Dothraki learners for Thronecast

[ingsve]

The Sky Atlantic show Thronecast is looking for Dothraki learners to be on their show.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/64058-dothraki-learners-needed/page__fromsearch__1

I emailed them and said that someone here would probably be interested and that I would ask on the forums.

[ingsve]

I got some more info from them. It doesn't matter where the person is from so anyone who is interested is welcome. They prefer someone who can be featured in video using Skype but if no one with a cam is available they could settle for someone over the phone. They record on tuesdays between 11am-2pm BST (which is 3am-6am PDT). It would be a rather short segment 1-2 minutes but it's an opportunity to show off some Dothraki.

[Hrakkar]

I volunteered to do this.

I am also now registered as 'Hrakkar Khal' on the Westros forums!

[ingsve]

I volunteered to do this.

I am also now registered as 'Hrakkar Khal' on the Westros forums!

Cool. So you already contacted them about it?

[Hrakkar]

I have an email into them. I have not heard back yet. It will probably be tomorrow before I hear anything.

[Daenerys]

Zhey Hrakkar,

Did you hear back?

[Hrakkar]

I have heard back, and will post more later.

I will not be on the chat this evening. There is a concert (Bach's St. Matthew's Passion) I am going to.

[Hrakkar]

I did hear back from the Thronecast folks, and they originally wanted to do an interview early this morning. They asked me to answer some simple questions in Dothraki (which I want to take a shot at writing answers for, before submitting them here for review). But they also asked me to translate and sing a verse of a well-known song. Their suggestion was 'I will Survive', but it could be any popular song. Below are the lyrics for 'I will survive' (Which was a good choice in the sense I know the melody). Most of it looks pretty straightforward, but there are a couple tricky words there:

FIRST VERSE:
At first I was afraid
I was petrified
I kept thinking I could never live without you by my side

But then I spent so many nights
Just thinking how you've done me wrong
I grew strong
I learned how to get along

CHORUS
Oh not I, I will survive
Yeah As Long as I know how to love,
I know I'll be alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
I will survive,
I will survive
Yeah, yeah

I am throwing this out to the community because I tend to get awfully busy, and I am sure 1 or more of you will enjoy seeing what you can do with this.

The interview has been scheduled for a week from today (Tuesday the 10th).

[Qvaak]

The requests keep getting more insane. I thought the CNN thing was slightly out of our league, but this... I guess they are looking for funny and klunky singing, rather than for the words to exaclty fit into the melody, but still, crazy stuff.

Without much polishing and with the vocabulary we have, I can come up with something like:

Atte anha aresakoon.
Anha mawizziven.
Anha zin dirge m'anha laz thirok vosecchi oma yeroon.

Vosma kash anha mithre san ajjalani arrek,
kash anha dirge disse meyer ray et anhaan k'athmalari.
Anha hajo.
Anha ezo avatterak atthirar.

Vos, anna vosecchi, anha vistesok.
Ai. Kash anha shilak os zhilataan,
kash anha nesak m'anha vithirerak.
Ei atthirar anni thirataan mra qora.
Ei athzhilar anni azhataan mra qora.
Anha vistesok,
Anha vistesok.
Ai, ai.

It's nothing wonderful, but should at least have relatively low grammar error count. Not even that many speculative words or sentence syntaxes.
Syllabe count? 166, I think. English? Less than 100.

[ingsve]

The requests keep getting more insane. I thought the CNN thing was slightly out of our league, but this... I guess they are looking for funny and klunky singing, rather than for the words to exaclty fit into the melody, but still, crazy stuff.

Without much polishing and with the vocabulary we have, I can come up with something like:

Atte anha aresakoon.
Anha mawizziven.
Anha zin dirge m'anha laz thirok vosecchi oma yeroon.

Vosma kash anha mithre san ajjalani arrek,
kash anha dirge disse meyer ray et anhaan k'athmalari.
Anha hajo.
Anha ezo avatterak atthirar.

Vos, anna vosecchi, anha vistesok.
Ai. Kash anha shilak os zhilataan,
kash anha nesak m'anha vithirerak.
Ei atthirar anni thirataan mra qora.
Ei athzhilar anni azhataan mra qora.
Anha vistesok,
Anha vistesok.
Ai, ai.

It's nothing wonderful, but should at least have relatively low grammar error count. Not even that many speculative words or sentence syntaxes.
Syllabe count? 166, I think. English? Less than 100.

Some nice choices. I love mawizziven. I would probably have gone with anha nem negwino.

I'm a little puzzled by vistesok for will survive. Iste means well-proven in battle so I guess if you are well proven then you must have survived but that's not really the meaning of the word is it? I thought we already had word for survive and it seems like we do but it wasn't in the vocabulary. In one of the posts on the Making of blog we have thirolat meaning survive ("I'm sure your horse will survive").

[Hrakkar]

Very nice work! And I agree that mawizziven is a rather interesting choice for 'petrified'!

I will look at this much more closely this evening (I hope!)

Now, I'll have fun trying to fit this to the rhythm of the song!

In any case, thak you for doing this, zhey Qvaak and Insgive!

[Qvaak]

Some nice choices. I love mawizziven. I would probably have gone with anha nem negwino.

Thanks. Some nice choices, some less nice. Maybe mawizziven is good. I also considered adraven. Not very close to literal, either, but somehow I didn't think of negwin (well, I didn't think that hard or long; I just wanted a passable translation to spark discussion or serve as better-than-nothing-solution) and thus found no close hitting words. With negwin, "Anha nem annegwin." or just "Anha negwinven(o)." would make more sense to me.

I'm a little puzzled by vistesok for will survive. Iste means well-proven in battle so I guess if you are well proven then you must have survived but that's not really the meaning of the word is it? I thought we already had word for survive and it seems like we do but it wasn't in the vocabulary. In one of the posts on the Making of blog we have thirolat meaning survive ("I'm sure your horse will survive").

Ya. As with the previous, I found no close hitting word that I liked. Not finding that thirolat, all the possible versions of thirat seemed random and dull. Istesolat seemed poetical and evocative and still somewhat close in meaning. Not that bright choice, on hindsight.
I guess thirolat must be the word, but the text is getting quite flooded with thir-rooted words. It would be nice to replace at least a couple of those.

Should I throw my list of dubious spots on my own translation? 'Cause that would be a lot more than just two suspect word choices

How would you translate "oh"? interjections like "aah!", "outch!", "oh!", "yuck!" etc. are at least half language dependent. How much can you deduce just from the phonotactics?

[ingsve]

Some nice choices. I love mawizziven. I would probably have gone with anha nem negwino.

Thanks. Some nice choices, some less nice. Maybe mawizziven is good. I also considered adraven. Not very close to literal, either, but somehow I didn't think of negwin (well, I didn't think that hard or long; I just wanted a passable translation to spark discussion or serve as better-than-nothing-solution) and thus found no close hitting words. With negwin, "Anha nem annegwin." or just "Anha negwinven(o)." would make more sense to me.

I guess the choice of which negwin to use depends on how one sees the word petrify. I saw it as "to become stone" rather than "to turn into stone". It depends if you see it as describing a passive action or as an active process. Ultimately I think both words would translate as "to petrify" depending on the circumstances.

[Hrakkar]

Ok, I have had a chance to play with this translation a little bit. Some of it just plain brilliant. Other parts simply cannot be sung within the melodic/rythmic constraints of the song. The biggest problem is number of syllables.

I made a couple of the substitutions that were discussed, using both thirolat and negwin. IMHO, thirolat is a much better match for 'survive' than vistesok.

I am going to continue to work on this, and see if I can't get they syllable count down a bit on some lines, or else use fast-moving syllables.

But what a great way to learn the language! Thanks!

[Qvaak]

Ok, I have had a chance to play with this translation a little bit. Some of it just plain brilliant. Other parts simply cannot be sung within the melodic/rythmic constraints of the song. The biggest problem is number of syllables.

Well, there are quite many words that aren't vital to the core meaning of the text, and some other small tricks like dropping the epenthetic es (if that works for haiku syllabe count, they should be elidable here too).
Vosma kash anha mithre san ajjalani arrek,
kash anha dirge disse meyer ray et anhaan k'athmalari.
->
Vosma kash anha mithr' arrek,
kash dirg' meyer et anhaan k'athmalari.
Just a bit iffy. Some things are easy to streamline, some less so. It won't be easy, no matter what.

I made a couple of the substitutions that were discussed, using both thirolat and negwin. IMHO, thirolat is a much better match for 'survive' than vistesok.

Ya. I'm definitely not arguing against thirolat. How do you use negwin? Anha negwino is probably the surest bet, just without the nem ingsve had there, I'd say.