sentence help

Started by Nawma_taronyu, June 03, 2010, 02:15:56 PM

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Nawma_taronyu

how would I say "You have made my day"

so far i got nga haseyei oeyä trr?
Eywa'eveng ngeyä mì sìrey livu frakrr.
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Sanhìyä Tirea

I am not the best Na'vi speaker on the forum by any standard, but I can try to help.

Firstly, " You have made my day" is somewhat idiomatic, meaning something closer to ''you have completed my day". I think. I'm not sure where you get "haseyei" from, but "hasey" means done, finished, which is not really what you are looking for here. The dictionary tells me that 'änsyem means complete (adjective) so to complete (the verb) would be 'änsyem si. You are also probably looking for the perfective tense (a completed action), so we need the <ol> infix, giving 'änsyem soli. Also, nga and trr need case endings so you can tell whether the sentence means "You have completed my day'' or ''my day has completed you''. This means that nga should be ngal (the ergative case, for the noun that is doing the verb) and trr should be trrit (the accusative case, for the noun that is having the verb done to it). Finally, you can rearrange the word order to make it sound better, and emphasise the last word more, and I would be inclined to put 'änsyem soli at the end.
Therefore we now have Ngal oeyä trrit 'änsyem soli.

Eywa ngahu,
Tanhìyä Tirea.
Eywa ngahu,
Sanhìyä Tirea.

hawnuyuna'viyä

Quote from: Sanhìyä Tirea on June 03, 2010, 03:57:57 PM
I'm not sure where you get "haseyei" from, but "hasey" means done, finished,
I suspect he was trying to put the laudative infix in it, because the whole concept of someone making your day is treated positively - unless the tone is sarcastic - but yes, hasey is the wrong idea here.

kewnya txamew'itan

Don't even think about translating it. That phrase is completely idiomatic. Idioms cannot be translated literally and still make any form of sense, just like puns, for example if I talked about someone who held the frying pan by the handle so I thought "I know you cod even though you're in disguise" you'd have no idea what I was on about.

As it happens, those are literally translated Spanish idioms and the total thing would be: "if I talked about someone who had everything under control so I thought "I know what your little game is""

That's just to illustrate how futile it is. Never try to literally translate idioms, it's never pretty.

Anyway, if we try to literalise the idiom we get something along the lines of "you gave me much happiness" which, taking a small assumption about na'vi idioms based on the phrase for congratulations and good luck, you'd get something along the lines of: ngal txana lrrtokit tolìng oeru or leykolu ngal oeru lrrtok atxan

Quote from: Sanhìyä Tirea on June 03, 2010, 03:57:57 PM
Therefore we now have Ngal oeyä trrit 'änsyem soli.

si verbs are syntactically intransitive, this would probably be a causative case rather than a dative so I'd just add an <eyk> in soli to get:

ngal oeyä trrit 'änsyem seykoli
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hawnuyuna'viyä

Ma KM:
You seem to make points about translating idioms very regularly, perhaps a new sticky would be useful?

Sanhìyä Tirea

I know you shouldn't translate idioms directly. I just thought I'd managed to change it so it wasn't an idiom (though I was having some difficulty with this).
Eywa ngahu,
Sanhìyä Tirea.

omängum fra'uti

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kewnya txamew'itan

Quote from: Sanhìyä Tirea on June 03, 2010, 05:32:00 PM
I know you shouldn't translate idioms directly. I just thought I'd managed to change it so it wasn't an idiom (though I was having some difficulty with this).

Nope, you rephrased the idiomatic version.  ;D

The idiom literally means "you completed my day", but, when we try to de-idiom-ise (that should be a word  :D) it is more like "that's the best thing I've heard to day" or just "that made me very happy".
Internet Acronyms Nìna'vi

hamletä tìralpuseng lena'vi sngolä'eiyi. tìkangkem si awngahu ro
http://bit.ly/53GnAB
The translation of Hamlet into Na'vi has started! Join with us at http://bit.ly/53GnAB

txo nga new oehu pivlltxe nìna'vi, nga oer 'eylan si mì fayspuk (http://bit.ly/bp9fwf)
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