Author Topic: The Lords Prayer thread  (Read 25102 times)

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Qvaak

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The Lords Prayer thread
« on: March 23, 2012, 04:03:55 am »
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.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2012, 04:33:05 pm by ingsve »
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ingsve

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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2012, 05:23:41 am »
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.

It depends on what you mean by prominent but I would think that the closest in terms of secular texts would probably be some type of well-known song lyrics or perhaps also movie quotes but that's stretching it a bit thin.

If you mean secular textx that are prominent in that they have also been translated into many languages then I can't really think of any that could rival various religious texts.
"I just need to rest, that’s all, to rest and sleep some, and maybe die a little" – Samwell Tarly

Najahho

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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2012, 12:54:37 pm »
The Lord's prayer could be very interesting in Dothraki!

Let's give it a try then:
Zhey ave kishi fin she asavva... "Our father who is in heaven"

maybe: hake shafki nem chomo "thy name be honored" ?

khalasar shafki jadi "thy horde come" ?

dirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)
« Last Edit: March 25, 2012, 08:05:47 pm by Niqqo »
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Qvaak

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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2012, 06:15:29 pm »
Quote
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:
Zhey ave kishi fini vekha she asavva
Vekhat is an exceptional word in that is assigns the subject to genitive; so fini is indeed a singular animate noun, even though the looks are a bit misleading.

Quote
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.
I think there is an experssion in dothraki for a third person ...optative? imperative?... degree/engouragement thingie. It's probably that infinite into accusative thingie. I'll probably manage to ask on the IRC tonight. My guess now would be:
Vichomerates hake shafki.

...more later
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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2012, 09:06:37 pm »
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"?
« Last Edit: March 27, 2012, 01:30:15 pm by Niqqo »
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Hrakkar

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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2012, 01:54:00 pm »
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!
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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2012, 02:38:41 pm »
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!

But it's actually a formal imperative.
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Qvaak

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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #7 on: March 28, 2012, 03:59:11 pm »
Quote
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.

What we can learn from here, though, is that the verb suffixes in Dothraki aren't very good at making the verb conjugation clear. There are a lot of same suffixes used for different things, and syntax and noun cases play a huge role in further clarifying the way of verbing. Imperative sentences don't carry subjects. That's how we recognize them (well, informal imperative carries an unique suffix, but the formal one really needs to have the correct syntax). There's probably no grammatically correct way to use the regular imperative (formal or informal) with any other person than the second. The use of passivizing particle nem is intriguing, but probably no particles (except vos) can be used either, and I'm not sure, how it would parse, exaclty.

I asked mr. Peterson about impersonal commands, and it seems I happened to be right: "Vichomerates hake shafki." really is a syntactically sound way to express the sentence. There were only a vaque hints pointing to this before, but I'll try to update the Wiki now that we know.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2012, 05:13:50 pm by Qvaak »
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Re: Re: Passover:The four Questions
« Reply #8 on: March 28, 2012, 10:13:48 pm »
Quote
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.

Actually yes, yes I was going exactly for that.
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Qvaak

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Re: The Lords Prayer thread
« Reply #9 on: March 29, 2012, 02:02:08 am »
Quote
Actually 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.

Quote
khalasar shafki jadi
We 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.

Quote
dirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)
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:
Tates ki athzalari shafki, ven she sorfosor ven she asavva.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2012, 02:37:28 am by Qvaak »
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ingsve

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Re: The Lords Prayer thread
« Reply #10 on: March 29, 2012, 04:12:50 am »
Quote
khalasar shafki jadi
We 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.

How about vekholat? Wouldn't that mean "to begin to exist"?
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Re: The Lords Prayer thread
« Reply #11 on: March 29, 2012, 07:05:25 am »
Quote
Actually 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.

Why not? A formal imperative to replace a subjunctive. I think it works just fine. The "let's" construction seems too colloquial to me.

...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.

Quote
khalasar shafki jadi
We 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.

Quote
dirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)
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:
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"?
Athhajar vidrie anna ayyey

ingsve

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Re: The Lords Prayer thread
« Reply #12 on: March 29, 2012, 11:31:15 am »

...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.

The verb is definately needed. You can only use the non-verb construction for copula if you have a situation where "(pro)noun is noun". The preposition is not enough to change the meaning into (pro)noun is in noun, it only makes in ungrammatical.

Quote
khalasar shafki jadi
We 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.

I think rhaesh is fine. That's the word you would use in any other situation to translate the word kingdom and I don't see why this should be an exception. If you want to make it more bombastic then perhaps something like rhaeshof could also work.

Quote
dirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)
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:
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"?

There are lots of translations that use a different parsing. The traditional swedish version is "Let your will be done so as in heaven so also on earth".
There is nothing wrong with ven she sorfosor ven she asavva, that's simply how you parse it in Dothraki.
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Hrakkar

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Re: The Lords Prayer thread
« Reply #13 on: March 29, 2012, 01:31:58 pm »
for the khalasar vs rhaesh debate, here are some more thoughts (coming from an overtly Christian perspective, but the discussion here is very good). 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.

Any thoughts?
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Qvaak

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Re: The Lords Prayer thread
« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2012, 11:42:59 pm »
Quote
How about vekholat? Wouldn't that mean "to begin to exist"?
Quote
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.

Quote
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.

The "let's" expression may seem colloquial just because I wrote what little we knew about it in the wiki, and I'm no word smith. I've tried to update the explanation a bit now that we know more.
The problem with formal imperative is that it's rather unlikely the way it's used is grammatical. I think I have specifically asked about using imperatives in third person and got a 'no'. I can't swear I have, but there certainly has been conversation around the subject.
And the further problem is that while grammatically broken language sometimes works in poetic context, with these sentences there is an easy grammatical or near-grammatical way to interpret them, so there's little chance that the strange imperative syntax would be communicated to the audience.

Quote
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.

Quote
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."

Quote
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.

Quote
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.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2012, 06:23:49 am by Qvaak »
Game of Thrones is not The Song of Ice and Fire, sweetling. You'll learn that one day to your sorrow.