetic e at the beginning. Ti should indeed be the formal imperative. The end of the sentence sounds promising to me, though ven needs to be in front of both arguments. I'd change dirge to athzalar. It's just "hope" in the vocabulary, but as a nominalization of zalat, I think the meaning should be spot on. But all in all I'm not at all sure, how that "thy will be done" might work in dothraki. I'll hazard an uninspired guess:
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)
Quotekhalasar shafki jadiWe have a word rhaesh, which is pretty good approximation of kingdom, IMO, but I think I like khalasar better. It's a good culturalization. I'm less sure about jadat. It's a literal translation, but sounds too concrete to me. Especially since khalasars can travel and thus don't need to metaphorically "come". Of course you might think of it literally even in English: the kingdom descending from the heaven, ie. moving here. I've always thought of it more as "to come into being", "to begin to exist". I might go with yolat.
And I'd use that newfound impersonal command thingie even here. So I'd propose
Yolates khalasar shafki.
QuoteActually yes, yes I was going exactly for that.Alright. Sorry for not getting it. Why chomolat and not just chomat?
Edit: Ahh! "Me vafik, zhey khaleesi. Dothraki chomoe mae." from the series. How that hasn't made its way to the vocab. Still, I'm not convinced the meaning fits.
...Thinking further about Zhey ave kishi fini vekha she asavva, I wonder if Zhey ave kishi fini vekhi she asavva would work - or be even better. A relative pronoun in a second person sentence seems a bit odd, but it works unproblematically in English (and in Finnish), so why not in Dothraki too.
Quotekhalasar shafki jadiWe have a word rhaesh, which is pretty good approximation of kingdom, IMO, but I think I like khalasar better. It's a good culturalization. I'm less sure about jadat. It's a literal translation, but sounds too concrete to me. Especially since khalasars can travel and thus don't need to metaphorically "come". Of course you might think of it literally even in English: the kingdom descending from the heaven, ie. moving here. I've always thought of it more as "to come into being", "to begin to exist". I might go with yolat.
And I'd use that newfound impersonal command thingie even here. So I'd propose
Yolates khalasar shafki.
Quotedirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?Tat should conjugate regularily save for the past singular, where there's that curious irregular epenthetic e at the beginning. Ti should indeed be the formal imperative. The end of the sentence sounds promising to me, though ven needs to be in front of both arguments. I'd change dirge to athzalar. It's just "hope" in the vocabulary, but as a nominalization of zalat, I think the meaning should be spot on. But all in all I'm not at all sure, how that "thy will be done" might work in dothraki. I'll hazard an uninspired guess:
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)
Tates ki athzalari shafki, ven she sorfosor ven she asavva.
...Thinking further about Zhey ave kishi fini vekha she asavva, I wonder if Zhey ave kishi fini vekhi she asavva would work - or be even better. A relative pronoun in a second person sentence seems a bit odd, but it works unproblematically in English (and in Finnish), so why not in Dothraki too.
This only if you actually need that verb there, which I'm not convinced about.
Quotekhalasar shafki jadiWe have a word rhaesh, which is pretty good approximation of kingdom, IMO, but I think I like khalasar better. It's a good culturalization. I'm less sure about jadat. It's a literal translation, but sounds too concrete to me. Especially since khalasars can travel and thus don't need to metaphorically "come". Of course you might think of it literally even in English: the kingdom descending from the heaven, ie. moving here. I've always thought of it more as "to come into being", "to begin to exist". I might go with yolat.
And I'd use that newfound impersonal command thingie even here. So I'd propose
Yolates khalasar shafki.
Not sure about this. Isn't "rhaesh" more like "land, country"? It would in any case fail to give the feeling of the realm and its structure, so I prefer to err on the side of the culture. Maybe a compromise with "khalrhaesh", "rhaesh khali"?
Why use "yolat"? "be born"? Isn't that too much interpretation? All translations use "come", why not go by that? The fact that a khalasar can actually "come" might be just a happy event that would help this culture assimilate the prayer.
Quotedirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?Tat should conjugate regularily save for the past singular, where there's that curious irregular epenthetic e at the beginning. Ti should indeed be the formal imperative. The end of the sentence sounds promising to me, though ven needs to be in front of both arguments. I'd change dirge to athzalar. It's just "hope" in the vocabulary, but as a nominalization of zalat, I think the meaning should be spot on. But all in all I'm not at all sure, how that "thy will be done" might work in dothraki. I'll hazard an uninspired guess:
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)
Tates ki athzalari shafki, ven she sorfosor ven she asavva.
The parsing is almost always "sicut in caelo et in terra" even in Ancient Slavic, maybe "ven she sorfosor ma she asavva"?
How about vekholat? Wouldn't that mean "to begin to exist"?
Why use "yolat"? "be born"? Isn't that too much interpretation? All translations use "come", why not go by that? The fact that a khalasar can actually "come" might be just a happy event that would help this culture assimilate the prayer.Jadat might well be the winner. If the word is not totally out of place, it's of course best to stick close to original. The way it's used in ye olde X.NOM Y.ALB expression gives me some trust that it at least might carry the right kind of metaphoric connotations. I just like musing over things. Vekholat, that ingsve proposes, might be a good alternative, much better than my yolat for sure.
Why not? A formal imperative to replace a subjunctive. I think it works just fine. The "let's" construction seems too colloquial to me.Umm. We still have problems hitting the same wave length. Chomat and chomolat are different words, both of which can be conjugated to formal imperative: chomi and chomo. I was wondering, why you used the one that wasn't on our vocabulary page. Both words mean more or less to respect. The former is stative, communicating a static state of affairs, eg. that I respect you. The latter is ...we have used a word 'dynamic'... it should communicate a change in the situation, an active deed. For example the Lhazreen women weren't generally respected, or considered respectable, so (as horrible as it is) it makes sense that the dynamic word was used. The name here, on the other hand, should have a permanent status of being respected, so I think the word must be chomat, if not vichomerat.
This only if you actually need that verb there, which I'm not convinced about.Well, it's not impossible that it might work, but I'm quite convinced otherwise and so seem to be ingsve. Zhey ave kishi she asavva would sound fine to me, but when you throw in the relative pronoun, that just screams for some proper predicate. We have a few examples of vekhat being used to indicate location, even in such simple sentences as "Vo mawizzi vekho jinne," but I find no examples of a location adverb used for a solitary argument.
There is nothing wrong with ven she sorfosor ven she asavva, that's simply how you parse it in Dothraki.Aye. Dothraki uses words like ven, che or ma (also words like kash) usually in front of all the arguments. It's more a syntax thing than a semantical thing. In translation you can often just drop one of the words away: "ven she sorfosor ven she asavva" -> "on earth like in heaven"; "Kash anha adakh, kash heffof samvo." -> "While I ate, the jug got broken."
for the khalasar vs rhaesh debate, here are some more thoughts (coming from an overtly Christian perspective, but the discussion here is very good).Thanks! I try to be respecful. The whole exercise is a bit pointless otherwise.
Khalasar refers to a moveable band of (presumably living) people. Besides move, the band can increase or decrease in number. It is dynamic, but it is physical. Rhaesh refers to the land, physical land that a khalasar might or might not be occupying.
Kingdom as used in this prayer, and as used by Jesus throughout the gospels really doesn't refer to a literal country or people, but more to a concept. It is referring to a state of being where God is in control. Thus a closer match would be a word for 'reign' or perhaps 'leadership'. Unfortunately, I drew a blank when trying to find a Dothraki term that expresses this idea.
I'm guessing khalasar is derived from khal and does not refer to just any band of people, but specifically to a group of people governed by a single khal. I'd guess comparing to kingdom hits quite close. Less kingdom as defined by the strip of land, more a kingdom defined by the loyal subjects, but kingdom nevertheless. Dothraki often tend to ridicule and detest the other ways of life than their own, so I think any idea of reign tied to land would sound less impressive than reign strictly tied to the people.
"Reign" or "leadership" would work, sure. When in doubt, strip the metaphore and go for the idea behind. But I think khalasar hits closer to the original wording and inherits most of it's connotations, so as long as it isn't proven unfit, I'm rooting for it.
Zhey ave kishi fini vekha she asavvaYa. That's about where we are so far. The only thing I'd change is vekha to vekhi. And I'm not happy with tates ki athzalari shafki, even though that was my own take. Athzalar IMO is a solid choise, but otherwise the sentence loses a good deal of the original meaning. It's just hard to come up with more promising wording.
Our father who is in heaven
Vichomerates hake shafki.
May thy name be honored.
Jadates khalasar shafki.
May thy kingdom come.
Tates ki athzalari shafki, ven she sorfosor ven she asavva.
May thy *will be done, in earth as in heaven.
Azhi kishaan hadaen kishi asshekh (can't find "daily" or "everyday" or anything there)I kinda gave up on this line thinking we'd come back to it when we have a word for 'bread', but now that I look at it, it seems completely bizarre to use 'bread', when surely bread isn't the rudimentary everyday item, even if Dothraki are familiar with the concept. Hadaen should be a much better word. The lack of any reasonable word for 'daily' hurts a bit. Because of it the possessive seems much more out of place than it should be. Of course if we'd go speculative enough, we might use something like asshekhay (participle through imaginary verb) or eyasshekh (compound with ei), but that goes far beyond reasonable uncertainity.
Terrific idea taking latin and greek roots to create new Dothraki loan words in order to properly translate the prayer.
Personally, if I am to borrow words instead of just mashing pre-existing dothraki words together, I take loan words from Swahili to complete my translations. P's become F's, B's become V's, U's become either O's or Oo's, and Dh's become Kh's. Simple. The phonology and structure more or less match up, and the cultures in which Swahili is descended from more or less match with that of the Dothraki. However since this is a script with European origin, it makes sense to use the languages that founded European civilization.That's really cool! I must admit I don't know much about Swahili, though I hope the duolingo course will be finished soon, as I'd love to start learning a non-Indo-European and from what I've read off the wikipedia page so far, it seems like a really cool language. I think if I were to borrow words into Dothraki they would be first from Valyrian (of course), and second from arabic seeing as it was David Peterson's phonological inspiration. Also now that I think about it, the indo-europeans were nomadic tribesmen who primarily rode on horseback, so it might be interesting to note how they derived their words for more agrarian-based concepts, tools, and institutions and compare the two.
I would like to contact you in the near future. I would enjoy the practice, especially since it's been a while from last I touched up my grammar. :)That sounds great! I'll warn I'm just learning, though; it's much easier to translate something with a dictionary and reference at hand to fix any mistakes than to come up with sentences on the spot for me, but for that reason I'd be great to practice with someone else! Just message me to exchange contact info.
I agree with Choyosor, very creative! I'm going to pass this on to David, who will also likely be impressed!Wow, thank you! Credit should also go to everyone who posted here before, as I built off much of my translation off what you guys had already worked out. I'd also like to add one little thing with is that I only just noticed the verb annithilat with one of its meanings being to entice and so think athannithizar or maybe even athvirannithisezar would be a better and more Dothraki-based word for temptation than Greek-inspired athvirittesezar. It's been bothering me since I found the word in the vocabulary and just wanted to mention it.