Na'vi karaoke

[Kaltxì Palulukan!]

Okay, so the UPS just brought me my copy of the Avatar Anarchist Survival Guide.

(OMFG!!)

Now I am extra-crunchy jazzed about finding new applications (ways we can play with/uses for) the words and knowledge we already possess. If you have read my aborted attempt to translate the 80's song "I want Your Sex" in another thread, this idea should come as no surprise to you. What is a good list of songs that would really be fun and/or funny in Na'vi?

Please list any songs you seriously believe would be good to translate into Na'vi. BEFORE POSTING, please, please think, and try not to simply post every song you know. My suggestion (and it is only an idea) is to think of songs that have a strong melody that people who have heard the song before would instantly recognize--and--do not have arcane words that will never be translated into Na'vi. "I want Your Sex" was an easy idea because of its repeated usage of the words brother, father, sister, and the phrase I am. True, it had difficult moments (there is no Na'vi word for sex, or love, for example), but if you can come up with a song that most of the words can be translated into without completely distorting them, I would like to know. Because you never know when FOX and friends (e.g. Cameron and Fromer) will suddenly dump a pile of new words on us.

So, any takers?

[Numeie]

Big Yellow Taxi has an appropriate message for translation to Na'vi, but the vocab may be a stretch.

[Tanhì Tireafya'o]

I'm wondering how we're going to translate whole songs. When vocabulary is currently around 500 words. I think sometimes there are words, there isn't a Na'vi one for yet.

[Eywa ngahu]

great idea or níltsan fpamíl
hmm a song, a song for Na'Vi translation....
what about: Louis Armstrongs "What a wonderfull world"?
1) it si well known
2) it has a lot of repetition
3) it is sufficiently short to be translated at this point
4) a lot of the words have already been made(one way or another) in Na'Vi.
5) hmm the greatest problem will probably be some of the things he mentions, but hey, why not just take something from pandora in stead?

[Tanhì Tireafya'o]

great idea or níltsan fpamíl
hmm a song, a song for Na'Vi translation....
what about: Louis Armstrongs "What a wonderfull world"
1) it si well known
2) it has a lot of repetition
3) it is sufficiently short to be translated at this point
4) a lot of the words have already been made(one way or another) in Na'Vi.
5) hmm the greatest problem will probably be some of the things he mentions, but hey, why not just take something from pandora in stead?

When you say it like that, you make it sound really easy. I feel like I could do this in two minutes, right now.

[Kaltxì Palulukan!]

1: We all are aware that there is a lack of words.

2: That is no excuse to NOT try something.

3: The idea behind this is to start inserting Na'vi words where yo can find them. This process makes your brain work, but it is "fun work" versus the (very important) time you spend studying rules and grammar and infixes and other pernicious "deep Na'vi" language lessons stuff. Sometimes you just need a break and you need to be able to see practical applications (uses) for your Na'vi vocabulary. Songs are contagious. They are easily spread to masses of people. By freeing your mind to casually insert a Na'vi word to substitute for an English one won't make you a Na'vi professor any more than it will make you ten feet tall with blue skin and a tail.

But it is kinda fun, and it gets your subconscious to start thinking in Na'vi in everyday situations without stress, and that is an invaluable help in mastering Na'vi. Of course we will all be studying the heavy grammatical stuff. But we need candy with our vegetables, or the attrition (drop-off factor) of Na'vi speakers/users will be intolerable.

But also: think of Harry Potter. You may not know this, but the HP "rabid fan" club is hundreds of thousands of members strong--strong enough to support at least 8 major bands, some of which have record deals! I actually bought an "Harry and the Potters--Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock" CD in Borders a few years back. They sing songs IN ENGLISH, with HP lexicon interjected. So it is not an alien concept to sing in English (or German, French...) and insert Na'vi words. Is it goofy? Yes. Do fans like that stuff? Yes--and they pay. All I am saying is that there is no shame having fun with what we have right now, instead of whining that we need more--and waiting 3-5 years to do anything. (Not saying that anyone HERE is whining--but if they ever did, that would be a shame.)

This is why I am wracking my brain to find ways we can have fun with what we do know now, and add to that as we can, later, when more information is out. :-)



Irayo for everyone's valued comments.

[Tanhì Tireafya'o]

Well. Now you say it like that...

It actually makes sense to me why you're translating songs. I wonder why I haven't come up with something like that.
Well, good luck. I'll put a translation of Eywa knows what song, when I'm finished.

Irayo <<and>> Eywa ngahu.

[Kaltxì Palulukan!]

Well. Now you say it like that...

It actually makes sense to me why you're translating songs. I wonder why I haven't come up with something like that.
Well, good luck. I'll put a translation of Eywa knows what song, when I'm finished.

Irayo <<and>> Eywa ngahu.

Okay, this is obviously NOT a "Na'vi translation" but here is a goofy idea. And it is FUN:

Okay for some reason I got Frank Zappa stuck in my head today. ("Valley Girl"). The method behind my madness comes from the old meow mix song from a commercial that is older than all of us put together--but the song is super catchy.

Meow Mix song

So I have, over the years, taken on the rather bad habit of choosing a word in a song and changing it to "meow." But it has to be the right word. It is something very difficult to explain, but easy to give examples of. But that is not the point. The point is that over the years I have developed an ear for words that are the "key" words in song phrases. In Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back!" Back is the key word (you can change to meow, or any other word).

So the point of (non-exact translation into Na'vi) songs is just to have some fun working some Na'vi words into songs you have heard over and over (and over . . .) so they don't drive you crazy when you hear them. Instead thay can make you laugh. Imagine you are at a convention (con, to anyone who has been to one) and instead of Harry and the Potters playing after hours, there is, say ---thinking of a name--Jake and the Banshees, and they play really corny remakes of songs (um, just like a LOT of theme bands do) where they just change the words a bit, so you can ENJOY THE SONG YOU KNOW but laugh at the changes they have made. In that theme here are some of the original F.Z. lyrics for "Valley Girl":

Valley girl
Shes a valley girl
Okay, fine...
Fer sure, fer sure...

(Valley girl's voice here):
Like, oh my god!
Like - totally
Encino is like so b****
There's like the galleria
And like all these like really great shoe stores
I love going into like clothing stores and stuff...

(Valley girl's voice here):
Anyway, he goes are you into s and m?
I go, oh right...
Could you like just picture me in like a leather teddy
Yeah right, hurt me, hurt me...
Im sure! no way!
He was like freaking me out...
He called me a beastie...
That's cuz like he was totally blitzed
He goes like bag your face!
Im sure!


Now here are my (first, raw, unrefined) ideas for a REMAKE or "spoof" song, called Na'vi Girl:

(Does the song make ANY sense at all? ---- Of course not! ---- It's a dumb song to make me laugh when I am bored)

(Frank Zappa):
Na'vi Girl
She's a Na'vi Girl
Okay sìltsan
Fer sure fer sure...

(Valley girl's voice here):
Like *O'Oeyä Eywa!
(*"O' " is just and "oh" sound)
Like - nìwotx!
Hometree is just like so b****!
There's like a Starbucks,
and really cool txon tìrey (night life)...

(Valley girl's voice here):
So this Tawtute walks up to me and asks
"Do you wanna sreu srak(?)"
And I was totally like:
"What are you, some kind of skxawng srak(?)
Look vrrtep--take a good look at oeru--
and then look at nyaru."
I mean, as if! What a ngawng!

Again, the point of this is to be creative and have fun thinking up fun (and in this case like, totally stupid) ideas to play with Na'vi. Who knows? If **you** took THIS IDEA (in this post) and got together with a few friends and formed a really crappy band and sang at cons or released an album, you might be minor celebrities among the fan's by the time Av2 and 3 come out. After all, it has already worked for Harry Potter--like Harry Potter is a better movie that Avatar. ("As if!")

I also have ideas for  Kid Rock song (not family friendly--so not posting it here, Queen, and a few others.

[ZombiezuRFER]

I actually tried to translate a song into Na'vi earlier but aborted it
I was trying to translate Michael Jackson's "Bad". I thought it would be funny saying I'm kawng, I'm kawng, I'm really really kawng. It's a complete lol!

[txum tukru]

i can easily remove vocals from a song using audacity.

[Txontaw]

How about boom de yada?

You could re-dub the Discovery Channel commercial

[Kaltxì Palulukan!]

I actually tried to translate a song into Na'vi earlier but aborted it
I was trying to translate Michael Jackson's "Bad". I thought it would be funny saying I'm kawng, I'm kawng, I'm really really kawng. It's a complete lol!

Don't quit! We know you can't do the whole song. For right now, just try out a few lines you like and post those. It will be good for a laugh. As the vocabulary develops, we can always do more.

This is just goofy fun.   

[Numeie]

Look vrrtep--take a good look at oel--
and then look at nyaru.

Oeru, not oel. (And nyaru should really be reflexive, but we don't know what that is yet so it'll have to do).

[Kaltxì Palulukan!]

Look vrrtep--take a good look at oel--
and then look at nyaru.[/color]
Oeru, not oel. (And nyaru should really be reflexive, but we don't know what that is yet so it'll have to do).

Fixed! Irayo!    

[Skxawng Hawnuyu]

You could try Green Tambourine by The Lemon Pipers... Everybody has heard that song at least once... only problem is... we dont have words for "green" and "tambourine"... 

[Kaltxì Palulukan!]

You could try Green Tambourine by The Lemon Pipers... Everybody has heard that song at least once... only problem is... we dont have words for "green" and "tambourine"... 

Ahh! Now this brings up a point of note I have been wanting to discuss for some time now. Having pored over the words list, and even the dictionary for weeks on end now, I have come across something that I should have noticed and thought deeply on from day one:

Non Na'vi terms.

Specifically: toktor (doctor), lertu (colleague), and kunsìp (gunship).

I am no linguist (but almost everyone else here seems to be, or a linguiphile, or a professor, or a damned rocket scientist . . .) but I have noticed that in many languages, they often use the original word (Pepsi) or a sound-alike (toktor). In my humble estimation, it would seem that alien (completely foreign concept) words are either phonetically translated by the indigineous people, or, if in the case of Pepsi there really is no correlation--it is a brand of cola--the word may just be pronounced "as is."

I was once told by a sociologist professor friend of mine that the two most recognizable words in the world were "Coca~Cola." You could literally go anywhere on the planet and say "Coca~Cola," even if you didn't know ANY words in the local tongue, and chances are that within a few people, someone would smile and respond knowingly.

So, I am curious about words (terms and labels) that are obviously foreign to the Na'vi, that have already crept into their language, and forthcoming words. Would colleague mean the same thing as friend to a Na'vi, based on what they have observed in humans? The Na'vi have no "friends." They have each other.

But interestingly enough we do have words for yellow and blue. And as we all know, yellow and blue make green (eanrim anyone? aww crap! Someone call the colnel! The private is making up words again!) ! It's a good thing the song was not called red tambourine, or worse puce bagpipes. I am certain the Na'vi can easily understand a percussion instrument such as the tambourine, but bagpipes might make them laugh senselessly.