Bible in Na'vi

Started by Col Quaritch, March 15, 2010, 03:33:28 PM

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Letxepa tirea

Quote from: `Eylan Ayfalulukanä on March 21, 2010, 03:35:46 AM
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.)

Oeyä irayo ma 'Eylan.

However I think I'll keep the translation as is. Mostly because the Na'vi, being people who do not use bricks and probably don't understand their construction, wouldn't understand why we would burn the "constructor-things". My current translation merely says that the people made "constructor-things" and made them strong. Which is true, because burning a brick thoroughly would make sure the brick is strong enough to build a great tower.

Quote from: `Eylan AyfalulukanäTìmuiäyä'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!

I agree I think we should have our own site or subforum in order for this project to run smoothly. Perhaps we can get our own wikia page and use that?

Of course I have no idea how to format anything on a wiki page so someone would have to do some formatting for the page.

Also I think that for now we need to make sure we focus on the New Testament, Proverbs, Psalms, and Genesis. The others, though good stories and good for ancient human history, wouldn't mean much to the Na'vi. Later once we have those complete we can go back to these books.

One more thing. I am stopping my work on the babel passage inorder to start working on proverbs. Mostly because I feel that they are more important, not only to the Na'vi but to the men and women who are really reading our work.

Yawä ayawne ngahu!





Oe zola'u, Oe tsole'a, Oe skola'a

Tìmuiäyä'itan

@riftmaster:
What do you mean by placeholders?

@'Eylan Ayfalulukanä:
I envy you for being able to express so much in such a short post! Gonna try this too now. Two things I wanna talk about:

1. The orga. I am with you what concerns one thread here maybe not being able to hold all traffic we need. That is indeed a problem. An own subforum would maybe lead to plenty threads come up on similar subjects, so this might also lead to confusion. Plus: You need a Mod.
Let's not talk about pdf, wiki or the technical way we get this done. Let's talk about the concept. I see two ideas here. There's your idea of the translators sending passages to the clearing house (push), and there is my idea of the clearinghouse gather the translation (pull). The reason for my pull approach is, that I like my translations to be controlled by the community, 2 eyes won't see everything. I am not quite sure what your idea is: Do you think to send text to the forum and to the clearinghouse and have the translators send updates to the clearinghouse once corrections are made in the forum?
I am also not sure what you mean with "canonical" part of the project. In my idea there's no such difference as premature and canonical, as prematurity evolves to maturity by constant review and correction, kinda like the protestant church or Ubuntu Linux: semper reformanda (always being reformed).

2. I like your concept of the 4 lines, though I wonder if we do really need the line with the plain Na'vi text after having the text in the first line. If we would do it like I did in my recent posts, you just have to get rid of < and > and you have the plain Na'vi. So this could easily be done automatically, once we need it for publishing as a real book 8)
Most important I think would be the line with the Na'vi and the infixes etc marked, and the line with the markers. We have to take into account, that Taronyu does not offer abbrevations for all in- pre- and suffixes etc there are. We might be doing a clever thing enhancing his standard. But maybe just ask him about inserting further abbrevations beforehand...? So we would have an all Na'vi standard that would make it easy for non bible project members to read and understand our work.
I still think about your idea with the base-8 verse numbers. What about having the decimal number printed in one script and the octonal number in another side by side? We'd have to indicate that in the preface of course  ;)
I get your idea with the bracelets around proper names. That way we would write {Yawä}yä and would be able to automate name replacement later. That would be most helpful for my next psalm, which contains the word Messiah, and there is no word or expression in sight for Messiah or Christ (plus we cannot just use the name Jesus as there have been other Messiahs in the bible -> Is 45,1). So I would just say {Messiah} here and leave it untranslated...?

Quote from: Eywayä_tawtteAlso I think that for now we need to make sure we focus on the New Testament, Proverbs, Psalms, and Genesis. The others, though good stories and good for ancient human history, wouldn't mean much to the Na'vi. Later once we have those complete we can go back to these books.
I don't think it would make sense to argue on a hierarchy of importantness of the bible's books. God can speak through the book of Ruth as well as through the gospels or Paul's letters (which we won't be able to translate this time I'm afraid, as they need highly developed language I think).

Yawä ayngahu
So I think let's just see what people are interested in and have fun with. I took the psalms becase I like them and I wanted to gain deeper knowledge into them. Col Quaritch took the gospel of John which is as he stated the one he likes best. 'Eylan Ayfalulukanä seems to have a preference for Zephania, so why make up a rule which books we have to do first? If God decides to bless our work we will have each book done just in time.
srungìri ftära tsyokxìl ngeyä
ke ivomum futa pesuru
lu srung skiena tsyokxta ngeyä
ulte Jesus a nerìn ayfo pamlltxe
san sutehu lu keltsun
slä Yawähu frakem tsunslu sìk.

Letxepa tirea

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan on March 21, 2010, 05:45:06 AM
Quote from: Eywayä_tawtteAlso I think that for now we need to make sure we focus on the New Testament, Proverbs, Psalms, and Genesis. The others, though good stories and good for ancient human history, wouldn't mean much to the Na'vi. Later once we have those complete we can go back to these books.
I don't think it would make sense to argue on a hierarchy of importantness of the bible's books. God can speak through the book of Ruth as well as through the gospels or Paul's letters (which we won't be able to translate this time I'm afraid, as they need highly developed language I think).

Yawä ayngahu
So I think let's just see what people are interested in and have fun with. I took the psalms becase I like them and I wanted to gain deeper knowledge into them. Col Quaritch took the gospel of John which is as he stated the one he likes best. 'Eylan Ayfalulukanä seems to have a preference for Zephania, so why make up a rule which books we have to do first? If God decides to bless our work we will have each book done just in time.

Nga munge mìso oeyä sap'alute.

I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was merely offering a suggestion. I would say the majority of missionaries translate the books I listed first. Then they continue translating the others while teaching the natives the already translated stories. Once again this is just opinion and an educated guess(I've done a little bit of  over seas missionary work myself).

Anyway I love proverbs and that is why I have switched to them from the babel passage. So far though I'm having trouble with the infinitives in the verses. Are there infinitive versions of verbs or no?





Oe zola'u, Oe tsole'a, Oe skola'a

riftmaster

I mean temporary text that will replaced with the real content




Col Quaritch

I know I have not posted here in while mainly busy being ill yet again. But was working from bed on a futher translation and it dawned on me I dont have to go word for word copy but instead so long as I get the same message across. Which once coming to that light is making my process of translation so much easier, after all there is more than one way to express Love or sacrafice. I should have a new posting that will need some grammer fixes monday or tuesday from John not in order of where I left off. I tend to get odd scripture verses and such in my head when im ill and I was lead to hang around and take apart 3:16 so that will be my submission when I get it loaded up.

Yawä yawne nga


Tìmuiäyä'itan

@Eywayä-tawtute:
I wasn't taking offense, all is cool 8) I just thought san why put up any rules here sìk. Of course it is useful in the mission field, to have certain books first. (though one could argue which ;D), but after all, we are not in a classical mission field. Those who would read the Na'vi bible can as well get a grip of a bible in their mother tunge as well, so if you approach this from a mission point of view, the aim is rather to raise interest in the bible than to have the word available for people. They do have it available (unless there are some Saudi Arabian reading here :-X)...

That was my whole point, so no offense, just wondering...

@riftmaster:
Okay, we're gonna see once you have this ready and up

@Col Quaritch:
Sorry to hear about you being sick again. Take your time and relax, no need to press on this project when it costs power you need for health. What you say about not translating word by word is true, and there is not one whole bible in the world (except interlinear ::)) that does a translation like this. As different languages work differently, you can never go word by word, even between languages as close as German and English (though one would still understand what yo mean I think, just everything would be upside down)... every bible translation is always a bit of an interpretation as well.
About translating odd words: That's a good idea I think. It keeps you motivated, it helps you personally as these verses are those that come to your mind and you get to think about them deeper when you have to translate them.
After all, John is your book, and as a last thought: It might proof good in terms of marketing to have some known phrases at hand in Na'vi, if we are ever asked to give some examples of our work.

srungìri ftära tsyokxìl ngeyä
ke ivomum futa pesuru
lu srung skiena tsyokxta ngeyä
ulte Jesus a nerìn ayfo pamlltxe
san sutehu lu keltsun
slä Yawähu frakem tsunslu sìk.

Tengfya swizaw

Nang! This seems like quite a worthy project. I do not trust myself in the least to even begin to volunteer to translate anything, but I admire you all for doing this and will definitely stay tuned. One thing I might point out, though (and I apologize if this has been brought up already) is that, while I agree with the need to translate the meanings of things, it is important to translate them as closely as possible to the original Greek or Hebrew word meanings. The bible is full of puns, cross-references, and wordplay and a single passage can have 10 meanings. Since things are inevitably lost in translation to a degree, I would urge you to study the original language meanings, not just the English translations. They do a wonderful job, yes, but many things are not ideal for translation from the root languages to English and there is much to be gained from sticking as close to true meaning as possible.

Just my two cents. :P


Here's to not knowing exactly what you're saying and having fun with it.

Proud founder of the DeviantART Learn Na'vi group!
http://learnnavi.deviantart.com/

Tìmuiäyä'itan

Irayo! The problem with Hebrew and Ancient Greek is, that there are so few people around knowing it, so it would be rather hard to find people who know these langauges and want to learn Na'vi and want to take part in this project.

Of course you are right about all the puns, cross references etc. And of course, there is something getting lost in every translation. But making knowledge of the original languages a must for project members would exclude too many. This is a community project where the community does its beset to translate the bible. When there are once people who hire others for a better translation, it will be different. But as long as it is a community thing and done in spare time as a hobby, I think one shouldn't expect a highest level philological outcome, as long as the message is getting through.

That said: There are also people in the project who know the languages and look at them while translating, so it's not so far off anyway...


Kìyevame!
srungìri ftära tsyokxìl ngeyä
ke ivomum futa pesuru
lu srung skiena tsyokxta ngeyä
ulte Jesus a nerìn ayfo pamlltxe
san sutehu lu keltsun
slä Yawähu frakem tsunslu sìk.

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

#128
Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan on March 21, 2010, 05:45:06 AM

@'Eylan Ayfalulukanä:
I envy you for being able to express so much in such a short post! Gonna try this too now. Two things I wanna talk about:

I guess necessity is the mother of all invention!

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan1. The orga. I am with you what concerns one thread here maybe not being able to hold all traffic we need. That is indeed a problem. An own subforum would maybe lead to plenty threads come up on similar subjects, so this might also lead to confusion. Plus: You need a Mod.

I don't think we are wanting for lack of suitable mods. And yes, I would expect that threads not directly related to translation would show up. They are bound to. They could all go in one spot. But I can see, for instance, a thread for everyone working on, say, Acts. Again, nothing elaborate is needed, just something to prevent a single thread from becoming a big jumble.

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itanLet's not talk about pdf, wiki or the technical way we get this done. Let's talk about the concept. I see two ideas here. There's your idea of the translators sending passages to the clearing house (push), and there is my idea of the clearinghouse gather the translation (pull). The reason for my pull approach is, that I like my translations to be controlled by the community, 2 eyes won't see everything. I am not quite sure what your idea is: Do you think to send text to the forum and to the clearinghouse and have the translators send updates to the clearinghouse once corrections are made in the forum?

What I see here is this, and it is more along the lines of your final idea. Say, a translator has just posted his/her first attempt at a passage, say a few verses. They post it to the list (in the right spot). Those wishing to take a look at it and comment do so. The translation is adjusted. After a few iterations, the test is deemed 'tweaked' enough to justify inclusion in the master PDF or PDF's. At that point, the text is sent to the clearinghouse for inclusion. The clearinghouse than places the text verbatim, in the appropriate 'working PDF'. In that place, it is visible to anyone who wants to see it. At that point, any portion of that text can be copied from the PDF, and be brought back into the forum for further work. When this is done, the adjusted text is sent back. The clearinghouse grafts this text back into the editable file format of their choice, from which the PDF(s) are generated. New PDF(s) are then generated. And of course, nothing prevents a translator from immediately posting a newly translated piece of work to the clearinghouse before it has been discussed, should thye choose to do so.

This process has several advantages. First of all, there is no diminuation of the ability of the community to participate. They can help with new material being considered for the first time. They can pull down something completed and re-edit it, or discuss it, etc. Second, it prevents early drafts, not really ready for viewing outside the list, from making it into the master PDF. It saves the clearinghouse person from having to search through all the threads for new material. No tricky scripts are needed to try an automate this function.

Disadvantages: Someone who wants to comment on material being discussed needs to know where to look for such discussions. Second, if the clearinghouse wants to alert everyone with a list of what has been changed in, say, the last 24 hours, there is extra work involved.  They are going to have to do a couple moderately tedious extra steps, to gather, organize and post  this information.

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itanI am also not sure what you mean with "canonical" part of the project. In my idea there's no such difference as premature and canonical, as prematurity evolves to maturity by constant review and correction, kinda like the protestant church or Ubuntu Linux: semper reformanda (always being reformed).

Perhaps I used a poor term here, for lack of a better term. The meaning I was try to convey is basically what you are stating above. The use of 'canonical' here refers to the fact that this material is posted and open to review, as completed translation work. This is as opposed to a really preliminary working draft that is being reviewed by a few interested folks in their own venue, forum, whatever. I think it is a disservice to the translators if they are required to post to the master PDF's ('canon') before they have had a chance for the others working with or around them to take a look at it for glaring errors. Of course, the translator is always free to immediately post any new work. This is not an attempt to 'close' the process in any way. It just means that people who like to review translation work are going to have to watch for it, perhaps by the 'new post to thread' mechanism on this and most other web boards.

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan2. I like your concept of the 4 lines, though I wonder if we do really need the line with the plain Na'vi text after having the text in the first line. If we would do it like I did in my recent posts, you just have to get rid of < and > and you have the plain Na'vi. So this could easily be done automatically, once we need it for publishing as a real book 8)

Besides the infix markers, you also have dashes representing affixes, plus signs marking leniting affixes, and I'm sure, some other characters. Doing this automatically creates a minor but annoying problem. It would change the way the Na'vi text registers with the trilinear gloss in the next line (why do they call it 'trilinear'?). I'll complete my thoughts on this in the next segment.

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itanMost important I think would be the line with the Na'vi and the infixes etc marked, and the line with the markers. We have to take into account, that Taronyu does not offer abbrevations for all in- pre- and suffixes etc there are. We might be doing a clever thing enhancing his standard. But maybe just ask him about inserting further abbrevations beforehand...? So we would have an all Na'vi standard that would make it easy for non bible project members to read and understand our work.

I'm not sure I 100 percent understand what you are driving at here, concerning Taronyu's system of representing Na`vi grammar stuff. It is fairly well-defined, to the extent that we understand the Na`vi language. If there is any place where standardization is likely to be a problem, it will be the abbreviations in the trilinear gloss.

I agree with you that the inclusion of the grammatically marked Na`vi is very useful, especially to people that are learning. That and the trilinear gloss help people to understand what the translator is trying to communicate. (I also think it will help people understand moderately abstract ideas like 'subjunctive', 'infinitive', 'relative clause', etc. I struggle with that aspect of grammar.)

The inclusion of the 'plain text' Na`vi is there for a couple of reasons. First, there are those (like myself) that have trouble reading the marked-up text. Second, it represents what the 'finished text' looks like (and sounds like when reading aloud. After all, Na`vi is a spoken language, and the written part is an adaptation for us tawtutes.) Third, it relates better to the English (or other language) plain text in the fourth line. And in practical use, the third (and perhaps the) fourth line are what end up in the final version(s) of the Na`vi bible. They can be stripped out of the master text together.

As I see it, the first time around, the translator prepares just what is in lines 1 and 2. (And it will take some discipline on the translator's part to do this, as creating especially the trilinear gloss could be a lot of extra work). Lines three and four are optional at this point. After the initial round of peer review, lines 3 and 4 would be 'fleshed out'. This would then be considered the 'completed, but still open for regular critical review' text. People looking at the master PDF(s) could tell where in the process a given passage is by the presence of 2, 3 or 4 lines of text. I also think that the passage would be marked with a 1 line date flag, that would indicate the last time that passage was modified.

When a book, or a major portion thereof is complete, a period of time is allowed, perhaps a month, where everyone has a chance to look it over. When no changes have been made in a month, lines 1 and 2 are stripped off to form the interlinear 'published version', and line 4 is stripped off of that to create the 'Na`vi bible published version'. Of course, this would still be open to review, but the review tracking would be done through the four line 'master text' of that book.

I have thought about your idea of using programmer's tools (like RCS or Submit) to control text additions and revisions. This is a novel idea, and if you can demonstrate a way to make this work in a venue like this, please do.


Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itanI still think about your idea with the base-8 verse numbers. What about having the decimal number printed in one script and the octonal number in another side by side? We'd have to indicate that in the preface of course  ;)

Here's something open to discussion. Arabic numbers would be used in lines 1,2 and 4. Base 10 makes more sense, but you could use base 8 as well. What do people think. Na`vi numbers (base 8 of course) would be used in line 3. This is jumping ahead a bit, but there are a number of ways that one could handle individual verses in the primary text. Since the primary text is principally for book assembly and textual criticism, each verse would stand alone, starting out on the left hand margin of the appropriate line. Verse numbers could be shown in square brackets at the beginning of the verse, on each line. The alternative is, you could put a single number above line 1, at the beginning of the verse. This would be an arabic number, probably in base 10, but the Na`vi number would be optionally included. Both numbers would be in one set of square brackets.

For the published version, the verse numbers would appear on the left edge, or for a 'reader's style', embedded in the text with square brackets. The format of the primary text needs to be structurally formal only for the reason of making editing and criticism easier, and formal only in certain aspects. The published text could be more refined in terms of layout, appearance, etc. That is something we have time to work on. And, there is no reason at all that different formats of the published text could exist, provided someone had the time to create a different version, and ensure it dd not differ in content from the 'official' published version. (There are years of work ahead here, folks!)

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itanI get your idea with the bracelets around proper names. That way we would write {Yawä}yä and would be able to automate name replacement later. That would be most helpful for my next psalm, which contains the word Messiah, and there is no word or expression in sight for Messiah or Christ (plus we cannot just use the name Jesus as there have been other Messiahs in the bible -> Is 45,1). So I would just say {Messiah} here and leave it untranslated...?

Since we agree on Yawä, there is no need to put that particular name in curly braces. I would think that constructions like Yawäyä would be 'fixed', if needed in review by others. (Then there is Elohim, another Hebrew word used for 'God' we haven't really discussed.  ;) ) is a But how about 'Bartholomew'? or 'Nebuchadnezzar'? It could also be used for 'messiah' or other particularly hard-to-translate words. This would be at the translator's discretion, I would imagine. If these names or words made it through to the published edition for whatever reason, it would be indicated there is a little more stylish manner, such as italics (ala King James) or a different font.

Quote from: Eywayä_tawtteAlso I think that for now we need to make sure we focus on the New Testament, Proverbs, Psalms, and Genesis. The others, though good stories and good for ancient human history, wouldn't mean much to the Na'vi. Later once we have those complete we can go back to these books.

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itanI don't think it would make sense to argue on a hierarchy of importantness of the bible's books. God can speak through the book of Ruth as well as through the gospels or Paul's letters (which we won't be able to translate this time I'm afraid, as they need highly developed language I think).

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itanSo I think let's just see what people are interested in and have fun with. I took the psalms becase I like them and I wanted to gain deeper knowledge into them. Col Quaritch took the gospel of John which is as he stated the one he likes best. 'Eylan Ayfalulukanä seems to have a preference for Zephania, so why make up a rule which books we have to do first? If God decides to bless our work we will have each book done just in time.

The primary reason I chose Zephaniah to start with is because the minor prophets are kind of a 'quiet backwater', but still scripture. Rather than start on some really important book, like John, or Genesis, or Psalms, I figured that my still-developing skills are better suited to something that wasn't going to be in the spotlight. Zephaniah was specifically chosen because it is my favorite book among the minor prophets, and is only 3 chapters long. If the group feels I am really wasting my efforts with Zephaniah, please make a suggestion where I should start. I certainly do not want to get in the way of more experienced translators, or people with better original language skills than I have. I am also willing to sit on the sidelines for a while, and help get this project structurally organized so it can grow without having to be reorganized a little ways down the line.

One final thought on the subject of original languages: One of the really interesting features of Na`vi is the free word order. One thing this enables us to do, that is hard to do with other language translations, is largely preserve the word-order of the original language. This is especially true of Greek, which uses a different word order than English.

On a personal note: It took 3 hours to compose this due to frequent interruptions, including being called into work. :(

Yawä ngahu

Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Tìmuiäyä'itan

@'Eylan Ayfaulukanä:
Okay, that post got some things clear for me, thanks for taking the time to write it. After reading it it seems to me, our different approaches differ mainly in these things:

  • 1. You have two instances of text, one for the text that's being worked on (and discussed), and one for text that is considered being something like final, though further discussion and editing is yet possible. I do not make a difference between those two and rather go like: A bad and yet disputable translation is better than no translation at all. Of course, one will not see from the text surface how good the translation is yet, one would have to take a closer look.
  • 2. You think of a forum or wiki as the place where things happen, while I still have the single thread in my head. A single thread is easier to keep track of than a whole subforum, in terms of clearinghouse checking everything. I do of course see that if we have a subforum or a wiki, it would be hardly possibe to still follow the pull approach I spoke of.

Either way is cool for me in that part. The only thing that I ask for is clear responsibilities. If I am to send text that I translated to clearinghouse, I want to have an idea on when I can do this. For example my 2 psalms have yet not been much reviewed by the community. I know that people have other things to do and reviews can show up any minute, and I get an idea of me having overwhelmed people with posting whole psalms, maybe I should rather post single lines. But as far as of now there are different possible interpretations for no posted reviews:

  • 1. People think I know the language better than they do and thus think they cannot correct me (which is wrong, I think I am one of the latest to show up on learnnavi and I haven't started with the language before my sign on date here)
  • 2. People did review it and found no mistakes (which I can hardly believe because everybody is making mistakes and I definately know there are mistakes in my work)
  • 3. People did not have the time to review.
So I just wonder if we follow the push approach you favor, when would I send my text to clearinghouse if ever? In the pull approach clearing house would just use my latest versin and copy and paste it to the document (that wold require that I post it here the way we want it to appear in the document, which is no problem for me if we have agreed on how to do it).
In the pull approach I'd see the translator who picked his or her book to be responsible of always posting the latest valid version to the forum, the clearing house would be responsible to update the document(s) on time (while we would have to take into account that this could maybe take a couple of days at times, as we all have also other work to do) and all the others would be responsibe to tell translators (e.g. translators of other texts) of mistakes they find and to tell clearinghouse of typos or stuff related to their work. But basically no one would have to wait and see what others do or not do. Revision would be always possible and of course we would have no such document that would be of a certain quality, but rather that has the latest version of texts, some of which could be in worse shape than others.
But this wouldn't be the final bible. The final bible is something we can think about in a couple of years. Right now what we have is nothing but a repository of translated work, good or better.

Disadvantage would be, that we'd have to review all before publishing the first actual bible (just for reasons of quality control). Advantage would be that we had final quality control out of the way in the process of building our text base (once we have a text base we can refne it in eternal iteration).

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäIt is fairly well-defined, to the extent that we understand the Na`vi language. If there is any place where standardization is likely to be a problem, it will be the abbreviations in the trilinear gloss.
That is what I mean. I miss certain abbrevations (and at the moment I'm maing them up on my own), like for <awn> passive participle infix and others. It would also be nice to have an abbrevation for the a marking a relative clause.

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäBesides the infix markers, you also have dashes representing affixes, plus signs marking leniting affixes, and I'm sure, some other characters.
I am not sure what you are talking about. Can you give an example? I've yet not made a difference between affixes, infixes etc in that case. And I have not yet seen it anywhere on the board. Most go 1st line: Na'vi text with infixes etc marke by <>, so finding words in tictionary is easier, second line use of the abbrevations, to indicate which infixes in the first line are considered which function, plus you have the literal English words for the Na'vi words so you know what people thought when translating. 3rd line the text in English they have as base for the translation above. Thus trilinear, as there are three lines.
I have no problem giving it a fourth line with the text in plain Na'vi without the infixes etc marked. This is certainly good for convenience, as it mght be easier to read than the first line, once you are fluent.

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäI also think it will help people understand moderately abstract ideas like 'subjunctive', 'infinitive', 'relative clause', etc. I struggle with that aspect of grammar.
It can give them an idea of how it is used, but it won't explain it I guess.

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäAs I see it, the first time around, the translator prepares just what is in lines 1 and 2. (And it will take some discipline on the translator's part to do this, as creating especially the trilinear gloss could be a lot of extra work).
Hmm, I would do all 3 lines i one rush I think. Because I need them all in my translation work anyway. It makes my work easier when translating, that's why I asked if others work differently. After all, you have to keep track of your work and I found this trilinear notation makes things a lot easier.
But I am not sure how other peope deal with this.

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäI also think that the passage would be marked with a 1 line date flag, that would indicate the last time that passage was modified.
This is basically a good idea we should keep in mind. It also allows us to see which texts need revision the most, as like there has been newer grammar published after last review, so working with this new grammar rules could clear up things.

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäWhen a book, or a major portion thereof is complete, a period of time is allowed, perhaps a month, where everyone has a chance to look it over. When no changes have been made in a month, lines 1 and 2 are stripped off to form the interlinear 'published version', and line 4 is stripped off of that to create the 'Na`vi bible published version'. Of course, this would still be open to review, but the review tracking would be done through the four line 'master text' of that book.
That's about what I thought of in respect of getting published material out of the work in progress pdf. One could mark this with certain version numbers...

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäI have thought about your idea of using programmer's tools (like RCS or Submit) to control text additions and revisions. This is a novel idea, and if you can demonstrate a way to make this work in a venue like this, please do.
I cannot remeber having brought up the idea, there must have been a misunderstanding, but I like it too, though. Problem is, I have no idea how to use those software products and I wonder whether they would work for us (though I can see something like subversion and LaTeX go together where everyone will know which part of the tex file to edit for his part, or you have severa files, yes, that could be really nice, though as I said, I have no idea how to employ this).

Quote from: 'Eyan AyfalulukanäOne of the really interesting features of Na`vi is the free word order. One thing this enables us to do, that is hard to do with other language translations, is largely preserve the word-order of the original language. This is especially true of Greek, which uses a different word order than English.
A quick note on that one: It seems to me, that word order is by far not as free as one might have thought in the beginning, though it is still freer than in English (where you have hardly any freedom) or German (where usually at least verb goes to 2nd place in a sentence but all the rest tends to be free). But it is not Latin, where you can put words wherever you want. And we have to keep in mind that different languages give different meanings to certain positions. I got aware of this when we read Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in school, in German and in English: There is one speech in the play, I think of Mark Anton, whcih starts in English with: "Friends, Romans Countrymen..." The same part in German is translated: "Landsleute, Römer, Freunde..." going opposite direction. This is due to English naming the most important first, while in German the last is most important. So I wonder if it is really useful mirroring original word order (though it might be very sensible in certain cases). If we keep also in mind what the Colonel said yesterday, that it's better to translate the meaning then words, you cannot much follow this idea anyway...

Finally I must say, I do really have a feeling that we will get something seriously good started here. Irayo everyone for your efforts.

Kìyevame!
srungìri ftära tsyokxìl ngeyä
ke ivomum futa pesuru
lu srung skiena tsyokxta ngeyä
ulte Jesus a nerìn ayfo pamlltxe
san sutehu lu keltsun
slä Yawähu frakem tsunslu sìk.

Col Quaritch

My John 3:16 going to be a tad off posted date I'm waiting for a program that will greatly help me in translation from Max Lucado. I have most of the first line done but I want to rego over it all before posting there some thing that dont set right with me on the translation I dont know if its cuase its a life time of knowing it they way I have from KJV or just something in the Na'vi that isnt sitting right with me but either way I'll post soon as this program shows up today and if not today late tonight. Keep the old Col in your prayers I feel like all of Pandora is tap dancing on my head at the moment.


Col Quaritch



dcb

Hello All,

This might be a bit of overkill, but on the other hand translating the whole Bible is a pretty huge task.
There is some open source software available that you might be interested in for this project. It is called FieldWorks and is available from fieldworks.sil.org
You'll want the Bible Translators Edition no doubt. It is fairly huge to download at around 300Mb.

Translation Editor should be a great help for the translation of the Bible, and FLEx should help with studying the language itself.
It isn't able to facilitate collaborative working. Which means that if several of you use the software keeping the data in sync with each other will not be a trivial task. However that is something that the project team are working on providing. On the other hand it can work over a VPN allowing several people access to the same project simultaneously.
The next version of the software should also run under linux. Currently it uses MS SQL Server and only runs on windows.

If I can help by providing more information just let me know.

Tirea Aean

First off, this project looks amazing, and I have interest participating.

another thing. I understand that you aim for Yaweh with the word Yawä, but seriously, why not spell it Yawey? as that literally sounds like Yaweh much more than Yawä does...ä is the ä as in cat bat sat rat (in USA anyway.) the Na'vi diphthong "ey" is the one found in "hey there!" while ä is more like "I'm ät the store" just me being picky.

so to get a bigger picture here, who is currently working on what as of now?

Tìmuiäyä'itan

Kaltxì!
When I proposed Yawä I had the German way of pronouncing it (Yawey is strictly English way of pronouncing it), though, rethinking it how it was probably pronounced in Hebrew (if it is even the right way to get vowels to the consonants) I guess it was rather Yawì. The -ey- is as said something very English and I cannot think of another language that would treat it that way, but still, I'm open to any changes.

As of free books I think it was Zepahnia, John, Genesis, Psalms and Proverbs being taken (hope I forgot no one), though I wouldn't mind if you helped me with Psalms (just tell me which you are working on so we don't sit on the same; I did 23 and 1 as of yet and am now not sitting at a new one). So go make your choice of what to take.

Kìyevame!
srungìri ftära tsyokxìl ngeyä
ke ivomum futa pesuru
lu srung skiena tsyokxta ngeyä
ulte Jesus a nerìn ayfo pamlltxe
san sutehu lu keltsun
slä Yawähu frakem tsunslu sìk.

Tirea Aean

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan on March 23, 2010, 09:49:45 AM
Kaltxì!
When I proposed Yawä I had the German way of pronouncing it (Yawey is strictly English way of pronouncing it), though, rethinking it how it was probably pronounced in Hebrew (if it is even the right way to get vowels to the consonants) I guess it was rather Yawì. The -ey- is as said something very English and I cannot think of another language that would treat it that way, but still, I'm open to any changes.

oh ok that makes sense! yes, in that case keep things how they are. fayteleri apxa skxawng längu oe.

so are we doing King James Version? Because that is what I have.

If you want me to help you with Psalms, I would gladly do so! just tell me what you have done, and what you plan to do, and i will take the rest. but then again, it is not a bad thing if we end up doing the same verses, as we can cross check our Na'vi translations and see other ways to say the same thing.

irayo apxay seiyi oe ngar!

Tìmuiäyä'itan

No, I am not calling out for help with the Psalms right now, I just wanted to say if it was your deep desire to work on the Psalms I wouldn't go like: No, psalms is mine. ;D

I'd appreciate very much if you would tak a look at the two psalms I already did (the latest versions should be in this thread 2 or three pages back). We agreed on basing the translation on KJV, though I do also look into the Hebrew text myself (as I studied the languages I don't wanna miss a thought) and of course, I will not get rid of Luther being stuck in my head, so basically KJV with all other influences that there might be, I guess (especially as we cannot make a word to word translation being short of vocabulary).

So pick whatever book you like, I'd say.

We are still in the process of discussing how to organize the collection and publishing of the work already done, but for now I think best is to put your translations here in trilinear gloss, so others can get your thoughts.

Kìyevame!
srungìri ftära tsyokxìl ngeyä
ke ivomum futa pesuru
lu srung skiena tsyokxta ngeyä
ulte Jesus a nerìn ayfo pamlltxe
san sutehu lu keltsun
slä Yawähu frakem tsunslu sìk.

Col Quaritch

Okay as project team leader I think its safe to say we orginaly said King James Version. But after you finaly get down to getting even so much as one verse translated over it stopps being the KJV. What most important is the message comes through no matter the language you choose to translate the Word into. As to Yawä our orignal thinking was 1 to avoid Ewya that spelling and meaning just simply wouldnt do for translationg the Holy Scriptures. 2 Based on the work Timuiaya'itan had done we all agreed early on this was a suitable word in Na'vi to mean God. This was something we all needed very early on as no matter what book each of us were willing to tackle we all were going to have to use this word with out a doudt. As to books being translated at this time I didnt assign any books I asked each person who joined to work on what is your favorite, in my case the book of John, and so on an so. As to the massive scope of the project huge mega huge we all are aware of this, I new this orginal when I was willing to tackle this alone I didnt ask for any volenteers when I first started this but Praise God people just started showing up and with various skills in both the Word and Na'vi, talk about a blessing from God. Bible in Na'vi project stands at about 12 people willing to give this their all I beleive theres more but that was my last count. I think it was best put about this project if it so much as brings one person to God then the project was worth all the time and effort, and I'm sure it will bring more than just 1. I know of people who would never picked up the bible but the moment it was aviable in Klingon they couldnt get enough of reading and studing it, I beleive the same will be for the Na'vi Bible.

God loves you and so do I


Tirea Aean

sweet. Yes, i see. I will take a look at a few pages back at your Psalms. so what do we plan to do with things like: LORD, LORD GOD, and LORD of host? have we ultimately decided on our phonetics of Jesus Christ yet?

with all that, I may start with Malachi, as it is short. after that, I will move on to another...this is gonna be a tough project without some frequently used words like "to say." we have to tell, and to speak. so i guess they must have to work for now.

Col Quaritch

Tuff but not impossible, Luke 1:37 NIV "For nothing is impossible with God."

I feel much needed advice to everyone before you sit down to start your translation. PRAYER! Ask God to help you in your work ask to keep your mind focus first that this is for him not our ego that we did this in Na'vi, ask that as you translate you learn new truths from the word you never seen before. Ask him to bless this project and each of its translators and that they remain focus on the project and not to loose heart. A project this size most deffently can make one loose heart and think there is no way "we" can do it. To remember that Philippians 3:14  press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus Each of us has our own gifts in both the Word and in this new fun language Na'vi and from that we each will support each other as this project grows.

I think with few expection most proper names remain just as they are Jake name still remained Jake in Na'vi, the only exception I know of for sure is Paul which is spelled Pawl and Mark which is spelled Markì. I know of the last on a good source but they wish to remain annoumious for personal reason which I will respect. I believe key words that we all will have to face are important to translate into Na'vi such as God (we now have ) Lord, Christ, Messiah, terms that are not common or consider common names. I'm open to any pms if you feel you have something to dicuss that you feel shouldnt be covered in open forum first.

Yawä Ngahu