Teléfono políglota XII (Polyglottal Telephone XII)

[Viktor77]

Well, I'm to blame for the translation of but-->almost like as I used literary Spanish mas which was interpreted into French as plus and not mais as was intended.

[Ser]

Some questions:

Ulrike, did you get "lutin" by looking up "elf" at the online English-French wordreference dictionary?

candrodor, does Old French distinguish "the man" from "the men" in the direct case?

Looking back at it, I remember that my first intuition was that "qui scivit se tempus videre" meant "who knew that he saw time" (looks like there was actually a voluit missing from the end of that), but then I thought, that doesn't make any sense, and there's this weird infinitive thing and this reflexive pronoun, and maybe this is some complicated construction that I just don't remember anymore, and then I spent a long time reading Latin grammars and twisting it around and trying to make it mean something that made sense until finally giving up. Amusingly enough, my first guess was actually more accurate...

Ohhh! It was probably a semantic borrowing from English "time" to Latin "tempus" then.

(Also, I seriously considered translating "nullae comae in pecore cruribusve erant" literally as "there was no hair on his cattle or his legs", but ultimately decided that was unnecessary.)

Oh man!

[Bob Johnson]

Postmortem time!

I'm pretty sure Yiuel did something funky here with his translation beyond being overformal, but I just can't see it (since I know zero Jappy).

It looks mostly fine to me, though it's rather minimalist: the "seen by" is dropped, as is the (redundant) "stout and of athletic physique." "Unique" hair becomes just "hair." "The monster's body changed everything" becomes "for the sake of the oni's body, everything changed," which is reasonable.

The only part that bothers me is that "known ... by time itself" becomes <toki shika shiranu> in a relative clause, something like "that didn't know anything but time."

------

The text I got was interestingly ambiguous -- it used "he" in a way that might refer to either the narrator or the "demon" (elf). I was able to preserve this by starting out with <kare wa> "he TOPIC" and then using pro-drop from there. It got rather strained toward the end.

My Japanese (with my romanization and gloss) vs Åge Kruger's English:
彼は、建物のそばにある小さい小川の岸にいる間に、震えていて、秘密に悪魔を見詰める。
kare wa, tatemono no soba ni ar-u chiisa-i ogawa no kishi ni i-ru aida ni, furue-te-i-te, himitsu ni akuma o mitsume-ru.
he TOP, building GEN beside LOC exist.INAN-NPST small-NPST small.river GEN shore LOC exist.ANIM-NPST while LOC, tremble-CNJ-IPF-CNJ, secret ADV demon ACC fix.eyes.upon-NPST
At the side the building where the banks of the stream once were, there was a shaking, secret devil staring at him.

The subject of <iru> "exist.ANIMATE-NONPAST" can't be the stream. I also gave no indication of past tense. The <furueteite> "trembling" part was a bit of a shot in the dark -- it felt like a sort of dangling participle, but I couldn't think of a better way to cram it in. <himitsu ni> is an adverbial phrase "secretly", not a modifier for <akuma> "demon/devil". Furthermore, <akuma> is clearly marked as the object of <mitsumeru>, not its subject.

(I almost wrote <oni> for "demon" but decided that was overly specific.)

なぜ服を着けていない見たいのか知りたい。
naze fuku o tsuke-te-i-na-i mi-∅-ta-i no ka shir-i-ta-i
why clothes ACC attach-CNJ-IPF-NEG-NPST see-INF-WANT-NPST GEN Q know-INF-WANT-NPST
He wanted to know why he appeared to have no clothes on.

Exactly what I intended. Normally, "wear clothes" is expressed with different verbs -- <haku> below the waist, <kiru> above -- I don't think I had ever used the phrase <fuku wo tsukeru> lit. "have clothes attached" before. I'd normally just use the noun <hadaka> "[state of being] naked."

痩せたけど、精巧な絵画の用に、完璧な形をした脹脛は体より容易に見える。
yase-ta kedo, seikou na kaiga no you ni, kanpeki na katachi o shi-ta fukurahagi wa karada yori youi ni mi-e-ru
lose.weight-PAST but, elaborate ADJ drawn.picture GEN *task DAT, perfect ADJ shape ACC do-PAST calf TOP body moreso easy ADV see-ABLE-NPST
Although he looked a thin, delicate image below the calves considering his intentions, his body was more easy to see.

Oops, I wrote <用> <you> "task, use" instead of <様> <you> "appearance". That probably messed up the rest of this sentence, though <karada yori> is "moreso than the body" -- things "face the other way" in Japanese.

胸郭と太股と脇腹は全く毛がない。
kyoukaku to futomomo to wakibara wa mattaku ke ga na-i
thorax and thigh.flesh and flank TOP utterly hair NOM not.exist-NPST
The chest, thighs, and side were completely hairless.

I was given "thorax, thighs and ribs" and, because "thorax" sounds somewhat odd, I tried to translate into some rather jargon-y words. Normally, "chest" is simply <mune>. Other than that, exactly as I intended. Ribs I had to change into <wakibara> "flank" (lit. side-stomach) because the English word grew from the rib bones, while in Japanese that didn't happen. <futomomo> could refer to "buttocks" but I'm glad to see that didn't appear here; we don't need our goblin porn to be even more porny.

子供の頃都市に住むから、悪魔の体はもっと嫌らしいけど、ボブキャットの優雅な外観を持つ。
kodomo no koro toshi ni sum-u kara, akuma no karada wa motto iyarashi-i kedo, bobukyatto no yuuga na gaikan o mots-u
child GEN time city LOC live.in-NPST from, demon GEN body TOP more disgusting-NPST but, bobcat GEN elegance ADJ outward.appearance ACC carry-NPST.
Since the children then lived in the city, the devil's body was more obscene, but had the elegant look of a bobcat.

<koro> is an adverb, rather difficult to translate out of context but something like "at the time." It modifies <sumu> "live.in-NONPAST", the subject of which is still the zero pronoun. On second thought, that should have been <sunda>, past tense. I borrowed bobcat from English (instead of using <yamaneko> "wildcat, lynx" lit. mountain-cat) on the theory that it referred to the North American animal specifically.

[faiuwle]

Ohhh! It was probably a semantic borrowing from English "time" to Latin "tempus" then.

Huh?

[Ser]

I mean, when Aeetlrcreejl wrote that, he meant "time" as in "weather", isn't it? But you don't use Latin "tempus" for "weather", or do you?

[faiuwle]

I don't think "tempus" is weather normally, or at any rate my dictionary gives "caelum" and/or "tempestas" for weather, and the closest thing in the entry for "tempus" is "season". And looking at the translations, it looks like the weather-->time thing first happened when FSI translated out of French, anyway.

[Åge Kruger]

The text I got was interestingly ambiguous -- it used "he" in a way that might refer to either the narrator or the "demon" (elf). I was able to preserve this by starting out with <kare wa> "he TOPIC" and then using pro-drop from there. It got rather strained toward the end.

That I definitely noticed!

My Japanese (with my romanization and gloss) vs Åge Kruger's English:
彼は、建物のそばにある小さい小川の岸にいる間に、震えていて、秘密に悪魔を見詰める。
kare wa, tatemono no soba ni ar-u chiisa-i ogawa no kishi ni i-ru aida ni, furue-te-i-te, himitsu ni akuma o mitsume-ru.
he TOP, building GEN beside LOC exist.INAN-NPST small-NPST small.river GEN shore LOC exist.ANIM-NPST while LOC, tremble-CNJ-IPF-CNJ, secret ADV demon ACC fix.eyes.upon-NPST
At the side the building where the banks of the stream once were, there was a shaking, secret devil staring at him.

The subject of <iru> "exist.ANIMATE-NONPAST" can't be the stream. I also gave no indication of past tense. The <furueteite> "trembling" part was a bit of a shot in the dark -- it felt like a sort of dangling participle, but I couldn't think of a better way to cram it in. <himitsu ni> is an adverbial phrase "secretly", not a modifier for <akuma> "demon/devil". Furthermore, <akuma> is clearly marked as the object of <mitsumeru>, not its subject.

(I almost wrote <oni> for "demon" but decided that was overly specific.)

I fond it difficult to tease out all the clauses there, and then re-arrange them into an English structure - I'm definitely not up to professional translating standard!

なぜ服を着けていない見たいのか知りたい。
naze fuku o tsuke-te-i-na-i mi-∅-ta-i no ka shir-i-ta-i
why clothes ACC attach-CNJ-IPF-NEG-NPST see-INF-WANT-NPST GEN Q know-INF-WANT-NPST
He wanted to know why he appeared to have no clothes on.

Exactly what I intended. Normally, "wear clothes" is expressed with different verbs -- <haku> below the waist, <kiru> above -- I don't think I had ever used the phrase <fuku wo tsukeru> lit. "have clothes attached" before. I'd normally just use the noun <hadaka> "[state of being] naked."

Woohoo!

痩せたけど、精巧な絵画の用に、完璧な形をした脹脛は体より容易に見える。
yase-ta kedo, seikou na kaiga no you ni, kanpeki na katachi o shi-ta fukurahagi wa karada yori youi ni mi-e-ru
lose.weight-PAST but, elaborate ADJ drawn.picture GEN *task DAT, perfect ADJ shape ACC do-PAST calf TOP body moreso easy ADV see-ABLE-NPST
Although he looked a thin, delicate image below the calves considering his intentions, his body was more easy to see.

Oops, I wrote <用> <you> "task, use" instead of <様> <you> "appearance". That probably messed up the rest of this sentence, though <karada yori> is "moreso than the body" -- things "face the other way" in Japanese.

Thanks for the tip!

胸郭と太股と脇腹は全く毛がない。
kyoukaku to futomomo to wakibara wa mattaku ke ga na-i
thorax and thigh.flesh and flank TOP utterly hair NOM not.exist-NPST
The chest, thighs, and side were completely hairless.

I was given "thorax, thighs and ribs" and, because "thorax" sounds somewhat odd, I tried to translate into some rather jargon-y words. Normally, "chest" is simply <mune>. Other than that, exactly as I intended. Ribs I had to change into <wakibara> "flank" (lit. side-stomach) because the English word grew from the rib bones, while in Japanese that didn't happen. <futomomo> could refer to "buttocks" but I'm glad to see that didn't appear here; we don't need our goblin porn to be even more porny.

Yeah, I thought buttocks would have been a bit weird (it came to me as a weird text anyway... )

子供の頃都市に住むから、悪魔の体はもっと嫌らしいけど、ボブキャットの優雅な外観を持つ。
kodomo no koro toshi ni sum-u kara, akuma no karada wa motto iyarashi-i kedo, bobukyatto no yuuga na gaikan o mots-u
child GEN time city LOC live.in-NPST from, demon GEN body TOP more disgusting-NPST but, bobcat GEN elegance ADJ outward.appearance ACC carry-NPST.
Since the children then lived in the city, the devil's body was more obscene, but had the elegant look of a bobcat.

<koro> is an adverb, rather difficult to translate out of context but something like "at the time." It modifies <sumu> "live.in-NONPAST", the subject of which is still the zero pronoun. On second thought, that should have been <sunda>, past tense. I borrowed bobcat from English (instead of using <yamaneko> "wildcat, lynx" lit. mountain-cat) on the theory that it referred to the North American animal specifically.

It took a while to translate the katakana correctly; wtf is a bobykyatto? Is it a name, 'Bob Catto'? Eventually it came to me.

---

Over all, I'm pretty pleased with how well I've done, even if I made some mistakes. This is my first time translating out of Japanese, so I'm pretty damn proud.

[Risla]

Har har har, I like how this turned out. Short text, but it certainly got mutilated enough to make up for that. I've got some ideas for future texts, if anyone wants to organize the next one; I'd rather refrain from doing it myself since I know I can be rather unreliable.

[Ser]

the next one

So... Is the next one going to be via audio or not? /isn't organizing it tho'

[treskro]

Would it be simpler if it is all audio?

[candrodor]

candrodor, does Old French distinguish "the man" from "the men" in the direct case?

Yes, I am fairly sure it does. I think I just got confused about case with the different clauses, I'm afraid.

[Astraios]

Here is the Lakota, with gloss, and langover94's English for comparison:

Wakpála waŋ thíkhiyela kiŋ él ípi na iglúžužupi.
river-DIM INDEF.SPEC dwelling.place-near.to DEF arrive.there-PL and REFL-undress-PL
They arrived at the stream near the camp and they undressed themselves.

Yay, this one basically worked.

[Goblin] kiŋ hačhóla kiŋháŋ oówaŋyaŋg tókheča héči slolyá čhíŋ čha naȟmála iwáŋyaŋke.
goblin DEF clothing-be.without when for.looking.at how.it.was DEF[topic.unknown.to.speaker] know he.wanted and.so secretly he.looked.at.it
The naked goblin knew what he wanted the weather to look like and secretly watched it.

Hmm. "The naked goblin" would have had hačhóla as part of the nominal, and not the verb - so it would be [Goblin] hačhóla kiŋ, rather than [Goblin] kiŋ hačhóla.

Líla tȟamáheča éyaš waš'áka owáŋyaŋke, sutáya paǧópi s'e tȟaŋčháŋ kiŋ t'íŋze.
very thin but strong looked.a.certain.way , firm-ADV carve-PASS as.though his.body DEF hard
He looked very skinny but powerful, firmly carved as though his body was solid.

Mix-up of the last phrase - s'e is postpositional, so it always means "as though [whatever precedes]", not "as though [whatever follows]".


Makhú na hú kiŋ híŋ wanígniče, čhaná kiŋ kȟó hiŋšmé šni.
his.chest and his.leg DEF hair lack<INAN.PL> , his.groin DEF also hair-deep NEG
His chest and legs were without hair, his groin was hairless as well.

Easy.

Wičháša kiŋ thiyátana waŋwíčhayaŋka čha iwíčhayačhiŋ, [goblin] tȟaŋčháŋ kiŋ ítȟokeča, éyaš igmúgleška s'e yuphíya iglúha.
man DEF back.at.home he.looked.at.them REL he.compared.it.to.them , goblin its.body DEF different.to.them , but cat-spotted as.though elegantly REFL-hold
The man at home looked at them and compared them, the goblin's body was different, maintained beautifully just like the spotted wild cat.

This was the hard one. I think I got so wound up by the structure overall that I messed up the opening relative clause (which I now think should have been Wičháša eyá thiyátana waŋwíčhayaŋka kiŋ (hená) iwíčhayačhiŋ). Sorry! The rest was fine though.

[jmcd]

@Renaçido :Thanks for organising this.

On the Lakota translation, you comment "The house changed to a stream " but the stream was laready there. It was camp that house became.

[finlay]

The text I got was interestingly ambiguous -- it used "he" in a way that might refer to either the narrator or the "demon" (elf). I was able to preserve this by starting out with <kare wa> "he TOPIC" and then using pro-drop from there. It got rather strained toward the end.

That I definitely noticed!

The goblin became an "it" in my english gloss. No such freedom with French, though.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Ulrike, did you get "lutin" by looking up "elf" at the online English-French wordreference dictionary?

Yes.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

I could do the next one, I already have an idea for a possible text. (unless someone else comes up with something that I like better)

It will be an ordinary text one if I run it, though, audio sounds too complicated to do. (Just where am I supposed to store the sound files after it's done for record keeping, for one?)

[finlay]

Ulrike, did you get "lutin" by looking up "elf" at the online English-French wordreference dictionary?

Yes.

I use that one too...

I went the other way, though. I guess my advice is look at all the entries (elf is given as "elfe" in the other section of that page), and then check how your French word translates back into English, too, because it may be asymmetrical.

[Nesescosac]

I don't think "tempus" is weather normally, or at any rate my dictionary gives "caelum" and/or "tempestas" for weather, and the closest thing in the entry for "tempus" is "season". And looking at the translations, it looks like the weather-->time thing first happened when FSI translated out of French, anyway.

When I received the text, the phrase was "who knew he wanted to see the time."

And yes, I did miss a voluit there.

[Ser]

Ulrike, did you get "lutin" by looking up "elf" at the online English-French wordreference dictionary?

Yes.

What I found most hilarious was that had I checked how to say it at Wikipedia I would've gotten a better answer than in that published dictionary (HAH!)... Though finlay is perfectly right about re-checking it with a back-translation.

It will be an ordinary text one if I run it, though, audio sounds too complicated to do.

At UL when it was attempted, the organiser asked for both what you made out of the last recording, an English translation, and your translation to the following language, which would mean more work to do, since all might be necessary to truly appreciate the translations.

(Just where am I supposed to store the sound files after it's done for record keeping, for one?)

You could use the kneequickie too, just as it was done for the Voices of the ZBB thread.

[Viktor77]

Ulrike, did you get "lutin" by looking up "elf" at the online English-French wordreference dictionary?

Yes.

Wikipedia is a great way to find out how to say things accurately! So long as the language has a page.

[faiuwle]

Just where am I supposed to store the sound files after it's done for record keeping, for one?

Get a dropbox. It is awesome.

[Qwynegold]

Okay, it's done. Now I know that my earlier determination not to translate out of Japanese was correct. Oh well, I hope the gist of the text is still somewhat similar...

Also, you had me translating into Japanese. And I purposely had fun using keigo

Oh, I thought there was some reason why the "demon" had higher social status than the narrator. I thought about writing stuff like "the gracious demon came out of it's honorable home", but then just ignored it. The keigo wasn't that difficult, I just looked things up in my textbook that I had forgotten. Except that I didn't know if ご覧になっていらっしゃいました was supposed to mean "was watching" or "came to watch". There were other stuff that were diffucult though. For example 知らぬ, I've seen these verbs that end in ぬ but I have no idea what it means. What is it?

2.44 miles

That <里> is <sato> "town" not <ri> "li (unit of distance)"...

So wait, the kanjis are identical? Or not? When I get home, I will recheck the dictionary...

[Bob Johnson]

I fond it difficult to tease out all the clauses there, and then re-arrange them into an English structure - I'm definitely not up to professional translating standard!

Yes, I get clause overload too -- literary Japanese tends to (what would in English be) run-on sentences, and if you think my text was bad, just wait. (Though my extended zero-pronoun was rather difficult.)

It took a while to translate the katakana correctly; wtf is a bobykyatto? Is it a name, 'Bob Catto'? Eventually it came to me.

Even for English L1s it's still hard with some words... and of course there's wasei-eigo such as <baikingu> "smörgåsbord" (not biking), and <manshon> "apartment building" (not mansion), to throw you off.

For example 知らぬ, I've seen these verbs that end in ぬ but I have no idea what it means. What is it?

It's the old-timey negative ending, ぬ = ない (though of course it's not an i-adjective). I think it's both attributive and final form, but don't remember right now.

2.44 miles

That <里> is <sato> "town" not <ri> "li (unit of distance)"...

So wait, the kanjis are identical? Or not? When I get home, I will recheck the dictionary...

It's a different reading and meaning, but the same glyph.

[Qwynegold]

For example 知らぬ, I've seen these verbs that end in ぬ but I have no idea what it means. What is it?

It's the old-timey negative ending, ぬ = ない (though of course it's not an i-adjective). I think it's both attributive and final form, but don't remember right now.

Oh, okay. Thanks!

2.44 miles

That <里> is <sato> "town" not <ri> "li (unit of distance)"...

So wait, the kanjis are identical? Or not? When I get home, I will recheck the dictionary...

It's a different reading and meaning, but the same glyph.

Oh, okay. My dictionary only lists the measure as the meaning for the single character word, but there is an お里 however.