Author Topic: Help for translation  (Read 17219 times)

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Qvaak

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Re: Help for translation
« Reply #30 on: November 28, 2012, 11:14:09 pm »
As far as Dothraki goes, this question is already answered (you can use she to clarify the syntax, but if you don't, loy is in accusative) so just some aftertoughts.

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As a linguist I don't think you can just say "few days from now" in the sentence and leave it like that, not in any language.
The internet is full of broken language, so googling a phrase tells usually very little, but prepositionless "A few days from now" has made it to even some recent bible translation. The prepositioned version seems more common, but there are other fun adverb version there too, like "not many days hence".
I think the syntax is similar in structure to eg. "ten miles south of the city", where I'd be much more reluctant to add any preposition. Why do these work? Heck if I know. Perhaps modifiers like "a few days from" or "ten miles south of" work already so much like prepositions, that more isn't that crucial.

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I don't think Dothraki is "less preposition-happy than English" it just uses prepositions where it needs to, in this case it needs to, unless you could use an allative, but certainly it needs either a prep. or a case
Dothraki has a case system augmented with prepositions. It generally uses prepositions only where it needs to; it uses prepositionless cases pretty much anywhere where they get the job done. The case system in Dothraki is rather limited, so prepositions have still a big comfortable place in the language. In English there aren't many alternatives to prepositions, so they are needed more often.
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ingsve

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Re: Help for translation
« Reply #31 on: November 29, 2012, 07:26:36 am »
I don't think Dothraki is "less preposition-happy than English" it just uses prepositions where it needs to, in this case it needs to, unless you could use an allative, but certainly it needs either a prep. or a case.

In one of his talks David mentions a hierarchy for how things are done in Dothraki. The hierarchy was Canonical Case Role >> Non-Canonical Case Role >> Object of preposition >> Subordinate Clause. This means that if something can be expressed by a classic use of a case then that always comes first. Non-canonical case role is tied to what David calls "Verb Classes". This means that certain verbs take on a specific meaning when their object is in a non-canonical case. A typical example is the expression "I ride next to Khal Drogo". Here one might expect a preposition to be used but not in Dothraki. Instead you use the verb dothralat in combination with the genitive case which in this situation is non-canonical. So the sentence should be Anha dothrak Khali Drogo. There are lots and lots of verbs that get these types of special meanings when combined with certain cases so before using a preposition one must first make sure that there is no case that can be used in that specific situation. This is what we mean when we say that Dothraki is less preposition-happy than English.

http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Verb_Classes
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Havazhyol

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Re: Help for translation
« Reply #32 on: July 31, 2013, 02:40:29 am »
M'athchomaroon,

I've been thinking about translating some latin sentences, and since I'm not familiar with grammar (and maybe more) in dothraki I seek for thy help...

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula posteros (unfortunatly known by today's young people as yolo...  :-[ )
Seize the days, and trust a little in the future

I went with

Collect the day, and have few hope for tomorrow

Yanqo(s) assekhaan, vosma ray athzalar silokhaan zolle.    (not sur weither to use formal imperative or not)

Thank you ^^

Here is my try, I think I can already point an error with the translation of "to have"
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Qvaak

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Re: Help for translation
« Reply #33 on: August 01, 2013, 09:07:41 am »
Alright. Let's do this again ;)

It's ultimately the translator's choice, what exact words to use, so going for yanqolat is, I guess, possible. There are problems with that, though. "To collect" (or "to gather") is an idea fundamentally applied to plural objects and uncountables. I guess you can, in English, say "I collected a penny", meaning that you picked up a penny (~"added a penny to my collection of money?" - or is that singular use reserved exclusively to debt collecting?).  Nevertheless, this is an extension probably not shared in Dothraki. To make matters worse, Dothraki is not as explicit with plurals as many languages, so pushing for the unusual singular use is even harder. As "a day" asshekh is animate, so there's a notable difference in plural, but asshekh has inanimate use too, as "today", so the reading would go easily there. Not that this would make any easy sense either, as "today" is fundamentally a singular event, but you might approach it as an uncountable, a mass noun, a waterlike puddle of now. And you could certainly be misled and confused.

Putting asshekh to allative is a whole another matter. Objects in sentences are in accusative, if there is no special reason for some other case. We know that yanqolat supports one special use of another case than accusative. You can use ablative to mark the fact that only some of something was collected, not all of it ("Anha yanqo korikh" - "I gathered the sticks" vs. "Anha yanqo korikhoon" - "I gathered some sticks"). What would allative mean here? Dunno. Maybe if asshekh were a complementary argument, allative might denote to the place where you gathered something ("gather the sticks in that corner") or the resultant collection of gathering ("gather the sticks into a pile"). Perhaps you might expect the main object of the sentence elided, resulting in something like "collect into a day".

I would go with qoralat as it feels pitch perfect to me. For true YOLO attitude qorasolat would work too. We have "to seize" as one translation for qoralat, but this is probably in part due to a bit misleading dialogue translation from the series: qoralat most likely does not explicitly denote to the act of taking, it denotes to holding, to keeping, to having. Qorasolat is the word explicitly denoting to taking, to making something your own. This has some rather dark undertones, though, as Dothraki are so fond of working on their own terms, so fond on abusing the priviledge of the stronger. The meaning of qorasolat extends from simple act of taking all the way to rape. And what would be more YOLO than "Abuse the day on your own terms with complete disregard to the damage you do to others."

I would go with informal imperative, as I view this more a suggestion than a straight out command. Depends on the take.

Why vosma? Of course "but" works just fine, considering the meaning of the phrase, but even your own translation of your Dothraki translation uses "and".  The latin does not use any conjunction (quam looks like a conjunctive, but if I'm not mistaken, it's just a part of an argument "quam minimum"), so you might even try to do without in Dothraki too. On the other hand, in my personal feel, plentiful use of conjunctions fits Dothraki, and I like to often use the complete precede-both-sentences system. That would not be wrong here, and in my opinion would nicely preserve the parallel sentiments feel of the original. The weak connection of the original gives me a feel of two independent but resonant sentiments, while "and" in the middle leans slightly on the "and consequently" direction.

Yes, ray for "to have" is decidedly wrong. English uses "to have" as an auxiliary verb for perfect tense (expressions like "I have x'd the z"). Dothraki uses auxiliary not-even-really-a-verb ray for similar expressions, but this has very little to do with what "to have" otherwise means in English. We saw before that qoralat can be translated as "to have". There's also an expression mra qora, literally "in hand", eg. "Korikh mra qora [anni]" - "I have a stick".

Trying to go "want little, hope little from tomorrow" does not does not seem a bad idea, but it's not easy, so why not use shillat, "to trust"? I would not say it's certainly the right kind of "trust" word, but seems very promising and straightforward.

My attempt would be, I guess
Ma qoras asshekhes, ma shillas silokh zolle.

You might drop the animate accusative from asshekh, and move it from "a day" to "today", as that's pretty much what's implied anyway, and the phrase would be more symmetrical, but, dunno, I kinda like the asymmetry and the indirect sense the asshekhes gives.
Game of Thrones is not The Song of Ice and Fire, sweetling. You'll learn that one day to your sorrow.