Bible in Na'vi

[Txur’Itan]

Which program would you probably use to edit the pdf? Cause then we could use the same program and handing over the raw data would be easier.

I suggest open office.

It is free, and supports MS word formats.

[Tìmuiäyä'itan]

I'd go for that, too. But I don't want to tell riftmaster what to do.

[riftmaster]

I have openoffice too! 

[riftmaster]

I'd go for that, too. But I don't want to tell riftmaster what to do.

don't worry about me you were here first!!

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

PDF's are intended to be a final form, so they are difficult to edit unless you have expensive software from Adobe.  When you are done with a session of adding text on some editable format, you could create a PDF of your work so far. But at some point, bits and pieces will have to be joined together, and this will be quite difficult to do if they are PDFs. So, this is why I suggested we need a working format that can be more easily edited.

As far as style goes, I am willing to come up with something preliminary and simple, that we can use to get going. We will have a while to perfect things, but it will be easier if there is at least some rough organization.

In the end, I am probably better at organizing and formatting things, than actual translation. I am learning a lot from reading the looooooong posts here! Irayo!

Yawä ngahu

[riftmaster]

I don't know about the rest of the group but that would be helpful for me

Irayo!

[Tìmuiäyä'itan]

Kaltxì ma smukan!

@riftmaster:
What do you mean would be helpful for you?

@'Eylan Ayfalulukanä:
I think you did not yet get my point about the pdf. Editing would be done by one person only. This person would have a odt file with all the content, and be updateing that file, while at the same time saving a pdf version to publish.
This would of course be a work in progress publishing, with version numbers like the dictionary of Taronyu.

So the idea is: We post our translations here and discuss them here. And the WRITER has the job to check the thread for new textpassages or new styles or whatever we decide on, and update the pdf accordingly (of course also his local odt file, but that is his business).

The job of the NON-WRITERS would be, to check the pdf for mistakes and discuss them here (if there are doubts) or contact the WRITER directly (that would be e.g. in the case of obvious typos, there's no further discussion needed, I think). In case of doubt we can still discuss the case here in the forum.

So the forum thread will be there for discussion of new things (or rediscussion of old things after finding further mistakes, that shall happen on a regular base as the language is not yet published completely).
The pdf will be there to have the actual state of the project present, without having to dig through the thread here.

My idea is that the pdf lies on the ftp server (which we seem to have available meanwhile) and we can have a link to it in our signatures, so everyone interested in the project just needs to see one of our profiles to get to the actual pdf.
The file would always maintain the same file name (no version number in the name), so we can leave our signatures constantly pointing to the same direction.

So the joining of the bits and pieces would be the task of one or two WRITERS, who can well use openoffice to do this. We can also publish the odt, but I think more people have pdf readers on their machines than an odt reading software. Some people have no office software at all, because they use their machines for surfing and games, or other things.
Plus, I think pdf looks neater than odt, and finally, yes, this would indeed be some kind of publishing, though of the work up to the date which will in the beginning not be too much.

But I am afraid that if we have an odt file on the ftp sever that everyone is to change at own risk and responsibility, that would possibly end up in chaos if we get some more helping hands here...

As far as style goes, I am willing to come up with something preliminary and simple, that we can use to get going. We will have a while to perfect things, but it will be easier if there is at least some rough organization.

I completely agree with you on that. My idea was to leave this part out to the WRITER, as I do not want to hassle myself too much with formatting etc. Just not my cup of tea, I confess, I am chaotic at times.

In the end, I am probably better at organizing and formatting things, than actual translation. I am learning a lot from reading the looooooong posts here! Irayo!

I hope I do not tell wrong things here, hehe. Maybe it is an option you and riftmaster get the organisation done together? I don't know. But I deeply believe that good orga is important for the mission to get fulfilled. We need translators, but also people who focus more on proofreading, we need people to gather our findings, we just have to be careful to have the right balance between the groups. But as riftmaster said he won't be able to do anything till monday...

So what do you all think?

Yawä ayngahu!

[Col Quaritch]

I'm good either way I have one of those mega computer dose it all and dose it to the max level. Its primary role though is gaming god-machine. Everything else is just a bonus as far as I'm concerned.

[riftmaster]

Quote from: ''Eylan Ayfalulukanä

As far as style goes, I am willing to come up with something preliminary and simple, that we can use to get going. We will have a while to perfect things, but it will be easier if there is at least some rough organization.

[Tìmuiäyä'itan]

tslolam, ma riftmaster!

[riftmaster]

Sìltsan ma Tìmuiäyä'itan

[Tseyk Tìriuä]

@Tìmuiäyä'itan

just reading your sig...nga+yä becomes ngeyä xD

[Tìmuiäyä'itan]

Oel ayngal kameie!

I got Psalm 1 done. Well, first try, many mistakes in it certainly, so see where you can correct me. I'm gonna do this in the trilinear style, it's more work to write but things should be easier to unterstand. First line goes Na'vi, second line goes decoding (for abbrevations look in Tarony's dictionary part E: English Short-Hand Terms for Trilinear Glosses), and third line goes the actual translation in real English, so here we go:


1. lefpom lu tute a ke tìran ìlä säfpìl <ay>ska'a<yu><yä> <tì>siltsan<yä> sì a ke kllkxem mì fya'o <ke><sì>kame<yä> sì a ke kelku si hu <ay>h<us>angham tìmuiä<yä>.
happy be man which not walk following idea PLU.destroy.AGENT N.GEN NMLZ.good.GEN and which not stand in path not.NMLZ(lention!).see.GEN and which not house.V with PLU.laugh.ACTIVE PARTICIPLE NMLZ.right.GEN
Happy is the man, who walks not folloing the idea of the destroyers of goodness and who stands not in the path of nonseers and who dwells not with those laughing at righteousness.
2. slä koren Yawä<yä> lu <tì>rangal po<yä> ulte koren<t> Yawä<yä> n<er>ume trr sì txon.
but rule Yawä.GEN be NMLZ.wish he.GEN and rule.ACC Yawä.GEN learn.IMPF day and night
But YHWH's rule is his wish and YHWH's rule he is learning day and night.
3. ulte po lu fìfya utral pa<yä> teya kilvan ro a (po<l>?) mauti<t> tìng krr po<yä> sì a ke terkup sì fl<er>ä (pol?) fra'ut.
and he be like.this tree water.GEN full.ADJ(left out) river at which (he.ERG) fruit.ACC give time he.GEN and which not die and succeed.IMPF (he.ERG) all.things.ACC
and he is like a tree at the rivers full of water, which gives fruit at his time and which dies not and which succeeds in all things.
4. <ay>ska'a<yu> <tì>siltsan<yä> ke lu pxel po slä pxel kerusey<a> rina' a (po<t>?) kurakx hufwe.
PLU.destroy.AGENT N NMLZ.good.GEN not be like he but like dead.ADJ seed which (he.ACC) drive.out wind
The destroyers of goodness are not like him but like dead seed which the wind drives out.
5. tafral <ay>ska'a<yu> <tì>siltsan<yä> ke k<iv>llkxem tengkrr <tì>pe'un ulte <ke><sì>kame tengkrr ultxa sute<yä> <a>muiä.
therefore PLU.destroy.AGENT N NMLZ.good.GEN not stand.SUBJ while NMLZ.decide and not.PLU(disappear!).NMLZ(lention!).see while meeting PLU(lention+disappear!).GEN ADJ.right
Therefore the destroyers of goodness should not stand during decision and non-seers during meeting of the righteous.
6. taluna Yawä<l> kame fya'o<t> sute<yä> <a>muiä sì fya'o <ay>ska'a<yu><yä> <tì>siltsan<yä> 'ia.
because YHWH.ERG see path.ACC PLU(lention+disappear!).man.GEN ADJ.right and path PLU.destroy.AGENT N.GEN NMLZ.good.GEN lose.oneself
Because YHWH sees (spiritual sense) the path of the righteuous men and the path of the destroyers of goodness loses itself (spiritually).


As you see I still have no real idea on how to build subclauses with "a", whether I have to repeat subject/object or not. Any help appreciated!

Yawä ayngahu!

PS: @Tseyk Tìruä: Irayo, gotta fix that!

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

Kaltxì ma smukan!

@riftmaster:
What do you mean would be helpful for you?

@'Eylan Ayfalulukanä:
I think you did not yet get my point about the pdf. Editing would be done by one person only. This person would have a odt file with all the content, and be updateing that file, while at the same time saving a pdf version to publish.
This would of course be a work in progress publishing, with version numbers like the dictionary of Taronyu.

So if I am following what you are suggesting here, there would be one person who accepts the bits and pieces everyone is working on, and combines them into one .PDF file, that would be the sum total of all the work so far.

So the idea is: We post our translations here and discuss them here. And the WRITER has the job to check the thread for new textpassages or new styles or whatever we decide on, and update the pdf accordingly (of course also his local odt file, but that is his business).

The job of the NON-WRITERS would be, to check the pdf for mistakes and discuss them here (if there are doubts) or contact the WRITER directly (that would be e.g. in the case of obvious typos, there's no further discussion needed, I think). In case of doubt we can still discuss the case here in the forum.

So the forum thread will be there for discussion of new things (or rediscussion of old things after finding further mistakes, that shall happen on a regular base as the language is not yet published completely).
The pdf will be there to have the actual state of the project present, without having to dig through the thread here.

I can see the reasoning for this. If you want to use  .PDF for this, it has to be set up properly, so that users can cut and paste text from it for the purposes you mention. And people who are writers for one book may be non-writers for another.

My idea is that the pdf lies on the ftp server (which we seem to have available meanwhile) and we can have a link to it in our signatures, so everyone interested in the project just needs to see one of our profiles to get to the actual pdf.
The file would always maintain the same file name (no version number in the name), so we can leave our signatures constantly pointing to the same direction.

With a sum-total work the size of the Bible, you run into a real problem. Eventually, this .PDF is going to get unmanageably large. So, consider this. The links we have on our pages point to a site that is either a FTP repository, or a webpage. There, the work is broken down into a .PDF for each book of the bible. (You might divide Psalms into two parts) This way, you will not run into a problem with a multi-megabyte .PDF, which will be difficult for some to download when they need it. It will also speed work, in that a passage of interest will be much easier to locate.

As we get complete books, build a master .PDF, which will represnt a 'distributable' form of the Na`vi bible.

The time to set this up is now, while things are really just getting underway. That will prevent a lot of things from having to be re-done later.

It would be a good idea to have a mirror repository as well, to ensure that months and years of work are not lost by a server crash.

No matter how this is done, the person acting as clearinghouse will be a busy person!

So the joining of the bits and pieces would be the task of one or two WRITERS, who can well use openoffice to do this. We can also publish the odt, but I think more people have pdf readers on their machines than an odt reading software. Some people have no office software at all, because they use their machines for surfing and games, or other things.
Plus, I think pdf looks neater than odt, and finally, yes, this would indeed be some kind of publishing, though of the work up to the date which will in the beginning not be too much.

If I was in the position of being the 'clearinghouse' (Not that I want to be  ), I could, with the tools I have, accept most any common format, including .TXT. I am sure there are others out there as well, who can accept a large variety of file formats. That way, people would not be constrained to any particular file format, as long as the layout and style requirements are met. The clearinghouse person could also internally use whatever file format that works for him/her to keep the non .PDF version of everything. The .PDF's would be generated only when a day's work has been collected and put in the right places. And if there is no activity on a given book that day, no new .PDF will need to be generated.

But I am afraid that if we have an odt file on the ftp sever that everyone is to change at own risk and responsibility, that would possibly end up in chaos if we get some more helping hands here...

That is a risk if you leave everything wide open for anyone to edit. But I think the most practical way to do this is if one or a small team of people work on a given book, that they share their work in an editable format. This could be kept on a non-public portion of the FTP site, or the colloborators could agree on another common place for it to be. A project like this, with non-secure information, is ideal for some of the 'cloud computing' resources that are out there.

As far as style goes, I am willing to come up with something preliminary and simple, that we can use to get going. We will have a while to perfect things, but it will be easier if there is at least some rough organization.

I completely agree with you on that. My idea was to leave this part out to the WRITER, as I do not want to hassle myself too much with formatting etc. Just not my cup of tea, I confess, I am chaotic at times.

Still, it is good discipline to get in the habit of doing something like this is a reasonably standard way. This makes the job of the 'clearinghouse' that much simpler, and gives the entire project a consistent look/feel. That said, any formatting need not be elaborate, just standardized. To this end, I am going to put together a few ideas for formatting and present them here. We can then tweak one or more of these, and ultimately choose one as the 'standard'.

In the end, I am probably better at organizing and formatting things, than actual translation. I am learning a lot from reading the looooooong posts here! Irayo!

I hope I do not tell wrong things here, hehe. Maybe it is an option you and riftmaster get the organisation done together? I don't know. But I deeply believe that good orga is important for the mission to get fulfilled. We need translators, but also people who focus more on proofreading, we need people to gather our findings, we just have to be careful to have the right balance between the groups. But as riftmaster said he won't be able to do anything till monday...

I would have no problems working on this with one or more others. And once things are set up and working, they should require only occasional attention (except for the clearinghouse person!)  Ultimately though, I think we all want some time to do some actual translating/proofreading as well! But some good groundwork laid down now will make this monumental task (which is realistically likely to take a few years) a whole lot easier.

So what do you all think?

Yawä ayngahu!

[Letxepa tirea]

"Came to pass" essentially means "it happened"

so here is the fix:
2 Ulte po zaím’u hasey

Meanwhile I think I read somewhere to not use po for "it", but rather use something like tsa'u... Not sure of that though. I desperately need some grammar book...

As do I. Can you provide a link to me when you find one?

Oh wait here is something from the wikibook:
it: (animate) po. (inanimate) tsa

So it should be tsa in this sentence. of course now there is len so I need to change this anyway.

2 Ulte tsa lamen

ayfo tolìran ftu tseng, po lu alìm

I am not sure whether we can put meaning into punctuation marks, so the comma alone might not do and you'd have to use ulte (they come from a place and it was far away), or you need to form a subclause: They came to a place, which was far away. I still have the feeling like far away takes up the position of an adjective in English here.  As lu would always say "A is B", we have A as "which" but we have no B, wonder if that works. B cannot be an adverb as I understand it.
Plus mind "it" being translated with po or not.

Urgh, punctuation marks need to be added into the language then. I was trying to make it a subclause anyway. So revised again is:

ayfo tolìran ftu tseng atsa lu alìm

I also changed out po for tsa in this case because as far as I know land is inanimate.

because it was the closest verb to "to find".

"to find/discover" = run. Page 9 in my version of the dictionary. You might want to redownload it or see if there's a new version of it around. Taronyu seems to update it rather often. My actual version is 9.661 and I have not checked for updates today. This language is evolving quickly and there seems to be a few new words every day.

alright revised again:

ayfo rolun ftu tseng atsa lu alìm

I also think I made a good transliteration of Shinar: Yìnär.

Okay, I thought we wanted to stick with the English names. But if not, that's also cool. I am just not sure if I got your argument. As far as I thought Na'vi y would be pronounced like "y" in English or "j" in German... And I have a feeling that the "a" in Shinar would be pronounced like the "a" in "father", which would not be the Na'vi ä, but you know... English vowels, a story of its own...

Crap... Hear i was thinking I did a good job with my transliteration. I guess we need the original hebrew name of Shinar in order to transliterate it properly.

In the dictionary it shows Tsatseng for "there, that place" so that's how I put it down.

You are right, I didn't see this. Sorry.

No worries mate. I'm not offended by criticism

ulte ayfo kolelku si

As kelku is no verb itself the infix would go with si -> kelku soli

Ah yes I should have known that. Another stupid mistake lol.

Why I didn't use those? Because I didn't know of their existence Traurig I'm still new and don't know alot of the vocab.

As I said, the dictionary is updated almost daily if not several times a day (this is btw what I thought our pdf to work like). I am still to find a good and up to date grammar I understand. Wikibooks is fine, but it seems some things here in the forums are more recent, and I find it hard to keep track.

Yes I found the dictionary you were talking about now.

Ulte ayfo plloltxe aylaru ponguä

If I understand it right, "ll" would be seen as vowel here, so the <ol> infix would go p<here>lltxe

I wasn't sure about that because then you would have pollltxe and those three "L"s have me worried. Is there a lenition for that?

San, Níwin, tung ayoeng slìyeyku tula'u, ulte ayfol sìyi txur, sìk.

Just a question of understanding: Why yo put tung?

Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly.

You want tung take the part of "let"? I think the way to express this in Na'vi is to se the <iv> infix on the verb that you "let" be done (check [urlhttp://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Na%27vi/Verbs#Mood]here[/url] under sage as optative), so you take slìyeyku and put the <iv> infix there (beware, you have to merge it with the future tense you use, but you could as I see it as well get rid of the future there), so you end up with slìyeveku (Future and Subjunktive, like in kìyevame) or with sliveyku (just subjunctive).

Now I know where you have the txur from. I didn't recall it being there, as I have the Luther bible in my head, and it isn't there. Luther translates as "form brick and burn them". I gotta look at the KJV more often... I know we decided upon that to be the base.

Yeah I thought tung was a better translation then the na'vi "ív". If you think it matters enough I'll change it but for right now I think it still means the same thing.

As for the burning the brick. I wasn't sure if you knew that burning a brick thoroughly means to make it rock hard.

Ulte sawtute lur tula'u tup tskxe

I don't understand lur. Typo or me being stupid? tup means "instead of". Now I wonder how understandable it is to tell the Na'vi, the people made constrct-things instead of stones. The Na'vi would maybe ask: Why instead of? Did they produce rocks before? And what for? To throw at people? Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit.
But how about sayin "in order to build houses"? -> "for the sake of the building of houses" -> fpisluseyk helkuä (fpi + sl<us>eyk <ay>kelku<ä> lentioned!).
If you say you like yours better, I'm cool with it. I don't wanna appear as the guy who has to critizise everyone, just giving my thoughts...

Mine is more to the original text. However I understand where your coming from.

Jesus' true name Immanuel name means "God with us" so Jesus could be Yawängahu or Yawämì'rrta (god on earth).

I wouldn't think of Jesus' true name as of Immanuel, as Mary named Him Jesus according to the command of God:

And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.

I know that verse in Jesaja as well, that speaks of Immanuel, but you can translate Hebrew "name" also with reputation and such, so truely, Jesus WAS the "God with us", but he was calles Jesus, or rather something like Joshua, Jesus being the Latinized form of the name.

But I still think we can freely put up descriptions and names for God and Jesus, because we have to get the message throu, not the text. So I think it would not be a too big problem if the names weren't in sync, as there are also many different names and descriptions in the bible.
Anyhow, if we agree to one way of putting it, I shall follow the rules.

Yes I completely agree that its important to make sure its the meaning not the text we are translating.

Also I was reluctant to use "sky" for heaven as it reflects a degree of tangibility.

Why not do Swoka txkxe io taw(Sacred land above sky)? Or maybe: kaw'it kusame atxkxe (not at all seen(spiritual) land)?

I just wonder whether the bible means the place where "God lives", as heaven, or the sky above us, that covers earth. I think it's more what we call sky today:

And God called the firmament Heaven.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night

And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth

and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven

It depends because heaven in the bible can mean both. I can't be bothered to find examples its much too late lol.

Yawä ngahu nìwotxa krr.


Okay, that for now. Kìyevame!
[/quote]

[Tìmuiäyä'itan]

As do I. Can you provide a link to me when you find one?

Sure I'll post it in this thread. I think that is what we all are after

I guess we need the original hebrew name of Shinar in order to transliterate it properly.

שִׁנְעָ֖ר   Shinar is a good way to transcript it to English. Maybe just Sin'ar in Na'vi (it has a ' consonant, there are two of it in Hebrew )

Urgh, punctuation marks need to be added into the language then

This is something we need to talk about anyway, I for my part have not used puntuation marks in my translations yet, as I wouldn't know where to put them (especially commas, full stop is easier). This post seems to say you don't need punctuation marks but can add them to clear things up. Question is, what language punctuation rules to go by? I neither know English comma rules perfectly, nor German

atsa lu alìm

I think "a" is a word of its own as a relative clause marker...? I found this two times, just quoted one.

then you would have pollltxe and those three "L"s have me worried. Is there a lenition for that?

That is a point, haven't thopught about that. I tend to think one "l" gets lost... but as "ll" is a consonant of its own, as is "l", and there can be two consonants after a vowel in a sylable, it could as well be possible to have three l's...

If you think it matters enough I'll change it

No, I don't think it matters enough.  
Update: I just ran into the word ko which seems to be added at the end of sentences when wanting to say something with "let's" etc... though I am not sure about the usage. Just wanted to share this new discovery of mine

As for the burning the brick. I wasn't sure if you knew that burning a brick thoroughly means to make it rock hard.

Hmm, that's right, Na'vi could possibly not know about the production of brick and how it's done... nekx seems to mean "burn down" by the way, as it also means "consume", and the bricks are not burnt down. So if there was a word for "bake"...
Anyway, that was rather me stating that I didn't understand the txur thing before but then seeing why you use it. I see now that there is neither a word for "to form" nor for "to bake", so anything that states they made rock-hard bricks would do I guess (I just think that back in ancient times they sometimes had just dried brick, so burning it would be better quality stuff you tend to need when building high towers).

Mine is more to the original text

Okay, but I still have no idea what lur means...

It depends because heaven in the bible can mean both.

I know. I just thought in this place it would mean the same as sky...

If you want to use  .PDF for this, it has to be set up properly, so that users can cut and paste text from it for the purposes you mention.

That's what I meant.

And people who are writers for one book may be non-writers for another.

That's a possibility. I for my part would be most happy if I had no writer job But I'll do whatever we agree on.

With a sum-total work the size of the Bible, you run into a real problem. Eventually, this .PDF is going to get unmanageably large. So, consider this. The links we have on our pages point to a site that is either a FTP repository, or a webpage. There, the work is broken down into a .PDF for each book of the bible. (You might divide Psalms into two parts) This way, you will not run into a problem with a multi-megabyte .PDF, which will be difficult for some to download when they need it. It will also speed work, in that a passage of interest will be much easier to locate.

Oel kame säfpìlit. I thought about splitting it up at a later time maybe, as now we have only a few verses of a few books... As for the multimegabyte pdf I am on your side...

The time to set this up is now, while things are really just getting underway. That will prevent a lot of things from having to be re-done later.

100% ack

It would be a good idea to have a mirror repository as well, to ensure that months and years of work are not lost by a server crash.

That's an important idea, though I guess everything will be at least as well on the computers of the writers, so we have one back up there... but redundancy is vital, you are right. And the more the better.

No matter how this is done, the person acting as clearinghouse will be a busy person!

Depends. In the beginning in any case. But after all it set up, it will only be look at the forum and see which text needs update, I don't know if this would be so much each day. Plus if there would be many translators in the future, we could also have several clearinghouses for certain bible books, as we have several pdfs too...

I am sure there are others out there as well, who can accept a large variety of file formats. That way, people would not be constrained to any particular file format, as long as the layout and style requirements are met. The clearinghouse person could also internally use whatever file format that works for him/her to keep the non .PDF version of everything. The .PDF's would be generated only when a day's work has been collected and put in the right places. And if there is no activity on a given book that day, no new .PDF will need to be generated.

That's exactly what I mean, so there the "raw" format will only matter when the clearinghouse position is passed on to another person, because that person will have to live with what the first guy set up.

But I think the most practical way to do this is if one or a small team of people work on a given book, that they share their work in an editable format. This could be kept on a non-public portion of the FTP site, or the colloborators could agree on another common place for it to be. A project like this, with non-secure information, is ideal for some of the 'cloud computing' resources that are out there.

Okay, that would be another concept, having people work on a book and doing this at some place online while caring of layout etc themselves. Like this, we would drop this forum here a bit, as discussions would take place in the book-teams...?

Still, it is good discipline to get in the habit of doing something like this is a reasonably standard way. This makes the job of the 'clearinghouse' that much simpler, and gives the entire project a consistent look/feel.

Sure, and I will stick to whatever the clearinghouse tells me to do. I see it like responsibilities be split up a bit. A translotor translates his text and is responsible for it, others give hints at miskates and other proposals to translate stuff, but basically it will be the responsibility of the translator.
I'd give the same part of responsibility to the clearinghouse, being responsible of design and consistent look/feel. Whatever the clearinghouse tells me has to be the format to deliver my work, will be what I do. As the clearinghouse writes down whatever the translator proclaims as the translation.
Having responsibilities that way will hopefully lead to decisions actually be done at some point, because if we want to discuss everything, we are maybe not sure what has been discussed and what not.
We can always bring up a subject, but the final decision will be that of the actual translator, or the clearinghouse (or whatever jobs we make up in the future).

I would have no problems working on this with one or more others.

As far as it's only about work being done, I would as well help. But I can not decide on format etc, this is not something that I am good at, so I rather leave this to others. But as far as taking workload from people I can help if I'm told what to do.

Ultimately though, I think we all want some time to do some actual translating/proofreading as well!

Sure Though I wonder if there are people out there who would like to contribute but do not feel capable of doing translation work or at least not yet. There were people mentioning something like that, I think of riftmaster and Mrs. Q. I for my part would certainly love to focus on proofreading and translating, as I think this is where I have the most to give to the project.

But some good groundwork laid down now will make this monumental task (which is realistically likely to take a few years) a whole lot easier.

Oe mlltxe ngahu. So somebody make a decision on that?

Kìyevame!

[riftmaster]

I am starting to write a layout for the PDF on my computer, should be online by when my computer is fixed

[Tìmuiäyä'itan]

@riftmaster:
Sounds good. Curious about it already. 'Eylan Ayfalulukan seems to be thinking about a layout, too. I guess you two are already in contact about it.

I started working over my psalms according to what I have learned about Na'vi in the recent days, so here I'm gonna give you Psalm 23 in its most up-to-date form. I'll sit myself at a workover of Psalm 1 afterwards. Any critizism appreciated.


lu Davidur fì way
be David.DAT this song
This song is for David/This is David's song/a song of David's.

lu oeru hawnuyu a Yawä lu
be I.DAT protect.AGENT N which Yawä be
I have a protector which is Yawä.

'erì'eiawn oehu sìltsana ayu
remain.IMPF.LAUD I with good.ADJ PLU.thing
Good things are remaining with me.

yereiem tseng ne pxasula tìyomyä pol oeti
put.IMPF.LAUD place to fresh.ADJ eat.NMLZ.GEN he.ERG I.ACC
He is putting me to a place of fresh food.

fyawerìntxeiu payä tsawnurokxa tseng ne pol oeti
guide.IMPF.LAUD water.GEN rest.PART P.ADJ place to he.ERG I.ACC
He is guiding me to a resting place of water.

pol oeru zamerunugeie tìreyit maw oe 'amiänga
he.ERG I.DAT bring.IMPF.LAUD live.NMLZ.ACC after I lose myself spiritually.PERF.PEJ
He is bringing me life after I lost myself spiritually.

oeti fpi stxo poyä ìlä fya'o amuiä teykìreian pol
I.ACC for the sake of name he.GEN following path ADJ.right walk.CAUS.LAUD
He is causing me to walk following the right path for the sake of his name.

txo kivä ka lehrrapa tseng tìterkupyä oe oel ke kìlyame tìkawngit
if go.SUBJ across dangerous.ADJ place die.NMLZ.GEN I I.ERG not see.IMM. FUT evil.NMLZ.ACC
If I go across a dangerous place of dying I will not see evil.

taweyk nga loleiu hu oe ulte oeru leyku tutet atstew tskol sì tukrul ngeyä
because you be.PERF.LAUD with I and I.DAT man.ACC ADJ.brave bow and spear you.GEN
Because you are with me and your bow and spear cause me to be a brave man.

ngal oeru wutsoti yoleiem eo fayfo a wem wä oeti
you.ERG I.DAT meal.ACC put.PERF.LAUD before this.PLU.he (=these ones) which fight against I.ACC
You put a meal for me before these one who fight against me.

oeti yoleiur ngal ulte txana tìnäkit tìng ngal oeru
I.ACC wash.PERF.LAUD you.ERG and much drink.NMLZ give you.ERG I.DAT
You wash me and you give me much drink.

nìngay tìngay sì tìsiltsan nereiong ìlä oe fra trr tìreyä oeyä
truely truth and goodness follow.IMPF.LAUD following I every day NMLZ.live.GEN I.GEN
Truely will truth and goodness follow me every day of my life.

ulte oeyä aytrryä tìngim mì helku Yawäyä kelku soluyi oeri
and I.GEN PLU.day.GEN NMLZ.long in house Yawä.GEN house.V.PERF.HON I.TOP
And I live in the house of Yawä for the length of my days.


There are two things I had to come clear about myself. One is the use of conditional clauses. According to this post, it works the following way:

Protasis (the subclause with the if): txo and verb with subjunctive infix.
Apodosis (the main clause -> then): future infix to the verb.

That way you know the <iv>ed verb belongs to the "if" part and the <ìy>ed verb belongs to the "then" part, although you don't need a then (as you don't in English as well, me thinks )

The other thing is about how to build relative clauses (I've been writing here that I wouldn't understand them properly before). I started a thread where I've been explained how to se them. maybe one of you likes to take a look.

By the way I needed both for this psalm, and I'm gonna need the relative clauses part for Psalm 1 even more, so take a look, I might still have made mistakes (I'm not learning longer than most of you I think).


Update: Got Psalm 1 reviewed:

1. lefpom lu tute a ke tìran ìlä säfpìl <ay>ska'a<yu><yä> <tì>siltsan<yä> ulte tute a ke kllkxem mì fya'o <ke><sì>kame<yä> ulte tute a ke kelku si hu <ay>h<us>angham tìmuiä<yä>.
happy be man which not walk following idea PLU.destroy.AGENT N.GEN NMLZ.good.GEN and man which not stand in path not.NMLZ(lention!).see.GEN and man which not house.V with PLU.laugh.ACTIVE PARTICIPLE NMLZ.right.GEN
Happy is the man, who walks not folloing the idea of the destroyers of goodness and the man, who stands not in the path of nonseers and the man, who dwells not with those laughing at righteousness.

2. slä koren Yawä<yä> lu <tì>rangal po<yä> ulte pol koren<t> Yawä<yä> n<er>ume trr sì txon.
but rule Yawä.GEN be NMLZ.wish he.GEN and he.ERG rule.ACC Yawä.GEN learn.IMPF day and night
But YHWH's rule is his wish and YHWH's rule he is learning day and night.

3. ulte po lu fìfya utral ro teya pay<ä> hilvan ulte fìfya utral a mauti<t> tìng krr po<yä> ulte fìfya utral a ke terkup ulte fìfya utral fl<er>ä fra'ut.
and he be like.this tree at full.ADJ(left out) water.GEN PLU(lention!).river and like.this tree which fruit.ACC give time he.GEN and like.this tree which not die and like.this tree succeed.IMPF all.things.ACC
and he is like a tree at the rivers full of water and like a tree, which gives fruit at his time and like a tree, which dies not and like a tree, which succeeds in all things.

4. <ay>ska'a<yu> <tì>siltsan<yä> ke lu pxel po slä pxel kerusey<a> rina' a kurakx hufwel.
PLU.destroy.AGENT N NMLZ.good.GEN not be like he but like dead.ADJ seed which drive.out wind.ERG
The destroyers of goodness are not like him but like dead seed, which the wind drives out.

5. tafral <ay>ska'a<yu> <tì>siltsan<yä> ke k<iv>llkxem tengkrr <tì>pe'un ulte <ke><sì>kame tengkrr ultxa sute<yä> <a>muiä.
therefore PLU.destroy.AGENT N NMLZ.good.GEN not stand.SUBJ while NMLZ.decide and not.PLU(disappear!).NMLZ(lention!).see while meeting PLU(lention+disappear!).man.GEN ADJ.right
Therefore the destroyers of goodness should not stand during decision and non-seers during meeting of the righteous men.

6. taluna Yawä<l> kame fya'o<t> sute<yä> <a>muiä ulte fya'o <ay>ska'a<yu><yä> <tì>siltsan<yä> 'ia.
because YHWH.ERG see path.ACC PLU(lention+disappear!).man.GEN ADJ.right and path PLU.destroy.AGENT N.GEN NMLZ.good.GEN lose.oneself
Because YHWH sees (spiritual sense) the path of the righteuous men and the path of the destroyers of goodness loses itself (spiritually).


There was just an idea to my mind: What about, after a while when we have like a gospel and some other stories ready, to publish the whole as a textbook for learning Na'vi, with bracelets like I put them in the first line? Or even with the 2nd line?
As I guess we all do something like this translating, why throw it away, could make these texts even more interesting to read... just a thought about when we now start soon collecting the text...
Or do you guys translate in a different way and don't have those lines?

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

txantsan I am amazed at the quality of the work being turned out here after, what, a week?!

For 'thoroughly burning bricks', you might consider using txep, 'fire'. This a noun, not sure what is added to it to make it a verb. In any case, the process of making brick, a ceramic material, is by 'firing', which would be nìtxep, or perhap nìtx<er>ep. This is the correct technical term that would be used today, and I think you can make it work in a historic sense until we have a term for 'burn'. (The dry but unfired brick is used to build a furnace. A strong fire is built in the furnace. The furnace structure not only contains the fire, but the bricks are fired in the process of containing the fire. Then, the furnace is disassembled and the brick used. I saw this being done in Africa, and I think I have a picture if anyone is interested.)

Tìmuiäyä'itan, in the interest of avoiding long posts, I like the ideas you presented. I just want to make some general comments. I can see you are suggesting an idea that some of these central roles would be best handled by a small group of people, such as the clearinghouse operation. I suspect that this is indeed the right way to go, as most people are not available every single day to do this. I am not sure that 'pulling' text from the list is necessarily the best way to go. It would be hard to automate, so that person whould have to go through a lot of board possts to find new material. Instead, new work would be sent to the 'clearinghouse', which I think would be easier on everyone. This would also prevent work on the list from being prematurely incorporated into the 'canonical' part of the project.

If this project comes to involve more than a few active people, I think that this single thread may not be able to handle the traffic. This is also the case if you get a few people working together on one book. Their traffic, combined with traffic from a couple other little teams, and you have a really hard-to-read webboard. Therefore, I see the biblelenavi project needing its own forum, either as a subforum here (best), or on another webboard. That way, people wouldn't have to wade through too much of other people's work to find what they need, and the casual visitor would see subforums, each devoted to their area. Perhaps those of you who have been around for a while can suggest this to the powers that be.

I am beginning to see in my mind a couple possible formats, and good examples of what I have in mind for a standard format are already here. I actually see a couple of standard formats for different purposes. One of these would be as follows: Top line: Na`vi text in bold, with adipositions, affixes, and infixes, etc. clearly indicated. Second line: trilinear gloss (which I need to learn a lot more about!)  for the first line. non-bold. Third line: Na`vi text, in reading form. In bold. Fourth line: English (or another language) translation. Non-bold. This four-line construction would not necessarily always be used, but it has some distinct advantages: First, the top two lines would be for analysis of the translation, and show how the translator came up with what they did. They could wait on developing the bottom line(s) until the bugs are out of the top lines. The bottom two lines taken together, represent an 'interlinear' translation, which some would find useful, especially beginners wanting to learn how to read. This is why there are interlinear bibles from the Hebrew/Greek, and I will be using one heavily when I do translating. Remove the translation, and you have the pure Na`vi text, which is our final aim. However, I see both the interlinear and the pure text versions being 'finished products'. Of course, interlinear versions could exist in multiple languages (and maintaining these could be the job of the person whose language-interest it represents). Still considering ideas for verse numbering (In brackets perhaps), indications of untranslated words or names (in curly braces, perhaps). And how to lay out text on the page. More tomorrow, which I should be able devote a few hours to (and hopefully translate a verse or two of Zepheniah). In the meantime, ideas are welcome. This is our project, not my project, and at all times yawäyä project!

[riftmaster]

By the way, the layout I am creating contains no translations, only placeholders.