التلفون المتعدد اللغات ١٦ (Polyglottal Telephone XVI)

[Ser]

أهلا وسلا بكم في التلفون المتعدد اللغات ١٦!‏
WELCOME TO THE POLYGLOTTAL TELEPHONE XVI!

RESULTS CAN NOW BE READ HERE>>>

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...It's been a while since the last one, isn't it?

1. Post the languages you can translate from and to. If you don't want to translate from and/or into English, then don't include it in your list.
2. The game starts. When you receive your text, you have about 5 days to translate it. If you take longer than that, you'll receive some words of encouragement to get it done for a few more days. Once past that, you'll be skipped over... Probably by giving the last person's English translation to the next person, if nothing better can be arranged.
3. Once you're done, send a.) the translated text to the next person down the chain, and b.) the translated text AND a translation into English to the organizer (that is, me).
4. The chains get done, and the results are posted to the KneeQuickie.

So let's start!

To (since I begin my chain): English, Spanish, French, Standard Arabic.
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فريق غريب - ١٢ مشاركًا (Team Strange - 12 participants)
Sinjana: English → Standard Arabic
Zayk: Standard Arabic → English
Risla: English → Spanish
Mr. Z: Spanish → Norwegian
Ulrike Meinhof: Norwegian → French
finlay: French → Latin
Bob Johnson: Latin → Japanese
Qwynegold: Japanese → Finnish
Aeetrlcreejl: Finnish → Bengali
installer_swan: Bengali → English
jmcd: English → French
ná'oolkiłí: French → English
DONE

فريق ساحر - ١١ مشاركًا (Team Charm - 11 participants)
Theta: English → Danish
Astraios: Danish → Hebrew
Ziz: Hebrew → Spanish
Trailsend: Spanish → Mandarin
treskro: Mandarin → French
tubragg: French → English
Lyhoko: English → German
Feles: German → English
Xaro: English → Croatian
hwhatting: Croatian → Dutch
Esmelthien: Dutch → English
DONE

[Bob Johnson]

How long is the text, roughly?

[Ser]

How long is the text, roughly?

Like an average Polyglottal Telephone, think of the PT X.

[treskro]

To/From: Mandarin, Japanese, French, Minnan Chinese

[Trailsend]

From/to: English, Chinuk Wawa, Mandarin, Spanish

[Astraios]

From: Any Romlang (except maybe Romanian and Latin...), any Scandilang, Hebrew, Maltese, Lakota.
To: French, Hebrew, Maltese, Danish, Lakota.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

from: Any Scandinavian, French, Spanish, Occitan (hesitant to say "all Romance", so I'm erring on the side of caution)
to: French, Swedish

[Ser]

Any Romlang (except maybe Romanian and Latin...)

Don'ts worry, I'll make sure you get 16th century Spanish in unvowelled Arabic script...

[Astraios]

Any Romlang (except maybe Romanian and Latin...)

Don'ts worry, I'll make sure you get 16th century Spanish in unvowelled Arabic script...

That's just cruel. xD Any modern Romlang except Romanian or Occitan.

[Mr. Z]

I was just thinking there hasn't been a Polyglottal Telephone in a while.
I'd be more then happy to do Arabic, but I'm afraid various issues lead to me being very incompetent in Arabic after a year and a half of studying. So I guess it's:
To: English, Hebrew, Spanish, Any Scandinavian
From: English, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, maybe French, Any Scandinavian

[hwhatting]

From and to: German, English, Polish, Russian, Dutch, French
From only: Latin, Classical Greek, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Croatian / Serbian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Kazakh

[Click]

From:Czech,Slovakian,Slovene,Serbo-Croatian
To:Croatian

[finlay]

From: French, Latin, Japanese, (maybe Dutch, German)
To: French, Latin

But maybe give me a little bit of notice because I may have to acquire a decent dictionary in the latter two. I could maybe give a whack at translation into Japanese, but the results will be questionable at best. (although my French and Latin aren't exactly well-practised at the moment)

In case it's not clear, no English, please.

Also, set the time limit to two days, otherwise it'll drag on. If you've given a decent length of text, people shouldn't take longer than about an hour or two on it anyway.

[hwhatting]

Also, set the time limit to two days, otherwise it'll drag on. If you've given a decent length of text, people shouldn't take longer than about an hour or two on it anyway.

Two days is too short, at least for me. I check this board and my private inbox maybe once a day, and depending on the language, the length and the degree of difficulty of the text I may need 2-3 quiet hours undisturbed by work and family life to do a translation. I don't have that every day - if I get my text during the week, I'll most probably wait for the weekend to do the translation. I mean, is this supposed to get us into the Guinness book for most speedy translation or is this meant to be recreational fun?

[Pole, the]

From: English, French, German, Polish, Esperanto, (any Slavic?)
To: English, Polish, (Esperanto?)

[finlay]

Also, set the time limit to two days, otherwise it'll drag on. If you've given a decent length of text, people shouldn't take longer than about an hour or two on it anyway.

Two days is too short, at least for me. I check this board and my private inbox maybe once a day, and depending on the language, the length and the degree of difficulty of the text I may need 2-3 quiet hours undisturbed by work and family life to do a translation. I don't have that every day - if I get my text during the week, I'll most probably wait for the weekend to do the translation. I mean, is this supposed to get us into the Guinness book for most speedy translation or is this meant to be recreational fun?

Normally we give three days. I still think 5 days is too long. Besides, if we do it the way we normally do it, we set a date at the beginning that you're supposed to do it by, and when people finish early, the next person essentially gets extra time.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

From: English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans
To: English, German

[hwhatting]

Besides, if we do it the way we normally do it, we set a date at the beginning that you're supposed to do it by, and when people finish early, the next person essentially gets extra time.

I know, I have particpated before. That's why I think a strict two-days rule (which I thought you wanted to propose) gives too little time. If some leeway will be allowed, it's fine with me.

[Ser]

Normally we give three days. I still think 5 days is too long. Besides, if we do it the way we normally do it, we set a date at the beginning that you're supposed to do it by, and when people finish early, the next person essentially gets extra time.

Wait, was I supposed to the dates thing...? I'm not sure if that helps. Empirically speaking, last time I organized the Polyglottal Telephone XII I didn't do it and it was, like, the fastest PT ever. (2.1 and 2.3 days per person in average for each respective group, finishing in just one month.) On the other hand, Lyhoko Leaci did the dates thing in the PT XIII, and it took almost two months (after getting past the dates four times) to get it completed (and even though it had two participants less than the one I organized).

[finlay]

It's the way I did it. I guess it's not the optimal way though; I think I considered changing it last time but the relay had already started by that point.

[Rui]

@Serafin: you can't just absolutely compared them like that. There are a lot of other factors, such as
-length of text (5 sentences, versus several paragraphs, in the case of XII vs. XIII)
-complexity of text (especially if there are lots of pronouns or complicated sentence structures; this isn't really a problem if you know both languages really well, but once people start volunteering languages they aren't so great at, it goes awry very fast)
-time between the first proposal of a new PGT and when it actually starts (people might be enthusiastic at first, but if it takes 2 weeks to fully organize it, things might come up for people in the meanwhile)

Especially towards the end, people's schedules are hazy, and like I said, things can come up unexpectedly. Especially if it stretches out over a few months...I feel like if even one person misses a deadline, then the entire rest of the chain is screwed


Anyway, I can't participate because I have too much to do in the coming month to month and a half, but I'd love to see the results...they are always fun and entertaining

[Ser]

@Serafin: you can't just absolutely compared them like that. There are a lot of other factors, such as
-length of text (5 sentences, versus several paragraphs, in the case of XII vs. XIII)
-complexity of text (especially if there are lots of pronouns or complicated sentence structures; this isn't really a problem if you know both languages really well, but once people start volunteering languages they aren't so great at, it goes awry very fast)

Yeah, fair enough. On the other hand, see also the PT XV, with a similarly short text finishing in nearly a month, using dates. So I'm still thinking that using dates or not is irrelevant, maybe the length and complexity of the text matter more.

-time between the first proposal of a new PGT and when it actually starts (people might be enthusiastic at first, but if it takes 2 weeks to fully organize it, things might come up for people in the meanwhile)

(Irrelevant, I'm not taking the organizing time into account.)

[Rui]

(Irrelevant, I'm not taking the organizing time into account.)

Yeah, I know, I was just saying that someone who signs up at the beginning might have a real-life issue that comes up in between the time that they say they'll participate and the time the text actually gets to them.

[Ser]

Also, guys, if you say "maybe (some language)", I'll simply omit that when making the chains...

[jmcd]

From:English, French, German, Scottish Gaelic, Réunion Creole, Spanish, Dutch, Italian
Into:English, French, German, Scottish Gaelic, Réunion Creole