Language Telephone - TEAM 1 RESULTS AND TEAM 2 RESULTS!

[Moose-tache]

If you're already added to the first post, you don't need to re-join. And since tomorrow I am facing a Grand Embuggering at work, I'm not going to get around to making the roster until Friday. And there wasn't a hard deadline in the first place, so by all means, keep the enthusiasm coming! I'm currently looking for texts to translate, ideally something around 200 words (maybe less if people have time constraints), and something that none of our translators will be familiar with. I might pick a passage from my embarrassingly large collection of boilerplate mid-century pulp fantasy novels.

[Kuchigakatai]

Moose-tache, what are your languages?

You can participate by translating the source passage into your language of choice.

[Moose-tache]

OK, working out the order now. I've PMed some of you about details of which languages you can contribute. Some highlights: we will definitely have an Esperanto segment, and either a Cantonese/Mandarin/Classical Chinese segment (don't worry, I'm not going to make anyone "age" Classical Chinese into Mandarin, unless you're into that. Theoretically we could do Mandarin > Cl. Chinese > Cantonese, but that would mean sacrificing some other languages). Right now it would be very helpful if anyone could come forward who can translate into Hebrew, even if you can only do English to Hebrew. Other less common languages like Maori, Sard, and Quechua would be nice, too.

Also, if Raphael only translates from/to German and Travis is our only other German speaker, we may have the two of you lightly "pre-rinse" the text by translating the original English into German and then back into English. I'll make sure there are plenty of adverbs.

Aside from The German Question, everyone who has signed up has a spot on the roster. As soon as I hear back from Vijay I will make a finalized list and publish it here. Hopefully the text will be short enough that a one week time limit will be possible, but we can work that out when the time comes.

Depending on how things work out, I will try to have an English segment somewhere in the middle so we can try to figure out who is to blame for which part of the mess.

[akam chinjir]

I'll make sure there are plenty of adverbs.

Going back and forth amongst Germanic adverbs and Cantonese/classical Chinese ideophones could lead to some fun.

[Linguoboy]

I can translate from German into Catalan, Spanish, French, or Irish with confidence and a bunch of others (including Standard Chinese) if accuracy isn’t really an issue.

It would be fun to have some nonstandard varieties. I could translate into Cajun French and out of Québécois, for instance.

[finlay]

Depending on how things work out, I will try to have an English segment somewhere in the middle so we can try to figure out who is to blame for which part of the mess.

we usually send an english translation to the organizer at each stage so that we can all keep track

[Travis B.]

I am not going to involve myself in this just because my German is probably not strong enough for it (I'd probably find myself spending inordinate amounts of time with dict.cc or dict.tu-chemnitz.de).

[Vijay]

tl;dr Yeah I speak Turkish just make me translate into that if it makes your life easier

I agree with finlay. Normally, each of us (except the last person in the chain, who presumably would be translating into English anyway) would send you our output translation along with a translation of that translation into English. However, we would also send the next person along the chain only the output translation (without the English).

Okay, so here's my attempt at a succinct language list since even trying to explain how well I know each one would probably take forever: (top seven) English, Malayalam, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, (can try to fake fluency in) Tamil, Latin, Krio, (can also try to fake fluency in but will probably be quickly found out as a fraud) Italian, Catalan, Swedish, (more or less intermediate) Russian, Serbo-Croatian/BCS, Turkish, Hindustani, Romani, Persian, Bengali, (try to study regularly but am not as good at) Modern Standard Arabic, Damascene Arabic, (try to study regularly and should be able to manage but haven't studied in a long time) Swahili, Thai, Indonesian/Malay, Tagalog, (ended up studying before I planned on it but don't speak very well yet) Japanese, Polish, Hebrew, Irish, (have attempted to study with moderate success) Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, Dutch...okay, never mind, I've already spent way too much time coming up with this list. Cantonese and Taiwanese are somewhere there, too, but I'm afraid these may both be trickier to use in a game involving the written languages because IINM the characters in these varieties don't always show up as anything but rectangular boxes.

Unless you speak Turkish or Hebrew. Or both. In fact, if you speak both, just send a face pic and your whatsapp number

But I don't have a whatsapp number! Or if I do, I don't remember what it is.

Right now it would be very helpful if anyone could come forward who can translate into Hebrew, even if you can only do English to Hebrew. Other less common languages like Maori, Sard, and Quechua would be nice, too.

I'd need access to a dictionary especially for the last three, plus there is a slight risk that if I try to translate into Quechua, the output would end up being a garbled mixture of varieties of Quechua, possibly with too many Hispanicisms. I try to focus on Cusco Quechua, but the best resource I've managed to use so far is for Ayacucho Quechua AFAICT and I also tried at some point to learn some Quechua from a paper on Salcedo Media Lengua, which IINM involves Imbabura Quechua. I could try translating into Hebrew if necessary, though. I'm especially unfamiliar with Sardinian and imagine dialect variation could be a problem here, too; I'm not familiar with dialect variation in Maori, though.

Also, if Raphael only translates from/to German and Travis is our only other German speaker,

Linguoboy and I speak German, too.

[Moose-tache]

OK, so Travis is out, linguoboy is in; I'm calling the deadline. That gives us 11 people, and I'm worried that a chain of 11 will take too long or require very short passages, so I'm making the executive decision to break the group up into two chains translating two passages. The second chain has a final French to English slot that could be filled by five of the six people on Team 1, so I ask that someone volunteer (it doesn't even have to be right now). At each step, please provide me with the translation you have made into the target language, and an English translation. I'm going to say the deadline is two weeks, but there is some room to be flexible if your schedule changes over the next few weeks. I'll send out the texts tomorrow.

Team 1: The Eurorail Train That Got Lost
Raphael [English to German] Deadline September 28
linguoboy [German to Spanish] October 12
Ryusheni [Spanish to Latin] October 26
finlay [Latin to Japanese] November 9
Yiuel [Japanese to Esperanto] November 23
Nerulent [Esperanto to English] December 7

Team 2: The Other One
vijay [English to Turkish] Deadline September 28
akam chinjir [Turkish to Old or Classical Chinese] October 12
Zompist [Old or Classical Chinese to Portuguese] October 26
Ser [Portuguese to Latin] November 9
methru [Latin to French] November 23
Hero From Team 1 [French to English] December 7

[Linguoboy]

"Latin to Japanese" is bloody bonkers.

[Vijay]

I know I didn't list Esperanto, but that shouldn't be too hard, either. (It's Esperanto ffs!). If you like, you could switch Nerulent over to the last slot in Team 2 and make me do the final translation for Team 1 from Esperanto to English.

[Ryusenshi]

This sounds nice! My Spanish and my Latin are both a little bit rusty, but I guess it's part of the fun.

[Moose-tache]

I know I didn't list Esperanto, but that shouldn't be too hard, either. (It's Esperanto ffs!). If you like, you could switch Nerulent over to the last slot in Team 2 and make me do the final translation for Team 1 from Esperanto to English.

That's a possibility, if Nerulent doesn't mind.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

I can translate from German into Catalan, Spanish, French, or Irish with confidence and a bunch of others (including Standard Chinese) if accuracy isn’t really an issue.

It would be fun to have some nonstandard varieties. I could translate into Cajun French and out of Québécois, for instance.

I could easily provide you with a Full Joual input. But you'd be opening a damning can of worms

EDIT : Nerulent is so gonna hate me. *Evil Grin*

[Moose-tache]

I can translate from German into Catalan, Spanish, French, or Irish with confidence and a bunch of others (including Standard Chinese) if accuracy isn’t really an issue.

It would be fun to have some nonstandard varieties. I could translate into Cajun French and out of Québécois, for instance.

I could easily provide you with a Full Joual input. But you'd be opening a damning can of worms

EDIT : Nerulent is so gonna hate me. *Evil Grin*

For some people it was tough choosing how to best utilize their talents. It would have been nice to put you to work on Quebecois, but your Japanese and Esperanto proved more tempting in the end. Maybe if methru speaks Quebecois we can have the final segment of Team 2 be Quebec French to English.

[Nerulent]

I know I didn't list Esperanto, but that shouldn't be too hard, either. (It's Esperanto ffs!). If you like, you could switch Nerulent over to the last slot in Team 2 and make me do the final translation for Team 1 from Esperanto to English.

Alternatively I could translate the Esperanto into Swahili and send that on to vijay.

I could also (attempt to) translate Joual but I am unsure how well I would go

Edit: I wouldn't mind doing the last translations for both teams either, they should be different enough at that stage that there shouldn't be too much cross pollination.

[Moose-tache]

I wasn't sure if you could translate into Swahili, Nerulent. In any case adding an extra segment to Team 1 would make it longer than Team 2, but I'm fine with it if Vijay doesn't mind doing two segments and Team 1 isn't horribly behind schedule by that point. Honestly, what happens at the end of each chain isn't set in stone. I would like for us to commit to a set order for the first four or five segments, then hammer out the details of the finale as we go along.
I'm about to send out the text to the first member of each chain, so if you are the first or second segment of either chain, please let me know if there is any serious problem.
EDIT: the starting passages are away! Let the wild rumpus begin!

[finlay]

"Latin to Japanese" is bloody bonkers.

i mean in practice it'll be via english since i don't have a direct L>J dictionary~

[Nerulent]

I wasn't sure if you could translate into Swahili, Nerulent.

Oh right, I probably can only translate from BCS but I can translate into Swahili and the rest.

EDIT: the starting passages are away! Let the wild rumpus begin!

Woo!

[Vijay]

Done! This seemed easy enough until I started looking up all the words and phrases I didn't know (which are a lot). This is the first time I've ever been at one end of a chain rather than in the middle, so that probably made it easier for me. It's not like last time when I had to go from Japanese to Croatian and I kept mixing up the subjects with the objects. I think I tried harder to make my Turkish sound idiomatic than I did to make my translation as literal as possible, especially since it so happens that I have read and tried to translate a bit of Turkish literature into English.

This sounds nice! My Spanish and my Latin are both a little bit rusty, but I guess it's part of the fun.

It is part of the fun!

For some people it was tough choosing how to best utilize their talents.

Like me lol

I'm fine with it if Vijay doesn't mind doing two segments

Of course I don't mind. I volunteered to do two earlier anyway (just not those specific two)!

"Latin to Japanese" is bloody bonkers.

i mean in practice it'll be via english since i don't have a direct L>J dictionary~

Plus this is what you did last time, too.