Need help with translating piece of text.

[Pej]

Hi guys,

Big fan of the series and so is my sister in law, because I love her allot and she just had a baby I created a dragon egg for her as a gift.
I do want to add some text to it for fun so her gift may seem like she recieved it from real Dothraki.

This is what I want to have translated (it doesn't have to be perfect, I just want to see her struggle with the text! ^^:

"Dear Catherine (Her real name is Willy, but she kinda hates it, guess why..),

This is my gift to you, dragonborn. Always as fierce as fire and strong as flames.
This egg might contain your destiny.
You recently became the mother of Julia, she needs your guidance.
Keep this gift close to you. It brings warmth and comfort.

Love"

If you guys could help me, it would mean the world!

Thanks in advance.

(Don't mind my English please, It's not my first language.)

[Havazhyol]

Cool, some exercice (sorry Ingsve, I tried to translate the Queen song but I missed time, and it was still too hard for me  )

Dear Catherine,

This is my gift to you, dragonborn. Always as fierce as fire and strong as flames.
This egg might contain your destiny.
You recently became the mother of Julia, she needs your guidance.
Keep this gift close to you. It brings warmth and comfort.

Love

Zhey Catherine erinak,

Me azho anni ha yeraan, zhavorsaloy. Ivezhofoe ven vorsa, haja ven vorsakh.  (with the preposition? without? Qvaak vs. Niqqo on this one  )
Gale ish losha (fate/destiny) yeri.
Yer (become) mayes ha Julia disse, me zigeree ha athidrilar yeri.
Jin azho mra yeraan. Me affazha ma chek zhores

Athzilar.

I left the words I could not translate in the parentheses (sorry).

Don't take this as a correct answer,  one of the sempaï will certainly give you a more accurate translation.

Hajas!

[Qvaak]

OK. my (first) try:

Zhey Catherine chom,

Jini azho anhoon yeraan, zhey zhavorsayol. Ma ven ivezhof ven vorsa ma ven haj ven athvirsazar, ayyey.
Jin gale'sh losha ovvethikhqoy yeri.
Yer zin maisoon haji Julia ahhaz, majin me zigeree athidrizaroon yeroon.
Qoras jin azh qisi. Me ficha ma athafazhizar ma athnithmenar.

Athzhilar

A lot of dubious stuff, of course. I'm practically drawing blank on "You recently became a mother". Both yer zin maisoon and yer ray maisaan feel enticing, but also very wrong. There has been some talk about "to become" structure, but nothing reasonable comes to mind. I don't like nemo ficha venikh for this one.

I did not try to Dothrakify the names, though we sometimes do that. Dunno, how they are pronounced anyway, as they are probably not even English names. Zhey Catherine would be something like Zhey Katherin and haji Julia would be something like ma Joliasoon.

[ingsve]

OK. my (first) try:

Zhey Catherine chom,

Jini azho anhoon yeraan, zhey zhavorsayol. Ma ven ivezhof ven vorsa ma ven haj ven athvirsazar, ayyey.
Jin gale'sh losha ovvethikhqoy yeri.
Yer zin maisoon haji Julia ahhaz, majin me zigeree athidrizaroon yeroon.
Qoras jin azh qisi. Me ficha ma athafazhizar ma athnithmenar.

Athzhilar

A lot of dubious stuff, of course. I'm practically drawing blank on "You recently became a mother". Both yer zin maisoon and yer ray maisaan feel enticing, but also very wrong. There has been some talk about "to become" structure, but nothing reasonable comes to mind. I don't like nemo ficha venikh for this one.

I did not try to Dothrakify the names, though we sometimes do that. Dunno, how they are pronounced anyway, as they are probably not even English names. Zhey Catherine would be something like Zhey Katherin and haji Julia would be something like ma joliasoon.

For recently became I would use yer maisoon combined with some type of temporal adverb meaning "recently".

[Pej]

Thank you so much guys! ^^
I admire your passion for the language and it's amazing seeing this coming together.

[Havazhyol]

I feel like a dwarf surrounded by giants...

[Qvaak]

Thank you so much guys! ^^
I admire your passion for the language and it's amazing seeing this coming together.

Thanks, zhey Pej. If you're holding by your original "it doesn't have to be perfect, I just want to see her struggle with the text!", I'd say my above translation is probably good enough. There is often some further discussion and analysis, but we don't usually end up with any "master version".

Some (further) comments on my own attempt:

Zhey Catherine chom,

~"O respectful Catherine,"
We don't have any exact match for "dear". Erin, "kind" comes somewhat close, and Havazhyol went that route-ish with his erinak, "lady". Even closer hit would be mra zhor or fin mra zhor, "whom I care about". I took a more liberal route and went with chom, "respectable/respectful". Respect is one of the central concepts of Dothraki culture, and rather nuanced. I felt it worked well in a standard-like greeting; simple, friendly and strong.

Jini azho anhoon yeraan, zhey zhavorsayol.

~"This is a gift from me to you, o dragonborn."
That azho anhoon yeraan, "a gift from me to you" should work just fine, but I'm nevertheless now thinking azho anni yeraan, "my gift to you" should work better; it's tighter, flows better and is closer to the original.

Ma ven ivezhof ven vorsa ma ven haj ven athvirsazar, ayyey.

~"As fierce as fire and as strong as burning, always."
We should no doubt be able and willing to deal with incomplete sentences, but I'd like to make this complete. As Dothraki does not use copula, the sentence does not even get much heavier. The adjectives are turned to verbs, but that's neat too. So: Yer ma ven ivezhofi ven vorsa ma ven haji ven athvirsazar ayyey.
I'm not feeling too good about the ayyey either. It should be absolutely right, but after the long comparative structure, suddenly climbing to full-sentence level seems hard. I originally used comma to separate the word, might use she too, but neither should be needed and neither really satisfies me anyhow.
Oh, and we do have a perfectly good word for "flame", vorsakh. I just felt vorsa and vorsakh were too closely related to give the same effect when compared as "fire" and "flame" do, so I went with a bit more exotic athvirsazar, "burning" (in sense of phenomenon, not in the sense of the act). Some interpretative license, eh?

Jin gale'sh losha ovvethikhqoy yeri.

~"This egg might contain your destiny."
We did not have a word for destiny (no wonder that), but we have some words that might point to the right general direction. I made a compound ovvethikhqoyi, "blood-destination". Blood is an another central concept, and often carries a nice implication of importance, though it of course often also carries that less fitting idea of violence ... but that's Dothraki for you. A brutal culture.

Yer zin maisoon haji Julia ahhaz,

~"You became a mother of Julia just then"
I'm quite happy with my ahhaz for "recently". Our vocab gives "then (of close or immediate future)" for it, but that should be just the use we have encountered it in. I see no reason why it wouldn't work as well in the past context.
Ingsve proposed just Yer maisoon for "you became a mother", but I don't like that. The standard interpretation is "You were a mother", and while in some senses the ablative seems less departed than allative un-arrived, here I feel the implication of "...and you aren't anymore" is too much there. Like, I get a backgroundy vibe: "where do you come from, what do you have in your past?" "Well, I come from being a mother. That's my past." ..I probably exaggerate, though. That kind of Dothraki expressions seem to be somewhat fluid and open to contextual interpretation. Still, it might be worth noticing that in story-mode Dothraki the continuing states are expressed with nominative instead of ablative.
But if simple ablative isn't good enough, what to do? I tried to make "you were a mother" less finished business with "unfinishifying" particle zin, which sounds pretty good when I put it like that, but is probably just strange and confusing gibberish.


...I'll continue later.

[ingsve]

The reason why I went with the past tense formation for "became a mother" was because of Davids version of when I translated the Oppenheimer quote (Now I've become death...". David translated that with the straight present "Now I am Death...".

Note that David has taken an interest in this thread and he is working on a blogpost with a translation of his own for it.

[Qvaak]

The reason why I went with the past tense formation for "became a mother" was because of Davids version of when I translated the Oppenheimer quote (Now I've become death...". David translated that with the straight present "Now I am Death...".

The original with Oppenheimer line was even more curious than that: "Now I am become death..."

Note that David has taken an interest in this thread and he is working on a blogpost with a translation of his own for it.

Gee. I hope his translation makes it in time for the intented use.

I better get my comments ready too:

majin me zigeree athidrizaroon yeroon.

~"And so she requires guidance from you."
Majin is of course an extra word I added just for the sake of pace. Dothraki gives me a feel of a little less modern city-life abbreviated language. There's a lot of slow, wordy language like eg. them de-emphasizing thingies. There's also (or so it seems to me) more tying sentences together with conjunctions, majin being the favourite linking word of little semantical weight.

Qoras jin azh qisi.

~"Keep this gift around."
Qisi is perhaps a little bit off the mark, more "near by, about" than "close". Close enough, I hope.

Me ficha ma athafazhizar ma athnithmenar.

~"It brings warmth and painlessness."
I find it a bit hilarious, that best I could come up for "comfort" was "painlessness", but - again - that's Dothraki for you. Fitting in a way.

Edit: I have forgotten about eliding mas (for some time now, since they often can be elided - eg. m'anhoon ... wink wink, Havazhyol). I don't think they have to be elided, but it's certainly what I would have done: Me ficha m'athafazhizar m'athnithmenar.

Athzhilar

~"love"
There are many ways to translate this. Both me and Havazhyol went with a noun athzhilar, "love, loving", and I think that's the best choice. Other possibilities: zhilat, "to love, loving, love"; zhilates, "let's love"; ma zhiloon, "with love"; zhiloon, "from love" ... etc.

[ingsve]

Note that David has taken an interest in this thread and he is working on a blogpost with a translation of his own for it.

Gee. I hope his translation makes it in time for the intented use.

No worries. I've already sent Davids translation to Pej. I haven't posted it here since I didn't want to spoil Davids blog post that will go live on Sunday.

[Pej]

Thank you guys so much for all the help, I'm sure it even taught you a thing or two! ^^
The gift has been given and it was amazing to see the reaction of my brother and sister in law!

Check out David's blog for a picture (I assure you, the egg looks much more awesome in real life!)

Thanks guys!