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.
