Learn Mando'a

From Season 2, The Mandalore Plot: the words of the dying Death Watch bomber and Satine Kryze:

Bomber: Calhava bru'chun dralshye'ran!

I know that the translation of this, while not officially canon, is accepted as "Compassionate leaders will burn," which makes sense in the context of this episode.


Bomber: Se solu, se kad, se darasuum kote. Kadi, se norm'iim.
Satine: Ki, kadi norm'iim.

I know that "darasuum kote" means eternal glory, but that's the only confirmed word that I could find in the dictionary or elsewear (I'm very new to all this, though!)

I've tried to determine likely meanings for the rest of the words/translation, but I'm sure others would have better guesses than me.

I assume:
- "Solu" is related to "solus" (alone, vulverable / each, one / united, as one), perhaps in relation to becoming one with the Mandalorian oversoul after death.
- "Kad" is the word for saber/sword, but I'm unsure how it's functioning here.
- "Ki" seems to indicate a command, perhaps a Concordian derivation of "ke/k''"
- Contextually, the bomber's line seems to be a wish (a yearning for the afterlife); Satine's line seems to be a release into that wish -- a kind of "Go with God" kind of line.


Please if you have any knowledge, assumptions, or headcanons, let me know! I'd love to at least try to determine a working translation!

It always sounded to me like the line of a dying man wishing to be released into the afterlife, too. But it also sounds like he is mumbling a bit incoherently. But I don't think he is.

If se were a derivation of te, the man would have said something along the line of "The one, the sabre, the eternal glory", hinting at Pre Vizsla as the wielder of the darksaber and his fight for what he and his followers percieve as the way to eternal glory.

Obi-Wan even asks Satine about what the man said, but all she answers is that he was speaking Concordian. To her, he probably was mumbling, and she deemed his words - except the last bit - unimportant.

The rest truly does sound like a sort of absolution. kadi could be the stem of a verb maybe like kadir, but other than that, I don't have any idea how to translate the rest either.

When I first saw that scene I immediately paused and looked at the subtitles. But when I realized, the first sentence could not be translated with what we have, I just stopped thinking about it, and just assumed it was made-up gibberish (just like whatever Jango Fett says to Boba on Kamino, when Obi-Wan asks about Sifo-Dyas).

This post however got me thinking again. The Mando'ade being a very secular people, having a concept of Afterlife seems fairly out of character for them - especially Death Watch! Nevertheless, it could still be a common thing for a dying Mando to ask for his glory. Now that I think about it, it reminds of a very common theme in greek mythology. You can only tell if someone has lived a happy, fulfilled life once their life is over. Because before that, anything can still turn for the worse (see e.g. Charon by Lucian). In German, there is also a saying "Du sollst den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben" (roughly: you should not praise the day before the evening).

Similarly here, in Mando culture honor/glory is obviously central, but you can only consider yourself a proper Mando, once you lived, fought and died like a Mando. That is what this line sound like to me.

As for translation, I am at a bit of a loss. Seeing Ki as a derived form of Ke definitely makes sense in both your and my interpretation. Perhaps it serves as an affirmative particle of speech, in englisch we'd just say "yes".

The rest of it, I don't know. I tried looking in the dictionary for words sounding similar, so they could just be dialect forms, but I didn't find anything useful there. This is also supported by Satine's reaction. Since all she said was "It was Concordian", either the sentence didn't make any sense (unlikely), or it was secret (very unlikely), or it had no important meaning worth translating to an outsider like Obi-Wan. It might even be that this goodbye to a fallen is a purely Concordian tradition.

For se, the two words with similar pronounciation I found were cin (haha that's me) and su, neither of witch make sense. Kadi definitely sounds like a verb form of kadir - perhaps a dialect of kotir? Although they do have kote in Concordian, so kotir would probably just stay the same.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the subject. If one of the more skilled Mando'ade around here have something more to add, I would love to figure this out together!