Dedicated Translation Help Thread

[Vazquar Tra'tabuur]

Vor'e! I've been out of the loop for a while, and didn't have that list. I was able to find and download it, which will make things much easier for me in the future.

[Pekatherosh]

Q: So I've been trying to find a word for seer (clairvoyant, fortune teller) and couldn't find one. The closest I've come is combining words for future (vencuyot) and vision (haa'it), however, I believe that something like observer/watcher would fit better the issue is that I can only find the word for observe/watch over (ja'hailir). How would I go about creating a coherent translation for seer using these, or other, words?

[Belandrie Meave]

Well, ja'hailur, then.

[Pekatherosh]

So it would be along the lines of Vencuyot Ja'hailur for "future observer"?

[Belandrie Meave]

Taylir bic pakod, jare. Mando'ade nu'go'naasir miite.
'ven'ja'hailur' would do it - literally comes out as 'future-see-er'.

[Pekatherosh]

Vor'e!

[Tempest]

For the purpose of my learning basic sentence structure and, thus, immediately putting any new words I acquire into use; three brief, related questions regarding a translation:

1. Is "I feel the pain of the knife, but my heart is still strong." correct as "Ni aalar bekad aaray, al ner kar'ta cuyir su kot'la."?

2. When is 'the' ('te' and/or the emphatic 'haar') used?

3. What are the differences between Mando'a and English regarding sentence structure?

[Aondeug]

1. The sentence is intelligible and correct as far as I can tell. Save two things. First is that the verbs aren't conjugated. To produce the stem you drop the -r at the ends of verbs. Without dropping the -r it comes out as "I to feel". With be'kad you need to add a beten, the little apostrophe, in between the possessive "be" and the noun "kad". Without it you get bekad which theoretically could be a whole different word. Not only does the beten link the possessive to the noun, but it's also a glottal stop. That is the little sound between the "uh" and "oh" in "uh oh". So it is a meaningful little thing. You can also drop cuyir. "To be" is a rarely used form of that verb. The "to exist" meaning seems to be used more. Either way it's more emphatic than necessary. Think of it like people who always use pronouns in Spanish. It's technically not incorrect but it sounds a bit weird. Other weird note is the word of be'kad aaray. Which is correct. But aaray be'kad could also be correct. The word order on some things is freer than English so feel free to play around with that. I prefer be'kad aaray personally just because I think it sounds more poetic.

2. The definitive article, "the", is rarely used. The emphatic "haar" I feel would only be used in exceptional circumstances of importance or respect. It is emphatic after all. By deeming something worth using haar you're hammering home that it's THE thing. That's a big deal. Te I feel would be used similarly but for less extreme situations. Like let's say you have two knives. One is a rusty piece of shit that you keep for some reason but it's not useful. The other actually is useful. You're working on something that requires a knife to cut and ask a friend for the knife. They have the gall to ask which knife. So you grumpily use "te kal" to get across that it's THE knife. You know the one that actually cuts and isn't a rusty hunk of fuckall? Di'kut.

3. Mando'a sentence structure is, by and large, very similar to English. This is one of the reasons that some consider it less a language and more an extended English based code. You can, in theory, take whatever English sentences you want and just swap words in and out. But Mando'a offers a bit more flexibility of word order and how wording works than English. Which basically means that so long as the meaning comes across you can put words in different orders not used in English. In fact you might want to switch word orders to place emphasis on specific things. There's also some cases where Mando'a doesn't require a "little word" like how English might. "Jate'shya" doesn't need to be followed by "than" to carry the meaning of "better than", for example. "Haatyc or'arue jate'shya ori'sol aru'ike nuhaatyc," is translated as "Better one big enemy you can see, than many small enemies you can't see" but more literally it'd come out as "Visible large'enemy better many small enemies unseen". There's no "than" here.

Another example that doesn't translate literally, but does get across the meaning due to wording and emphasis on wording is seen in "Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaas'la.". We translate this as "Nobody cares about your father, only the father you will be". Literally though it's coming out as "Your bloodline is not important. You as a father? Large importance." The words aren't exact but the ones picked are stressing the specific bits that make the meaning of the sentence important and culturally that can be very important. You could literally use buir instead of taldin, but you'd be losing the very important distinction between taldin and aliit in the process. That's moving away from grammar itself though and more into the semantics of idioms. But that sort of thing's rather important to languages I feel, and it's a big reason that non-native speakers of, say, Arabic sound like weird robots to native speakers many times. We don't have too many examples of full sentences in the Mando'a canon as it is, but it is a thing to keep in mind and play with.

[Tempest]

Vor'e, vod.

That really helps; I'll keep it on hand next time I'm practicing new Mando'a material.

[Aondeug]

Ba'gedet'ye, ner vod.

[Tempest]

I figured wishing someone 'happy birthday' was appropriate to bring up here-- and honestly I wanted an excuse to ask about more Mando'a stuff. My possessive word use is pretty clumsy and my verb form use, particularly '-ir', is rather strange. Knowing the proper thought process to make up unknown word forms would be helpful as well.

Ner vod briikase banar ibi'tuur, bal ni copaan rejorhaa'ir raysh "Briikase gote'tuur" o'r Mando'a. Jorcu ni narit magyc, ni balyc jorhaa'ir "K'hailir gar'ibi'tuur ti jatne manda." Gar mirde?

[Aondeug]

The morphological mode of Mando'a is primarily aggluntinative, if that's what you're asking. Which is to say we just kind of smash words and word endings onto existing words to make new ones. There's some other ways words get formed in Mando'a but that's one of the main ones and the main one I see used in making new words and word forms. For this I'd go through what words you do know and try to start breaking them into pieces. Figure out what those pieces mean. So like you see "jor" in both jorhaa'ir and jorcu. Maybe think about if they could be related. Not saying they are but just go through and look at that you know?

Unless you mean like...forms we don't know of like how some have suspected that Skirata is a specific name form of Skira? With that you honestly just kind of go by your gut. Look at the words we've got and find little bits that we're honestly not sure about. Like the 'ba' of ba'gedet'ye we're not sure what it is exactly. It could be a few different things. I like to think it's the dative bah, myself, and keep open the option of being able to dative structure phrases. It helps if you look into how other languages make words too? Like Mando'a isn't based on Finnish but knowing that Finnish makes use of the dative to make new words in a way English wouldn't is a helpful thing to know where you're going "Ok but what the hell is ba'gedet'ye really?" and for making new words and word forms entirely.

As far as what you wrote...I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the first bit. It looks kind of like you're going for "My vod, something happy's happening today"? But banar isn't conjugated and right now "ner vod" is the subject when I'm not sure it's supposed to be? Also by raysh do you mean rayshe'a, as in five? Magyc I think is majyc, extra. Jorhaa'ir after ni balyc should be conjugated. Is mirde a word you made yourself?

As for conjugation, I tend to go with just dropping the -r myself though I've seen people drop both that and the vowel. I'm not sure if the latter is correct but the former definitely is. You don't need to conjugate a second verb though because otherwise it makes no sense, so you've got that right. If you had written it as ni copaani rejorhaa'i it'd come off as like..."I want telling" or something. The official grammar just says "The infinitive ends in -ir, -ar, -ur, -or or -er. Removing the 'r' usually produces the stem." So just dropping 'r' works but what are the cases in which it doesn't work? That I don't know if we have anything official on and I don't recall us having it. So I'd just go with my gut in terms of what I think sounds better. So copaani definitely sounds right, but jorhaa'i might be a bit weird sounding? So maybe drop the 'i' too to get jorhaa?

The possessive we have three definitely canonical ways to do it. The three definite correct ways are...kad be'jetii. So "thing of possessor" basically. And kad jetiib. Which I guess literally might in English be like "thing possessor's". The last is Boba'kad. So "Name object".

I've also seen it structured as be'jetii kad in at least one fansong, Par Cyare Buir for reference. While this doesn't have any official sources that I know of I do like the structure and feel it makes sense. I mean gra'tua cuun makes sense and it's technically vengeance ours.

[Tempest]

I had guessed those from a couple times when I browsed the non-canonical stuff, but I am glad I know it more definitely.

It was supposed to be something like "it's my brother's birthday today, and I wanted to wish him happy birthday in Mando'a" then something along the lines of "I wanted to say something extra so I added 'fill today full of harmonious family time' Your thoughts?".

That makes sense.

[Draalv]

Q: I've been having a hard time finding anything on the brewing culture of Mandalorians. More specifically, trying to find titles or words which would be used for the Brewmaster of a clan or just a plain brewer from a clan. I know there's no word for master, which is causing me a bit of trouble on how one would create a word for the role.

[Aondeug]

My guess would be to mix gal with alor, goran, or something similar. Something that would refer to a head of something or someone who makes something.

[Vlet Hansen]

Gal'got would be brewing, to me, and I'd do Gal'alor for brewer, in the same vein as Nau'alor being a smith.

[Kar'Tayl Ani]

I'm trying to translate a phrase, but I've gotten a little stuck.

I'm trying to translate: If not me, then who...

So far, I have: meh naasad ni, <then> tion’ad… meh naasad ni,<then> tion’ad…

Would "then" even be used? Do I have the correct sentence structure? Thanks for your help!

[Void]

Void

[Kar'Tayl Ani]

Thank you very much! To be sure I understand, either of the following should work, correct?

Tion'ad, meh nu’ni?
Who, if not me?

Meh nu’ni, tion’ad?
If not me, who?

Thank you again!!!

[Void]

Void