Anyone up for a good old-fashioned translation relay? RESULTS POSTED

[Pedant]

I’ve no problem with it. With what language?

Bellissimo! I think I might try Booladjirra.

Just the name Booladjirra makes me think it's con-Australian.

To a degree…I thought about using Irthironian, which is basically con-Manx derived from con-Australian, but Booladjirra’s got a rather nice set of context markers that I want to become more accustomed to using. But I can swap to another language—Salvihana, Duales Hercuan, Qoldishtari…

[bradrn]

To a degree…I thought about using Irthironian, which is basically con-Manx derived from con-Australian

Wait, what?

but Booladjirra’s got a rather nice set of context markers that I want to become more accustomed to using.

What’s a context marker?

[Pedant]

Wait, what?

Heh, heh...

What’s a context marker?

There is almost certainly a correct term for it, but in this case it’s a combination of honorific speech, evidentiality marking, and reference to the setting. For example in the phrase Lhandjihamumbar wendu, naandenuruga jarra /l̪aɲɟiʔamumbaɹ wɛndu na:ndɛnuruga jaɽa/ “While you’re gone, I’ll fix dinner”, context markers (suffixes on the nouns and verbs) indicate that the speaker is in a place where they feel at home and is close kin to the listener, likely of the same social ranking, and the listener is going out into a public space but not into the wilderness. It does not, incidentally, mark for male or female status, indicating that either both are of the same gender or that they’re both very close.

[Travis B.]

Lhandjihamumbar wendu, naandenuruga jarra /l̪aɲɟiʔamumbaɹ wɛndu na:ndɛnuruga jaɽa/

This just screams con-Australian to me.

[Moose-tache]

Not trying to be a pain, but do we have confirmation from Rounin Ryuuji that they got the text?

[bradrn]

There is almost certainly a correct term for it, but in this case it’s a combination of honorific speech, evidentiality marking, and reference to the setting. For example in the phrase Lhandjihamumbar wendu, naandenuruga jarra /l̪aɲɟiʔamumbaɹ wɛndu na:ndɛnuruga jaɽa/ “While you’re gone, I’ll fix dinner”, context markers (suffixes on the nouns and verbs) indicate that the speaker is in a place where they feel at home and is close kin to the listener, likely of the same social ranking, and the listener is going out into a public space but not into the wilderness. It does not, incidentally, mark for male or female status, indicating that either both are of the same gender or that they’re both very close.

Interesting! I’d love to see a grammar of this language, or at the very least a post on the context system.

Lhandjihamumbar wendu, naandenuruga jarra /l̪aɲɟiʔamumbaɹ wɛndu na:ndɛnuruga jaɽa/

This just screams con-Australian to me.

I’m not so sure…taken together, /e/, the prenasalised stops, the glottal stop, the final /ɹ/ and the complete lack of retroflexes make it feel really out of place to me (though all are individually attested in various places). Compare:

Ŋarra dhu nhäma nhaltjan ŋarra nhuŋu dhu birrkaʼyun yoram ŋarra dhu wo yakaʼyun ŋarra dhu (Djambarrpuyŋu Yolŋu; Wilkinson 1991)
Njunam yaːyenji gawurrendjin. Gembenji guwe yoːwan. Guwe bumdjenji gimawam. (Duuŋidjawu, Kite & Wurm 2004)
Pmere arrulerle kwele neke; artwe anyente, ante newikwe arelhe nyente, ante ampe urreye kweke artnerrentye, (Mpartnwe Arrernte; Wilkins 1989)
Bayi baŋgul mundan bulganbilmban; yiɲᶁagayulgira bayi ɲalŋgaŋunu. (Dyirbal; Dixon 1972)

[Man in Space]

Not trying to be a pain, but do we have confirmation from Rounin Ryuuji that they got the text?

We do. I will check in again.

[quinterbeck]

Not trying to be a pain, but do we have confirmation from Rounin Ryuuji that they got the text?

My understanding from PMs with Rounin is that they have been delayed unexpectedly in various ways ("never rains but it pours" and all that) and that the torch is nearly ready to be passed on.

[bradrn]

I’ve been thinking it would be interesting to collect all the torches and distribute them publicly after the relay ends. I know I’d be interested in seeing grammatical information for some of these languages!

[quinterbeck]

I'm afraid I'm going to drop out of the relay. I only had time to do this up until Wednesday 20th, after which I will not have spare time for quite a while. The few days left of my holiday, I've realised, need to be spent in other ways (as much as I would love to decipher and translate the torch).

Apologies especially to Moose-tache, who has already been putting effort into learning Leima just for the relay.

I’ve been thinking it would be interesting to collect all the torches and distribute them publicly after the relay ends. I know I’d be interested in seeing grammatical information for some of these languages!

That's usually how relays are concluded in my experience - with a public presentation of every torch in sequence. But I suppose nobody mentioned that in the thread here!

[Moose-tache]

I'm sorry to hear that. Are you sure it's not something a longer deadline could fix? Also, I'm sure it would be possible to jump back in at the end if you find you have more free itme in a month or so.

[bradrn]

I’ve been thinking it would be interesting to collect all the torches and distribute them publicly after the relay ends. I know I’d be interested in seeing grammatical information for some of these languages!

That's usually how relays are concluded in my experience - with a public presentation of every torch in sequence. But I suppose nobody mentioned that in the thread here!

I should have been more specific: I was specifically interested in the grammatical part of the torch. I already know that the texts are published after the relay.

[quinterbeck]

I'm sorry to hear that. Are you sure it's not something a longer deadline could fix? Also, I'm sure it would be possible to jump back in at the end if you find you have more free itme in a month or so.

I appreciate that! If I thought I had time later I would ask to move down the chain, but I'm quite confident I won't have enough time right up until July. Which is too bad.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I'm sorry, too; what I'd expected to be an uneventful week or so has turned out to be full of random unexpected things that kept piling up.

[Moose-tache]

OK. We're a couple of weeks behind, we've already lost a soldier, and I've just receieved a torch written in Moon Japanese. Good thing I just poured myself a stiff cup of coffee.

I'll try to have this done within a week.

Oh, Also Ryounin Ryuuji: could I get a phonetic transcription of the torch? Or at least the proper nouns? (EDIT - Wow, that was fast!)

EDIT: OK, this is... more confusing than I thought it would be. Did Man in Space send you a text that was already gibberish?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

OK. We're a couple of weeks behind, we've already lost a soldier, and I've just receieved a torch written in Moon Japanese. Good thing I just poured myself a stiff cup of coffee.

Oh, it isn't from the moon, it's from some planet (I don't have a name for it yet) in a different universe from Earth, spoken by people who are human-ish, but different in some ways. It's incidentally missing some vocabulary you would find on a Swadesh list because of this, but none of the gaps were an impediment here. I also doubt a Japanese-speaker would understand it very well. The culture isn't very Japanese, either. Materially, it's a mix of what from human eyes would look like several different things. Socially, it isn't particularly hierarchical, and speaking with piles of politeness levels and honorifics would seem very odd to the Ineshîmé themselves. Some vestiges of similar register shifts are preserved in a few archaic forms (and in predecessor languages, hyperpolite pronominals were once in vogue, but they're nearly all obsolete now except in set expressions), but they aren't productive.

Oh, Also Ryounin Ryuuji: could I get a phonetic transcription of the torch? Or at least the proper nouns? (EDIT - Wow, that was fast!)

I've had a lot of practice transcribing this one. Now you know what it sounds like, though I imagine the Romanisation was already quite indicative of the approximate values of the sounds. It's a bit more dental than Japanese, and also has a phonemic /l/, but one didn't happen to show up in the text itself (I'm a little surprised at that, it isn't rare or anything). The voiceless consonants other than /s/ are aspirated, and the voiced stops and sibilants are faintly prenasalised by some speakers. /e o/ are very mid, and the rounded vowels are compressed, but still somewhat rounded. Oh, and /u/ is [yᵝ] kind-of a lot.

EDIT: OK, this is... more confusing than I thought it would be.

Well, it has a sentence structure that's very backwards from English, and is heavily inflected, with a few verb forms I'm not sure are attested in human languages. The verb forms carry a lot of the semantic weight, too. If you aren't familiar with Japanese or Korean, it's probably going to be a bit of work to figure out the structure. Quinterbeck was, so I did take a moment to expand the Torch, being not sure if you were or not.

Did Man in Space send you a text that was already gibberish?

No, I understood the narrative just fine (once I arranged the words according to instructions and translated them, only a few times did they come out feeling odd), and other than a few things that didn't translate well culturally, it rendered fine once I finally had time to do it. I can identify a few points of what I think were translation loss, but they were the result of — I believe he calls them the Tim Ar — and the Ineshîmé having very different cultures and ways of expressing themselves. If a native Ineshîmé-speaker were to read this, they would probably find the narrative extremely strange and full of wildly fanciful ideas. Some of the references in it would also be totally opaque and without suitable cultural parallel.

[Moose-tache]

I am familiar with Korean and Japanese; that's why it's melting my brain. Without spoiling anything for future participants, it's difficult to predict based on knowledge of Japanese what Ineshime syntax is doing in every case. Also, there are a few vocab items you left out, but I'm having fun guessing them from my Japanese knowledge. I predict a 30% information loss by the time I translate it into Borscht-Baltic and hand it off to Brad.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Oh, all right then. That's just an error, and I can fill in the gaps if you want them.

[Vilike]

I’ve been thinking it would be interesting to collect all the torches and distribute them publicly after the relay ends. I know I’d be interested in seeing grammatical information for some of these languages!

That's usually how relays are concluded in my experience - with a public presentation of every torch in sequence. But I suppose nobody mentioned that in the thread here!

I should have been more specific: I was specifically interested in the grammatical part of the torch. I already know that the texts are published after the relay.

If there aren't better alternatives, I propose the Relay Museum.

[Moose-tache]

Torch sent to Brad, and Man in Space.