'You Are My Sunshine' in Hurrian? Hittite?

[fusijui]

I'm hoping the collective memories & general obscurity-savvy of the board can help me out here, as I've drawn a blank so far.

Years back (maybe 10-15 years?) I remember coming across on the web the results of an annual translation competition put on by a publisher (?) of biblical/ancient Near Eastern scholarship, one example of which was a rendition of the song 'You Are My Sunshine' into some ancient Anatolian language (can't remember which for sure), with cuneiform and transcription provided along with the interlinear text.

Obviously this is a work that shouldn't be lost to scholarship, or to entertainment. My Google-fu is inferior, however. Does anyone here remember what I'm talking about? Many, many thanks in advance.

[Vardelm]

I've never seen this, so I can't help. However, I do think this should become a regular translation for conlangs in place of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[fusijui]

It was a really brilliant bit of work, as I remember it -- I read it all the way through the first time thinking it was a legit Hittite (or Hurrian, etc) hymn, about the Storm God chasing off the Sun and so on, until finally the penny dropped.

I really hope someone can help me locate it again; if I find it somewhere else, I'll definitely post it here to share the joy.

[Emily]

I've never seen this, so I can't help. However, I do think this should become a regular translation for conlangs in place of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

i personally feel there should not be a regular translation text for conlangs, be it the udhr, the babel text, or anything else

[bradrn]

Could it perhaps be “A Newly Discovered Hittite Love Letter” (2009), a.k.a. “You are my Sungoddess”? A quick search doesn’t turn up any source, but it’s mentioned in this conversation — the publisher was Eisenbrauns, I believe.

EDIT: Found it:



(Source: https://laptrinhx.com/cuneiform-dating-831106433/.)

Alas, the original appears to be lost to history, though I’ve saved the link above in the Internet Archive just to be sure it won’t disappear again.

[Raphael]

Great! Now I wonder if anyone has ever written a washing bill in Akkadian.

[Travis B.]

Great! Now I wonder if anyone has ever written a washing bill in Akkadian.

I wouldn't be surprised, because IIRC much of what was ever written in Sumerian or Akkadian was boring accounting stuff.

[bradrn]

I've never seen this, so I can't help. However, I do think this should become a regular translation for conlangs in place of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Well, you nerd-sniped me into translating it into Wēchizaŋkəŋ. Look, I even got it to fit the metre! (Sort of.)

Text	Literal translation
Thēmicānuthánacháŋ áthethám Énukrāthicháŋ thēnɨcáyəthū Təwēamɲēŋkəŋ sēkrəmpəwēchanāŋ Áthəthākrəmpəthánathán	Sunshine [what comes out of the sun], you are to me When it is grey, you make me good How I love you, you never know Don’t take it away to me

(Accents mark stressed short vowels. Morphophonemic transcription, for future reference:

More: show

|tha-e-micā-nu-təna-kəŋ əʷ-ə-tə-e-tham
əʷ-e-nu-krathi-kəŋ ə-tə-e-nu-icə-yəthu
tə-wə-e-am-iɲem-kəŋ əʷ-tə-e-krə-mpə-weʷ-kanaŋ
əʷ-ə-tə-tha-e-krə-mpə-təna-tən|

)

[fusijui]

That is definitely the one I was thinking of, thank you bradrn!!! I can see that my memory has magnified the text a bit, but I still love it.

FWIW, this was part of an annual exercise that they did for a few years, and I remember reading some other good bits along the same lines. So if the Wayback Machine can be teased into giving them up...

[bradrn]

FWIW, this was part of an annual exercise that they did for a few years, and I remember reading some other good bits along the same lines. So if the Wayback Machine can be teased into giving them up...

I looked already, but they seem to have been lost to history.

[fusijui]

Good to know -- maybe I'll try hitting up Eisenbrauns directly about making it available again. In any case, thank you for the web-detectiving that got me this far!!