Have Toilet, Will Travel, and other Idiomatic Expressions

Started by Stranger Come Knocking, June 07, 2015, 12:00:03 PM

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Stranger Come Knocking

 :P I don't know why, but I can still remember a potty training book from when I was really little.  And a book about the flu.  So that's where the title came from.

Anyway, figured I would take a shot at some interesting phrases and expressions.

English: Long time, no see.
Full sentence/explanation: I haven't seen you in a long time.

Na'vi: Txana krr, hola aynari. (Probable coll.: Txana krr, holaynari.)
Long time, few eyes. (As in, few people have laid eyes on you.)

*

English: Have book, will travel.
Full sentence: As long as I have a book, I will travel.
Moderate Explanation: As long as I have the tools, I will do the job.

Na'vi: Oeru (lu) ikran, ngaru (oe) sayop.
To me (is) an ikran, to you (I) will travel.

*

English: Long story short (alt. To make a long story shorter)
Full sentence/explanation: To condense a long story into a short story

Na'vi: Vol seyki vur atxan
To cause a long story to be short

Probably too much word-for-word or too English-y, but fun stuff to think about. :)
I will not die for less
I dug my grave in this
Will I go before I fall
Or live to slight the odds?

These are my books.  You should check it out.  Speculative sci-fi murder mystery historical fiction.

Plumps

Idioms are always difficult to translate and often do not translate word-for-word.

I'll stay away from the idioms :D Just a few grammatical notes:


Quote from: Stranger Come Knocking on June 07, 2015, 12:00:03 PMEnglish: Long time, no see.
Full sentence/explanation: I haven't seen you in a long time.

Na'vi: Txana krr, hola aynari. (Probable coll.: Txana krr, holaynari.)
Long time, few eyes. (As in, few people have laid eyes on you.)

In German this is ,,Lang nicht gesehen", i.e. short for "haven't seen (each other in a) long (time)"
Colloquially, after hol etc. the singular is used. But that means "few eyes". Is that what you want to say?


Quote from: Stranger Come Knocking on June 07, 2015, 12:00:03 PM
English: Have book, will travel.
Full sentence: As long as I have a book, I will travel.
Moderate Explanation: As long as I have the tools, I will do the job.

Na'vi: Oeru (lu) ikran, ngaru (oe) sayop.
To me (is) an ikran, to you (I) will travel.

I like that a lot ;) The only thing is that I would change ngaru to ngane/ne nga because of physical movement towards someone.

Quote from: Stranger Come Knocking on June 07, 2015, 12:00:03 PM
English: Long story short (alt. To make a long story shorter)
Full sentence/explanation: To condense a long story into a short story

Na'vi: Vol seyki vur atxan
To cause a long story to be short

I don't get the lexical background here... What do you mean to say with vol?
To my knowledge it's just vurti sleyk(iv)u pup, "make the story short".

阿波

"Long time no see" is actually a calque from Chinese. So, perhaps it'd be fine to translate it to Na'vi, too.

Tìtstewan

I am agree with Plumps.

I got only the small idea for "Long story short (alt. To make a long story shorter)"
P(iv)eng vurit nìfya'o apup - tell the story shortly
or just
Vurit nìfya'o apup.

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Stranger Come Knocking

o_O According to dict-navi, pup is physical length, and vol is temporal.  Since Na'vi is oral, and in the context of making a long story short, wouldn't vol be the better word?

Edit: Just saw that it's yol  WT[censor]?  I hate underlines! >:(
I will not die for less
I dug my grave in this
Will I go before I fall
Or live to slight the odds?

These are my books.  You should check it out.  Speculative sci-fi murder mystery historical fiction.

Tìtstewan

A "story" isn't a time frame and yol means short (of time), if I am not mistaken.

Pawl used pup like in:
Vospxì Ayol, Postì Apup - Short Post for a Short Month

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Stranger Come Knocking

Quote from: Tìtstewan on June 07, 2015, 03:10:54 PM
A "story" isn't a time frame and yol means short (of time), if I am not mistaken.

Pawl used pup like in:
Vospxì Ayol, Postì Apup - Short Post for a Short Month
But that's exactly it, isn't it?  The post is a physical (if digital) thing.  A month is a length of time.  Because the Na'vi don't have a written language, how would they consider their stories?  Oral, because everything is oral, or would they have comparable cave paintings to base yol vs. pup?  I'm confused. @_@
I will not die for less
I dug my grave in this
Will I go before I fall
Or live to slight the odds?

These are my books.  You should check it out.  Speculative sci-fi murder mystery historical fiction.

Tìtstewan

#7
The amount of the spoken words?

On Na'viteri, I find these two examples that uses yol:

Maw sätswayon ayol ayoe kllpolä mì tayo a lu rofa kilvan.
'After a short flight we landed in a field beside the river.'

Yola krr, txana krr, ke tsranten.
'It doesn't matter how long it takes.'

In both examples it is meant the time: one lenght of time [yola krr] and time of flight [sätswayon ayol].
If you say, "tell me the short story", you expect to hear a short (less amount of words) story which, of course, consume less time, even because the short story will be spoken.

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Plumps

Quote from: Stranger Come Knocking on June 07, 2015, 04:07:55 PM
But that's exactly it, isn't it?  The post is a physical (if digital) thing.  A month is a length of time.  Because the Na'vi don't have a written language, how would they consider their stories?  Oral, because everything is oral, or would they have comparable cave paintings to base yol vs. pup?  I'm confused. @_@

I'd agree with you. :) Don't be confused.
This is actually something where I'd see that Na'vi can make a distinction. If you mean a written story you can use pup (meaning the space that it takes up on the page), if you mean a spoken story you can use yol (meaning the time it took to tell).

So, vurit sleyk(iv) yol is more correct in a spoken context.
On the other hand, taking up Tìtstewan's example with peng, I'd say we would have to use yol because one cannot tell a story 'physically long', right?

NB: Mind you, the other way around is something that I remember there was a long discussion in one of the LEP submissions for a separate adjective meaning "long (of time)" which, tì'efumì oeyä, we already have in txan. The thing is whether everyone would immediately understand vur lamu txan as "the story was long" ... to avoid confusion I'd render this as vur krrnamekx nìtxan, "the story took much time." But that's probably off-topic here. ;)

Tìtstewan

So...

...written story:
use pup

...oral story:
use yol


Interesting, I can't remember me that discussion in the LEP or I completely missed it. Btw, I really like the idea with krrnekx Vurit ke krrneyk(iv)ekx nìtxan. or Vurit krrneyk(iv)ekx nìyol. :)

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