Naʼvi Bible Name Authority File

Kaltxì, Guest! Why don't you join our community?

Paul Frommer's
Language Workbook

[Yawne Zize’ite]

Since more and more people are translating bits of the Bible, it would be useful to have an organized list of the Naʼvified versions of proper names from the Bible, so we're consistent in our Romanization and Naʼvification. I'm no authority, so I'm going to list the ones I've seen. I have skipped the names of some minor characters in the Book of Ruth whom I don't recall as appearing elsewhere in the Bible.

http://wiki.learnnavi.org/index.php/Bible/wordlist was an early attempt, but it's long out of date and lists forms I have not seen in use.

יהוה = Yawey (earlier texts use Yawä). General use. Genitive Yaweyhä?
הַשָּׂטָן or Σατανάς = Satan. General use.
דָּוִד = Tavit. General use.
ירוּשָׁלִָֽם = Yerusalem. My usage.
יִשׂרָאֵל = Yisraʼel. My usage.
יִשׂרָאֵל = Yisrael. Eltu Lefngap Makto.
יִשׂרָאֵל = Israel. Alyara Alati.
בֵּ֧ית לֶ֣חֶם = Peyt-lehem. General use (with or without hyphen).
יְהוּדָה = Yehuta. General use.
נָעֳמִי = Na’omi. ’eylan ’angtsìkä. (He consistently includes glottal stops and changes `ayin to a glottal stop.)
נָעֳמִי = Naomi. Alyara Alati. (She consistently drops glottal stops and `ayins.)
מוֹאָב = Moʼav. ’eylan ’angtsìkä.
מוֹאָב = Moap. Alyara Alati.
רוּת = Rut. ʼeylan ʼangtsìkä.
רוּת = Ruteʼ. Alyara Alati.
עָרְפָּה = Orpa. Alyara Alati.
בֹּ֫עַז = Poazì. Alyara Alati.
רָחֵל = Rakel. Alyara Alati. [Note that this name was pronounced with [χ] not [ħ].]
לֵאָה = Lea. Alyara Alati.
אפרתה = Efrata. Alyara Alati.
תָּמָר = Tamar. Alyara Alati.
פָּרֶץ = Farezì. Alyara Alati.
עֹבֵד = Opet. Alyara Alati.
חֶצְרֹון = Hezìron. Alyara Alati.
רָם = Ram. Alyara Alati.
עַמִּינָדָב = Aminatap. Alyara Alati.
נַחְשֹׁון = Na'son. Alyara Alati.
שַׂלְמָה = Salmon. Alyara Alati.
יִשָׁי = Tsyesi. Alyara Alati.
Χριστός = Kxrrì'stu. Common use.
מָשִׁיחַ = Metsiakx. Eltu Lefngap Makto.
Ναζαρέτ = Natsara. Eltu Lefngap Makto. [All forms of this word are difficult; it also appears as Ναζαρέθ, and Ναζαρά is usually considered the oldest form. Furthermore, it usually appears as a genitive adjective, which has provoked arguments over whether the original meaning was "Nazirite", which would be identical in Greek transcription. Modern Hebrew uses נָצְרַת.]
יוֹסֵף or Ἰωσήφ = Yosep. Eltu Lefngap Makto.
שָׁאוּל = Tsaʼul. Eltu Lefngap Makto. [Influenced by the Islamic version طالوت?]
עַמּוֹן = ʼAmon. Eltu Lefngap Makto.
יְהוֹשָׁפָט = Yehotsafatx. Eltu Lefngap Makto.
אֲרָם = Aram. Eltu Lefngap Makto.

I think that's all of them.

Not yet present in any Bible translations, but important, is "Egypt"; used Ekipìt and, in an unrelated piece, I used Masìr. There is also a case to be made for Mitsrayim.

In sum, we have a bit of a mess on our hands, and if the Na'vi Bible ever gets to the compilation stage it will need editing to unify the transliteration.

[Eltu Lefngap Makto]

Thanks for doing this.  Of course, I advocate the system I used!    I don't think we are going to come to any consensus as long as people are going from various English versions, ancient vs. modern Greek pronunciations, and ancient vs. modern Hebrew pronunciations.  Real life Bible translation teams (my professor headed up one) agree on philosophical and historical approaches before they begin.  In most cases, they agree on a "genealogy", that is, which previous translation attempts they will consider relevant.  I hate to enact legislation, but I think if we don't, we'll end up with lots of little Bibles ... which is where we're already headed.
 

[Yawne Zize’ite]

Thanks for the insight on the real-life Bible translation team!

To make it worse, I can contribute that I was attempting to go from the original Hebrew but was de facto going from a melange of freely available English translations with contributions from the Reina Valera (Spanish), Strong's concordance to the original Hebrew, and the Japanese Protestant Bible since it's written in a simpler style than the popular Taisho bible (for clearing up a few words that are less ambiguous in Japanese).

Meanwhile, I don't think anything has been settled regarding translation philosophy or intended audience, so various authors will vary on the level of "Pandorization" of the material. I wasn't planning to explicitly move the Biblical narrative to Pandora, but I wasn't intending to play up the differences between Israelite social structure and Omatikaya social structure either.

You can't afford to lose the crowdsourcing, at the rate this project is going, but perhaps you could take our contributions and make an edited version, imposing your team's will on the material regarding names and such?

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

I think this list is a good place to start, as it shows the sourcing of each name. It can be added to as more names are added (who is doing 1 Chronicles?  ) It could also be placed on the wiki that Eltu Lefngap Makto created.

From what I can gather from the dictionary, the genitive form of Yawey would be Yaweyä. There is a note about 'vowel fronting' in this partuicular case, but no case for inserting any additional letters for epenthesis.

As far as versions go, there are two clearly identifiable 'versions' in the works right now. The first is the original project, intended for devotional reading. It is intended to be as literal as Na'vi will allow for at this time. The second 'version' is Eltu Legngap Makto's 'confrontational version', which would be used like a ministry tool for witnessing to the Na'vi. It contains some interesting translations that would make a lot more sense to a Blueskin than to us.

Ultimately though-- and this is a ways off-- an editor or team of editors needs to work over the material being prepared for each version to bring about book-to-book consistencey. But at this time, I think it is much more important to just get books translated. A translation that is stylistically or grammatically/syntactically off is better than no translation at all.