Let's start with the first "let it go" refrain. It's pretty good example of my usual translation ruminations.
Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door!My translation:
Annevak mae, annevak mae
Laz vo qorok mae memras ajjinoon
Annevak mae, annevak mae
Notak elataan ma jonak emrakh!"Let it go" sounds like a command, as per English syntax, but how does that work, when generally the singer seems to speak about herself? It seems like an advice, encouragement or command that is said to oneself, and might work in Dothraki as an informal command,
annevas mae, or even explicitly self-referential encouragement
annevalates anha mae. Or maybe you might take it as more abstract, less sentence syntax bound notion of 'letting it go' instead of any kind of self-addressing and translate just as infinite verb form:
annevalat mae. I looked forward and saw that the verse was very pronoun dropping, opposing the normal English way. You could read the verse going
(I'll) let it go / (I) can't hold it back anymore / (I'll) let it go, / (I'll) turn away and slam the door! I decided to replicate this interpretation, as Dothraki is also normally opposed to pronoun dropping. It however has more redundancy, so the 'I' would still be more pronounced:
annevak mae. This, however, brings a further dilemma. While I did use future in the English interpretation, I used present tense in Dothraki, so my translation is actually more
(I'm) letting it go than
(I'll) let it go. I might have gone all the way and put it into
vannevak mae.
Then there's
it. English uses a lot of syntactical dummy
its that don't denote to much anything at all, something like "It's, funny: I thought it would rain." This
it does not feel like properly dummy, but it's still pointing at extremely fuzzy general implied
all the stuff weighing on my mind. If Dothraki syntax did not naturally support keeping it, I would have happily skipped the whole word. But then in keeping the word, I'm left wondering, how would Dothraki naturally denote to this kind of a vague
general topic of conversation. Even in English the choice between
it,
this and
that is fine. Dothraki has two
thats, so all
mae,
jin,
haz and
rek seem possible to me.
Oh, and then there's of course the small question about what
to let something go means. To be sure, I consulted an idiom dictionary. I got
let it go. Allow it to stand or be accepted. For example, Let it go; we needn't discuss it further.
which seems about right. It doesn't make much sense to go literal with something approximating
to allow to depart (
azhat elat perhaps). I first thought I'd keep kinda close with
eqorasolat, which pretty nicely translates the idea that you've
held onto something and are now
letting go of it. But thinking further, I felt
annevalat was keeping even closer to the actual meaning. Also,
eqorasolat could be interpeted in a favorable way, but the metaphorical sense is not really established as far as we know; of
annevalat we actually know that the appropriate metaphorical dimension exists, so it mirrors better the established English idiom. Both are IMO defendable.
phew. That isn't even the whole translation of the verse explained, just the first line.
