Bible in Na'vi

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

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Col Quaritch

heheh I cant resist well see you when you have no class  ;D

Actually what I think gets me as I was looking through the Navi list of words is I will see say two different words and yet they both have the same meaning and no explanation as to why. Only answer I ever got was why two different words for say Alien "ketuwong" and "kewong" one means that is alien to you and the other one as in someone is alien i.e. the skypeople are alien to pandora. so you can see my confusion in picking words when we have no explantion for some of these double words.


Txur’Itan

Quote from: Col Quaritch on March 17, 2010, 11:56:34 AM
heheh I cant resist well see you when you have no class  ;D

Actually what I think gets me as I was looking through the Na'vi list of words is I will see say two different words and yet they both have the same meaning and no explanation as to why. Only answer I ever got was why two different words for say Alien "ketuwong" and "kewong" one means that is alien to you and the other one as in someone is alien i.e. the skypeople are alien to Pandora. so you can see my confusion in picking words when we have no explanation for some of these double words.

"ketuwong" = ke tute wong = not person sameness

"kewong" = ke wong = not sameness

Basically they are calling someone a "not person".

The reason they are used to mean alien is the same reason many language have words for the concept of people other than the local natives.  This has been canonized in the AVATAR universe to mean beings who are not of the Na'vi people, and may not have necessarily been for just humans.  The sequel may reveal more to us, but for now, alien is the closest approximation of the translation.  
私は太った男だ。


Col Quaritch

yea so you can see why it confuses me with out explanations on these words, thus making translation a bit tuff but I will stick with it. Really looking forward to any new words the good Doc should bless us with.


riftmaster

#43
I will try to help when I can, but until my na'vi improves I can only wish you luck and say well done so far


Yawä ngahu

BTW love the bible sig.




Col Quaritch

Welcome to the team and you know what any help is better than none, and one of the biggest help as your na'vi gets better is encougment and prayer for the project and its members.


Mrs. Q

This project is a huge undertaking. It requires patience, understanding and prayers. As my Na'vi is AWFUL, I will be studing diligently so I can make an occasional intelligent comment. This is important work, and I salute you all as doers of the word. 'Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth.' 2 Thessalonians 1:2-3
In the meantime... until I learn to read and speak better, I will be keeping you in my prayers.
Kate

Letxepa tirea

I'd like to join in.

Also I am thinking of working on the tower of babble passage. It is the Conlang cornerstone passage just because of the irony more then anything else.

That is if you let me join in.

Either way:

Yawä ngahu





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

riftmaster

Quote from: Mrs. Q on March 17, 2010, 04:19:32 PM
This project is a huge undertaking. It requires patience, understanding and prayers. As my Na'vi is AWFUL, I will be studing diligently so I can make an occasional intelligent comment.

I am in almost the same position as you, but as Col Quaritch said any help is better than none




Tìmuiäyä'itan

#48
Irayo ma Kate!

I found it a good way to start learning the language taking small parts of the bible translating just small sentences and think how I would express their meaning with the words at Hand. For example the two bible quotes in my sig, I have no idea how right or wrong they are (I hope I get corrected if somebody notices a mistake...).

Like let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth, there is no right and left, so I put one and other, there is no hand, so I put arm, and as I put arm and arms don't do anything on their own or one wouldn't say this, I put help for do, and I put it to the active voice, so a literal translation back would be like:
Your one arm (hopefully) knows not this, for whom your other arm is help.


But besides from prayers, interpretations and translational work we also need someone to collect things we decided, like we decided to use Yawä as God's name and such, so we can keep track of our decisions and don't have to get throu the whole thread to find a thing.
Such support help would need no Na'vi knowledge at all (though it wouldn't hinder ). I am thinking of a pdf that is kept up to date and linked maybe also in the signatures, like Taronyu has the dictionary linked to his signature.
I guess we could have all Info central in one pdf: First goes list of agreed terms and names (name forms) and then the bible passages we already have gone through once.

This might have the sideaffect that people who are interested but yet not joining the team can get the pdf from one of our signatures, read it, think about it and tell us about mistakes we might have made (and we will make mistakes, there will be the necessity to check everything again after a while when we are more fluent, but this will be easy if we have made the hard work now, that is, have something in our hands at all.).

So whom of you wants to take over that part of the job, securing all work so we can easily get back to it?


Quote from: riftmaster
I will try to help when I can, but until my na'vi improves I can only wish you luck and say well done so far
Languages improve using them  So think about taking over this part of collecting what we all agree on, you might doing this retranslate some parts if you like and tell us where it is incomprehensible. No question ist too stupid and the reason it's incomprehensible is most likely that we didn't see a mistake, rather than you not understanding a part. Interested?

@Txr'Itan: Thanks for the explaination. I wasn't even aware we have two words... (though I wonder your explaination is right, look further down)

Looking at the dictionary I see it's basically two word-kinds: Adjective and noun. Ah, now I get it, problem of the English mother tunge, it's the same word in your language...

I try to explain it. First of all:
ketuwong = noun
kewong = adjective

A noun is the word, that stands for a thing. Like a car. A thing can be A car, but it can not be car.
An adjective is a word, that describes a thing. Like a color. You cannot be A yellow, but you can be yellow (if somebody paints you )

The same here: You can be A ketuwong, but you cannot be ketuwong. You can be kewong, bt you cannot be a kewong.

Bad thing is, in English noun and adjective are always the same in letters and pronounciation, but these words serve different purposes in the language. As said: A noun when refering to a thing and an adjective when referring to something a thing is, like blue, light, warm, alien, strange, well-known...

So when looking up words for translation, be sure you look that they serve the real purpose you are looking for. If you want to say: An alien, you need the noun for alien. When you say: An alien man, you need the noun for man and the adjective for alien.

Was this in any way helpful and/or comprehensible? Please tell me, things improve with feedback


Quote from: Col
Really looking forward to any new words the good Doc should bless us with.
I'd propose not to wait for the Doc to translate a word, but rather to try to find a way to get the meaning through nonetheless, some words might never wind up. Like in Irish there are no words for yes and no as I was told.
So my proposal would be, if there is no word for something, express it describing it, like for example saying ride-animal for horse etc. When we reread the whole corpus later it will be easy work to exchange descriptions with proper words. Like this we will be getting on more quickly, and it'll motivate to have a bigger amount of text after a shorter time. We will have to reread it anyway for mistakes, but we will at least have something in our hands to present in our Avatar-Convention church-booth
What do you think about it?


Quote from: Txur'Itan
The reason they are used to mean alien is the same reason many language have words for the concept of people other than the local natives.
I think if it was this concept, they would both be nouns or both be adjectives. But the thing that the noun has "tu" in it, which comes as yo say (and I believe it too) from tute=man, I think it is clear that one is the word for a man and the other one is a description of a man, as stated above.

@Eywayä_tawtute: I guess the Col. won't say nothing against, so welcome aboard. The tower of Bable is not taken as far as I see it, so go ahead and show us what you do with it. Good luck!

Yawä ngahu ulte 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

Quote from: Eywayä_tawtute on March 17, 2010, 05:03:07 PM
I'd like to join in.

Also I am thinking of working on the tower of babble passage. It is the Conlang cornerstone passage just because of the irony more then anything else.

That is if you let me join in.

Either way:

Yawä ngahu

We would love to have you with us on this project. There is no set assignments other than I have taken it upon my self to start with the book of John mainly due to it being my favorite of the gospels to teach new believers from and to teach and learn from. But thats just me, but as the banner indicates its our hope and prayers with all these wonderfull people coming on board that the entire Holy Bible will be avible in the Na'vi language for everyone to have and read.

Yawä Nghau always.


riftmaster

 I am a 15 year old boy who does not have much spare time but I will try !

Also my knowledge of the bible is not brilliant but translations and collecting I can do!!!

If it is alright I would like to take on this role


Yawä ngahu




Col Quaritch

Ok yea evil double poster. But I didnt see the post by Tìmuiäyä'itan which is odd to say the least. You brought up alot of good points and I love everyone of them, your right reputition and just rewriting these words even if a few at a time is going to teach us Na'vi. As to Dr. Frommer I hadnt planed on waiting just mentioning it would be nice but I think we are on the right track in doing what we can in filling in those mission parts we are going to need. If by grace he should come up with say offical word or two of something we have made that would make it cannon na'vi and we do alot of re-editing on some things oh well :) Not like I dont enjoy going over the word. Cant speak for everyone else but the idea of chronicaling our work as we go along is fantastic we need that so those more fluent in navi have one easy link to see and help us correct our work rather than weed through all these post. I so love how the Lord is leading so many to want to take part in this project even if its in small ways all the work no matter how big or small is for his greater good and Glory soooo I'm happy as a calm (how ever happy they are) and I'm going to see about how the whole pdf thing works never toy'ed with that before.

Yawä Nghau


Tìmuiäyä'itan

Okay, so you and riftmaster get the pdf up to date. Nawm! I said pdf because it's the most spread file format. Some here might use Windows, I use a Mac, some might be on Linux or other systems, so pdf would be more handy than some Office format that only half the people can actually open on their system (I always hate it when my profs are ignorant on this and send *.doc files that I can open meanwhile but everything is upside down in them...).

It shouldn't bee too hard, you use the application you usually use to write, and than you make a pdf print. There are small applications in the net that simulate a printer, but give you a pdf rather than a paper print. If you are unsure, tell me about it and tell me your system and I can see if I find such a pdf printer driver for you...

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.

riftmaster

#53
I live in the uk so I will start making it after school tomorrow




riftmaster

Can all members working on this project please post what they are working on so I can add it to the PDF

p.s: any other things needed to be included




Txur’Itan

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan on March 17, 2010, 05:11:07 PM
Quote@Txr'Itan: Thanks for the explaination. I wasn't even aware we have two words... (though I wonder your explaination is right, look further down)

Looking at the dictionary I see it's basically two word-kinds: Adjective and noun. Ah, now I get it, problem of the English mother tunge, it's the same word in your language...

I try to explain it. First of all:
ketuwong = noun
kewong = adjective

A noun is the word, that stands for a thing. Like a car. A thing can be A car, but it can not be car.
An adjective is a word, that describes a thing. Like a color. You cannot be A yellow, but you can be yellow (if somebody paints you )

The same here: You can be A ketuwong, but you cannot be ketuwong. You can be kewong, but you cannot be a kewong.

Bad thing is, in English noun and adjective are always the same in letters and pronunciation, but these words serve different purposes in the language. As said: A noun when referring to a thing and an adjective when referring to something a thing is, like blue, light, warm, alien, strange, well-known...

So when looking up words for translation, be sure you look that they serve the real purpose you are looking for. If you want to say: An alien, you need the noun for alien. When you say: An alien man, you need the noun for man and the adjective for alien.

Was this in any way helpful and/or comprehensible? Please tell me, things improve with feedback

In the first scene where we see Mo'at, Eytukan, Jake, Tsu'Tey, and Neytiri all together under the Toruk totem, Eytukan and Mo'at use both of these words to refer to Jake in an "alien" context.  Both translate to one word "alien".  But considering that -tu seems to turn words into nouns, they probably both have the root "kewong" for "alien".

Eytukan: fahew a-kewong adj. "alien.(attributive) smell"
Mo'at: fì-ketuwong-ti n. "this.alien.(Accusative)"

Quote from: Tìmuiäyä'itan on March 17, 2010, 05:11:07 PM
QuoteQuote from: Txur'Itan
The reason they are used to mean alien is the same reason many language have words for the concept of people other than the local natives.

I think if it was this concept, they would both be nouns or both be adjectives. But the thing that the noun has "tu" in it, which comes as yo say (and I believe it too) from tute=man, I think it is clear that one is the word for a man and the other one is a description of a man, as stated above.

That is likely a feature of Na'vi grammar that is causing this, but the source words have not changed meaning, and what they are used for in this case appears to be consistent.

ketuwong is a contraction with compounding, and probably a bit irregular as kewong, OR it is kewong with -tu inserted to make it a noun. 

The ability to convert words through shorter forms is a feature of the language of Na'vi.  Like ayoeng = awnga, where both mean "we" pn..

Changing words from adjectives to nouns to verbs appears to have many interesting suffixes and prefixes to use for that, but they are a bit inconsistent, and that is the thing this language does. Sometimes languages do unpredictable things.

Tsaketuwongìl fìketuwongti poru sleyku tengfya kewonga fahew läpu.
That alien caused this alien to smell like an alien.
私は太った男だ。


TesterScot

Quote from: riftmaster on March 17, 2010, 06:21:48 PM
Can all members working on this project please post what they are working on so I can add it to the PDF

p.s: any other things needed to be included

Yeesh! I'm getting seriously behind on this project.  :D
I'm kinda swamped at work; but, I'll try to keep up.

I'd really like to take on the Gospel According to Mark; but, I'm willing to pitch in with anything.

EDIT - Also UK-based.



Irayoru 'Awve Tìkameie for the profile pic. Go to http://www.mpandoraln.weebly.com to see his ongoing work.
Brand New Learner - please correct my usage 8-)

Col Quaritch

Well deffently going to need the word alien for the bible thats for sure. We Are Aliens (Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)



Tseyk Tìriuä



Tengkrr tìsngä'i Yawäl peyä tsenget ulte kifkey Yawä'evangäti ngamop.

Tìmuiäyä'itan

@riftmaster:
Great you do this. I sent you a PM.

@Txur'Itan:
Irayo for clearing this up a bit more. That's exactly how I understand it (I possibly misinterpreted yor first post on the matter like it was with the Na'vi like it is with the Israelites in the bible using one word for people that only refers to them(ha am), and another word for all other people(ha goyim), but I guess I got you wrong there).

Quote from: TesterScotI'd really like to take on the Gospel According to Mark; but, I'm willing to pitch in with anything.
I'd say you grab it, you got it.

Quote from: ColWell deffently going to need the word alien for the bible thats for sure. We Are Aliens (Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)
Yeah, I keep forgetting you English speakers use the term alien not only for extraterrestrials, but also for people like me (i.e. foreigners)...  ;D

@Tseyk Tìriuä:
Welcome aboard. Grab a bible part and let's get started.
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.