Language Telephone - TEAM 1 RESULTS AND TEAM 2 RESULTS!

[Ryusenshi]

OK, finally done. I've sent the text to Moose-tache, and to Yiuel for the final round.

[Linguoboy]

This will be the first game of telephone where I’ll be truly surprised by the result as I can no longer recall a single word of the translation I did. I didn’t even remember what language it was until I looked.

[Vijay]

Yay! Now all we need is Yiuel's translation, and we're done!

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Yay! Now all we need is Yiuel's translation, and we're done!

It should be done during next week. FR to EN shouldn't be too difficult.

[zompist]

Since Team 1 is done, could we get those texts posted? No reason it has to wait till Team 2 is done...

[Moose-tache]

OK, Team 1 results are up in the first post!

I have communicated with Yiuel about the last leg of Team 2, so hopefully that won't take long. I know we've had some hiccups in this telephone (up to and including personal tragedies far more important than an internet game), but I take responsibility for the incredibly long time it has taken to complete this. Rest assured, I will not be trusted to run a coffee maker after this.

[akam chinjir]

Egad, I hate to think what I'd have done with that in classical Chinese. (Not that I remember especially well what I did with the other prompt!)

[finlay]

Thanks! ~ I'll maintain for now that any errors were due to me being on an international flight without internet access lol

I realised after i submitted it that ヒューケルト might have been a better way to transcribe it in order to preserve "hu" instead of "fu", oh well.

[zompist]

Thank you, Moose, and everyone on Team 1!


Many years later Fukert approached his mother.
"Mother, why did you choose this name for me?"
"Well. It occurred to me just after fucking."

[Raphael]

To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed that the end result is still so close to the original.

[Linguoboy]

To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed that the end result is still so close to the original.

Next time we need to include Welsh!

Or have Nerulent try to translate my Hawai'ian on the basis of their Māori (or vice versa).

[Moose-tache]

I expected the text to turn to gibberish right away, but it did hold up surprisingly well. I blame Raphael. His no-nonsense translation into German replaced the nauseatingly purple prose into a simple, literal translation that was easy to work with. Many of the languages were indo-european, though surprisingly, one of the toughest links was between the two closest languages, Spanish and Latin. I think the ZBB is just full of good translators. Other telephone games have had longer chains, and that might be good advice for next time.

You might be a little happier with Team 2 when it's ready. That text immediately became a slow descent into madness. Maybe that's why it's been such a chore getting it finished.

[Nerulent]

Or have Nerulent try to translate my Hawai'ian on the basis of their Māori (or vice versa).

Oh dear, I can only recognise a handful of words in your posts in the fluency thread!

[alynnidalar]

If anything, this just goes to show that the participants really do know the languages they translated to/from!

Now for maximum entertainment, do another round where participants can only use languages they are not familiar with...

[Linguoboy]

Now for maximum entertainment, do another round where participants can only use languages they are not familiar with...

On Unilang we called that the "FUBAR" variant of language telephone (or "broken translation game", as it was known there).

[Vijay]

Did Yiuel ever say anything, Moose-Tache?

[Moose-tache]

No. He was very responsive as part of the other team, and he did say he would get to this translation, but that was a while ago. I'm running out of people who could replace him, as he was already an alternate. We can't use you or Zompist, because you're already on Team 2. At this point I'm close to running the French through Google Translate and calling it a day.

[alynnidalar]

It'd sure make things a little more unpredictable, haha.

[Vijay]

I'll get it done by Monday if you give it to me and not look at the original! I promise! Please try me please please pwetty pweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

EDIT: Wait, there are other people who can read French here, too, right? Linguoboy (sorry, I thought of you first because I was looking through the list of participants)...Ser...hmm, Finlay?

[Ryusenshi]

A few belated comments on my translation.

The “slashed” here is a typo in English.

Ooops.

The changes from “birthmark” to “whim” and “give birth” to “give light” are simply bad luck. Spanish uses the same terms for both.

I recognized "dar a luz" (litt. "give light") as an idiom for "give birth". (French has the similar "donner le jour", litt. "give the day"). My Latin dictionary says that "dare lux" also existed as an idiom in late Latin, so I used it. (My English translation is overly litteral in places.) I didn't think it would be misunderstood by following translators.

The switch from "birthmark" to "whim" is indeed an error on my part, though.

If you’re wondering what in the hell happened with “if her opponent didn’t die, neither by her own hand…” well, linguoboy seems to have gone with “she must marry the first man to conquer her if she is not to die,” or “si no se moriré.” In Latin the one who conquers her and the part about not dying got smushed together because Latin syntax, and we ended up with “qui in pugna hanc vicit si non moreretur.” Wild.

I had trouble understanding the Spanish sentence. The original text is clear that the woman who refuses the man must then get killed by him or kill herself; but in Spanish, "por su mano" could refer to either person's hand, so the contrast with "por la propia" isn't clear. That's why the Latin text is weird: I kept things ambiguous because I wasn't sure what the original was supposed to mean.

surprisingly, one of the toughest links was between the two closest languages, Spanish and Latin.

Well, the close relation makes individual words easy to translate (hence why "tempestuous" was kept through three languages), but modern Romance languages have a completely different syntax from their ancestor. So the meaning of a complex sentence can easily get lost. (Plus, as I said, my Latin is really rusty.)

I also note that "to know" can famously be a euphemism for "to have sex", because of its use in the Bible. This possible connotation was reasonably understandable as long as we used languages with a Christian history; but going through Japanese, which has no such history, it was changed to "to learn" then "to familiarize", which does not have the same connotation.