Bible in Na'vi

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

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Col Quaritch

As in all big decsions for this project I will research all options, I will pray and I will wait upon the Lord to see what works best. I know little of wiki other than the collage here wont allow any info from it used in term papers. Oh and to a certian extent it has been very valuable to me for playing Star Wars Galaxy online up untill the last publish then it died off. But as I said I will look deeply into both even though I have already started a forum if its not whats best I will have no problem delted it. Whats most important to me is God's will on this,

Your project leader and servant in Christ Jesus,

Colonel Quaritch (Bear)


`Eylan Ayfalulukanä

Quote from: Col Quaritch on July 22, 2010, 05:03:10 PM
As in all big decsions for this project I will research all options, I will pray and I will wait upon the Lord to see what works best. I know little of wiki other than the collage here wont allow any info from it used in term papers. Oh and to a certian extent it has been very valuable to me for playing Star Wars Galaxy online up untill the last publish then it died off. But as I said I will look deeply into both even though I have already started a forum if its not whats best I will have no problem delted it. Whats most important to me is God's will on this,

Your project leader and servant in Christ Jesus,

Colonel Quaritch (Bear)

Bear/Colonel, I can now see where some of your concerns come from.

A wiki is simply a web tool that allows people to collaboratively edit documents. It is different than a forum, because everyone works on the same document in a wiki. This has the advantage that there is just one text to refer to. It has the disadvantage that it is hard to see how the text came to be. I think what you are doing is confusing a wiki with Wikipedia, the best known example of a wiki, and one your college forbids for research use. Wikis exist all over the internet, that have no connection whatsoever with Wikipedia.

As I think this through, it is possible we need both a web board (forums like this) AND a wiki. LearnNavi has both, and they serve different purposes. The Web board would be used to do the actual translation work and initial criticism/editing. This material, as it becomes 'vetted' somehow, would move to the wiki. Although the text would still be open to be worked with there, it would be a smaller group of more experienced translators (or others through one of the more experienced people). This is the place where the text really becomes easily readable for the first time.

After a text has been translated, and reviewed to the point that little or no tweaking is being made, it can be moved to a web page, where it will exist as a file that can be read online or downloaded (PDF format). This, too will be open for review, but changes will have to be more carefully reviewed (by several sets of menarì) before they are made.


Yawey ngahu!
pamrel si ro [email protected]

Col Quaritch

Take into consideration, I'm still very much in thought and prayer on this. When I get to my pc tomorrow instead of posting from my iPad I have a few questions that will need answers to better help me as your team leader.

Your fellow brother in Christ,
Bear aka Col Q


Tìmuiäyä'itan

#263
In an attempt to avoid studying for my exam in september, I tried to translate laudate omnes gentes (here non-Latin)into Na'vi. This is what came out of it:


ngopyuru     rol     awngeyä
creator-DAT  sing    we-GEN

Sing for our creator


fraolo'ya        rivol
every-clan-VOC   sing-SUBJ

Sing every clan

Edit: Actually, I wonder if the first line would not be closer to the stresss rules, if rol was first:

ról ngópyuru awngéyä - fraólo'ya rivól...
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

I see. A separate wiki for this might not be a terrible idea, but as for the forum boards, again a subforum on here, where many topics can be made inside it would solve what we need out of a forum. OR EVEN I can see to it that this project can have a MAIN BOARD on the main forum AND inside that you can have subforums and inside those subforums, many topics...again, just let me know.

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan on July 23, 2010, 02:57:24 AM
In an attempt to avoid studying for my exam in september, I tried to translate laudate omnes gentes (here non-Latin)into Na'vi. This is what came out of it:


ngopyuru     rol       awngayä
creator-DAT  sing    we-GEN

Sing for our creator


fraolo'ya        rivol
every-clan-VOC   sing-SUBJ

Sing every clan

Edit: Actually, I wonder if the first line would not be closer to the stresss rules, if rol was first:

ról ngópyuru awngáyä - fraólo'ya rivól...

vocative is for speaking TO someone. is "every clan" the party being spoken TO here? <just wondering, because idk about this specific little passage>

-ya is not required it is just another option for collective nouns...ma is said to always work when speaking to someone...it just seemed a hair strange to see olo'ya where ma fraolo' imo might be easier to say...but hey this is really a matter of opinion and personal preference, not really fact. but what IS fact is that the gen of awnga is awngeyä. all pronouns have an -eyä genitive case ending. oeyä, ngeyä, peyä, awngeyä, oengeyä, ayoeyä, feyä, even tseyä(gen of tsa'u).

so basically its good how you have it...just switch awngayä with awngeyä. :)

Col Quaritch

Im very happy here for one big reason despite the fact that other faiths are here everyone respects what we are doing and they do not try to mess with us or bring us down, of that I greatly appreciate. After alot of thinking and praying on this matter it would be much wiser to remain here with our own sub forum. After all, all navi resources are right here with no need to transfer any work or move any material. I am not sure how this would still work but I feel we still need our own section for this project to allow us to really sink our teeth into the project and hit the ground running. A near completed work then will head for the Wikipedia as suggested with a deffent final translation posted on a website where anyone may read on line or download into what ever format their pc may support. I know 0% about the wiki thing I would ask who ever dose to please take up that mantle and lead that end of the project and speak slowly (hehehe) when teaching me. As to our sub forum I feel its a must here if you believe it can be done. This by far would aid all translators of any level in translating thier books. I would also like to encourge anyone not understanding this language still (i.e. me) to take any audia classes that may be offered or online text class what ever. I think I can convers on the level of a 2 year old, or less. I pray this decison meets with everyones apporval I feel this is the direction the Lord has lead me in to better meet the needs of his project. As always please feel free to pm or email me with any questions or concerns.
Yours InChrist
Bear


Tirea Aean

okay then! off to fish I go! to ask him for a main board...

SO

the Main board on the forum will be called Bible leNa'vi Project?

and what will the child boards therein be called? <he will ask me these things>

OH and THIS THREAD can be moved into that main board or into a subforum in that board as well...

Tìmuiäyä'itan

@Col Quaritch:
The wiki thing isn't as complicated as it seems. A wiki is a software, like there are also forum softwares.
There are plenty forums in the net.
They serve the purpose to discuss things.
One can start a thread on something and others can answer to this in a linear way (like I cannot answer here to anything riftmaster or TesterScot said pages ago, my post goes right underneath the last one).
Like this, the discussion of an issue can be brought forward.
A wiki on the other hand is not there to discuss. It is better for collecting work, working on it in cooperation etc.
Therefore, it is not linear like a forum thread.
In a forum thread, you cannot change a mistake, someone before you made when posting something.
For example the little chant I translated above: Tirea Aean could only point me out to 'awngayä being wrong (gotta fix this in a minute;)), but he couldn't go and correct it himself.
Working on a joint document with a forum would be very complicated, because one had to either wait for the guy who made the mistake to correct his stuff, in order to have a correct copy of the work.
Or, one had to copy the whole work (imagine us working on the book of psalms and each posting containing like 100 psalms just to have the most up to date version of all at one place) with corrected verses...
Or, one would have to ask the forum admin to edit everything accordingly in other people's threads (in our own forum we all were admins and would have been able to do this, but working like this is like having an electric screwdriver and using it the old style way, moveing around the whole thing to drive a screw out or in: ineffective).
Now, there are the wikis.
Wikipedia is one wiki, most probably the most well known one, but not the only one (as far as I know nobody ever spoke about wikipedia here, so get that out of your head ;) wiki≠wikipedia).
One other wiki (apart from wikipedia and the millions(?) of more wikis throughout the net) is the wiki of this community:

http://wiki.learnnavi.org

That is what we are talking about here, not wikipedia (I repeat this to get the thought out of your head, not because I consider you slow, so no offense ;D)
So, in a wiki, you have certain pages.
Those pages have titles.
Those pages can generally be edited by anyone.
One good thing: One can always (!) get the last version of the wiki back. Like if some idiot would come and change an article on Na'vi grammar into some explaination of Russian pronounciation rules, this could be taken back with a few clicks.
There can also be write restrictions to certain wiki pages (here someone else has to explain, I know hardly about this).
The way a wiki works is simple:
You have a page.
The page has a title.
You can find the page by entering the title in the search bar.
One possibility (I don't say this is the wisest way to organise things) would be that there was one page for the gospel of say John.
You'd enter "Gospel of John" in the searchbar, and you'd see the gospel page presented to you (Wikipedia for example would present you some info that you would find in an encyclopedia about this certain gospel - here is not the place to discuss the quality of wikipedia articles:D).
In the wiki of our community, one could take the same title for the page which shows the Na'vi text of the gospel of John.
So anytime one inserts "gospel of john" in the community wiki search bar, one would be presented with our current state of the translation.
Everybody could change this, though.
But we could restrict writing access I think, but then, the assigned writer would have do all the updates of texts (as other pages in the wiki seem to not be targets of spammers I'd give it a try to give anyone the chance to change things, but have some words of talking to us in the forums first)
Okay, so we have a translation of the gospel on one page and we get there by entering the name in the search bar.
But we could also link there from another page (links are easily done, maybe we'd have to write a little tutorial on wiki syntax, but that won't be the hardest)
We could, for example have a page that is called New Testament.
From there we could link to each book of the New Testament.
We could have the same for the OT, or we could have both parts of the bible on one page with the respective links to the books, plus links to pages that explain how the project will be working together, where to report mistakes, how to format wiki pages etc... (maybe even a page with some hymns' translations, so if someone will want to have a wedding at a convention, but a christian one, the service could be even more na'vified, but let's forget about this)
So one could have one page, let's call it a portal, that would link to all info about the project, describe what we are doing, have the ressources linked, the rules, our work so far.
This would be for information and presentation.
Some minor discussion one could maybe have on the discussion pages (those pages are there, but not good for discussion as they are not linear like a forum thread)
So the discussion would still go to the forum. One could have a link on each discussion page to the subforum, stating that discussion would go there
So discussion of texts (the actual work) would go to the forum
Presentation of the project, including our work so far, would go to the wiki

Sidenote: If we have all the texts scattered throughout several forum threads, it would be a lot of work to gather them and get them in one, say pdf-file. So if we want to have something in our hands in the end, this would be hard.
Wikis sometimes have functions (don't know if ours does) to directly export the contents of a certain wiki page (or several pages) to a pdf file.
If our wiki does not support this, we will still have all the work at one place and would not have to seek through many threads to get all together.

I hope this was said slowly enough. No we have to think of how to set up wiki pages (one page per book? one per chapter?) and how many subforums we'd need in the community forum.

My opinion: I have some ideas about the wiki. But those are still not very clear. But I'll voice what I think once we'll speak about this. On the question of the subforums: I thik we are yet not too many people here. So I doubt there will be alot of traffic this time. Things might change in the future, but I'd say we need no subforums, one forum Bible leNa'vi would suffice, where we can put several threads on different issues. This would already be a great help.

@Tirea Aean:
Irayo for the corrections. I wasn't aware of the PN GEN being different. I'll change that. And yes, it's all clans (originally all nations or all peoples [omnes gentes], but these words are not there in Na'vi) that are addressed. I know -ya does not have to be used, but it comes in handy for the syllable number and the rhythm (stress yould be on the first o of fraolo'ya, which I think is right)...


Okay, as usual I've been talking a lot. Anyway, I hope my explaination of wikis wasn't too bad.

Yawä ayngahu
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

ok no problem.

Certainly a wiki is a great idea.

also.

All nations.

ayolo' nìwotx...

i know the dictionary definition of nìwotx doesnt say "all" but thats what it means...it is a word conveying the idea of "in entirety" "completely" and also according to Frommer's uses of it, all:

Quote from: Paul Frommer
Ayeylanur oeyä sì eylanur lì'fyayä leNa'vi nìwotx:
to all my friends and and friends of the Na'vi language:

Quote from: Paul Frommer....'uo a fpi rey'eng Eywa'evengmì 'Rrtamì tsranten nìtxaw awngaru nìwotx.
something which for the sake of the balance of life on Pandora and on Earth matters much to us all.

not saying that fra- is wrong...just presenting other things...:) its what I do..in fact i think nìwotx ayolo' would destroy the rhythm you got goin on there...but this is the thing about Na'vi: it is impossible to translate a song into Na'vi and have it be grammatically correct and have the original song rhythm kept intact...Very sad only...but it is true.<at least true of translating the words not the meaning...it MIGHT be possible to translate the meaning not the words and MAYBE keep the rhythm, PLUS vocab gaps in Na'vi...so song translation has always been a nightmare></ramble-rant-rant-rant>

Tìmuiäyä'itan

Well, if you look at the several texts of this little song in all different languages (they have everything in so many languages in Taizé, it's incredible!), they are only losely connected.

So what you say is that nìwotx is not an adverb? Becaus in this sense it seems to function as attribute and those I thought have to be adjectives and not adverbs (maybe I'm confusing grammar terms here)...
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 July 24, 2010, 12:52:34 PM
Well, if you look at the several texts of this little song in all different languages (they have everything in so many languages in Taizé, it's incredible!), they are only losely connected.


That's cool! That must be difficult to do, keep the rhythm and meaning intact after translation.


Tìmuiäyä'itan

From the book of Philemon (quick and dirty, using Luther1984 as base, not yet the Greek text):

Verse 1:

Pawlìl   a   lu  spe'etu  Yesur     Kristur    sì   Timoteosìl      tsmukanìl    fpe'  tsa'uti  ne  Filemon   ayawne      srungyu   ayoeyä
Paul-Erg REL be  captive  Jesus-DAT Christ-DAT and  Timoptheos-ERG  brother-ERG  send  this-ACC to  Philemon  ADJ-beloved help-NDS  we-GEN

Paul, captive of Jesus Christ, and Timotheos, the brother, send this to the beloved Philemon, our helper.

Verse 2:

sì  ne Afia  tsmuke sì  ne Arkxipos  a   wem   ayoehu      sì  ne pongu ayspawyuyä          mì     helku ngeyä
and to Aphia sister and to Archippus REL fight we-ADP-with and to group PLU-believe-NDS-GEN ADP-in house you-GEN

and to Aphia, the sister, and to Archhippus, who is fighting with us, and to the group of believers in your house

Verse 3:

txoa        livu    ayngahu          sì  fpom  ne   Yawä a   lu sempul awngeyä     sì  ne   eyktan Yesu  Krist
forgiveness be-SUBJ PLU-you-ADP-with and peace from God  REL be father we-INCL-GEN and from leader Jesus Christ

Forgiveness be with you and peace from God, who is our father, and from the leader Jesus Christ.
(I am not too happy translating grace with forgiveness and Lord with leader, but I find no better yet)

Verse 4:

Oe irayo seri      Yawäru  frakrr krrpe zerok    ngati   tengkrr irayo seri
I  thank do-IMPF   God-DAT always when  remember you-ACC while   thank do-IMPF

I always thank God, when I remember you while thanking.
(thanking and praying is basically similar, so I used irayo si for both, until we know a term fpor "to pray")


Okay, late now. Just wanted to have done something for this project... felt like it. And: This is almost one fifth of the book, it has only 25 verses. But again I realize how few words we actually have for the translation. And how complicated some things are. Let's not get discouraged.

Yawä ayngahu
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

I'm blessed to see this and to grind my teeth too I still can't seem to grassp this language, some head translator huh  ::)


Tìmuiäyä'itan

#273
My language skills leave me... what is a "head translator"? ???


I wasn't sure whether to post this here or to the wiki, but I put it here, as I have no "go" for wiki use. ;) Tirea Aean? Col?
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.

Mithcoriel

I was gone for a while, so I skipped a few pages.
Like I said, I don't mind trying to translate a chapter or so. Even though I'm not a Na'vi expert. I mean the bible is a huge book. You can use a lot of small translators, like "canon fodder" or whatever expression I should use, just to get the bulk of it done.

But I really think there ought to be a list in the first post saying who's taking care of which chapter, or which chapters have already been translated. I'm kinda opposed to the idea of starting a translation now, when I might accidentally pick a section that has already been translated, or someone else will accidentally translate the one I already did.
Ayoe lu aysamsiyu a plltxe "Ni" !
Aytìhawnu ayli'uyä aswok: "Ni", "Peng", si "Niiiew-wom" !

Tìmuiäyä'itan

This is why I hope we'll get a "go" for using the wiki soon. And having an own subforum where we can discuss and correct translations.

In the wiki all'd be at one place. So if you see your chapter or book already translated, you'll know it. You can then decide to review the chapter (like looking if we have new vocab meanwhile that would allow things to be said easier, or to look for obvious mistakes or improvements of the text we have so far).

You can also decide to do pioneer work in some other chapter or book. As you said, the bible is huge, there'll always be texts to work at. But great to see people are coming back to the project again.
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

I would like to think here is our last stopping off point before wiki. from what little i know if navi it looks fine to me but then again I can only carry on converstations with 1 year olds in the language.  :)


Tìmuiäyä'itan

Wow, own subforum! Things get going!

@Tirea Aean: Is there any update from okrìsi about the wiki?

@Col: The problem is, I cannot even talk to a one year old in Na'vi. I can only use the language in a way like you use maths or so, but I need my dictionary, grammar etc all the time...

So, I can offer to put a little structure to the wiki, if wanted. Some stuff like what we are about to do and the setup of all the bible books (think of copying from a German bible translation project, they also use a wiki 8))

I'm not the best in making it neat-looking, but it should be possible to make it functional... and someone with abilities in graphics design can polish it p later ;)
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.

'Oma Tirea

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan on July 27, 2010, 03:14:54 PM
Wow, own subforum! Things get going!

Maybe that way you can work on different gospels in different threads er somethin' ;)
[img]http://swokaikran.skxawng.lu/sigbar/nwotd.php?p=2b[/img]

ÌTXTSTXRR!!

Srake serar le'Ìnglìsìa lì'fyayä aylì'ut?  Nari si älofoniru rutxe!!

Tìmuiäyä'itan

Yeah, it'll make things easier, much easier... I think we'll use the forums only for discussing corrections, once we know we can use the wiki... Then we'll collect the translations over there...
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.