poem translation

[Kì'eyawn]

Kaltxì ma smukan,

I've been trying to translate a poem of St. Teresa of Ávila, and... well, i'm no linguist.  Here's the first of three stanzas, with what i've got so far.  I've done my best to break up the words/sentences into their constituent elements, but like i said i'm no linguist, so apologies if anything is written incorrectly.

I gave all my heart to the Lord of Love
Oeyä txe'lanit talmìng nìwotx oel Tìyawnä Nawmeyktanur
Oe-yä  txe'lan-it  t<a<l>m>ìng      nìwotx       oe-l   Tìyawn-ä  Nawm-eyktan-ur
i-GEN heart-ACC give<PST><PFV> completely i-ERG Love-GEN Great-leader-DAT

I needed to make up a word for "Lord," so i went with (or at least attempted) "Great Leader." 
 
And my life is so completely transformed
Ulte oeyä tìrey fìnìtxan lolatem
ulte oe-yä tìrey fì-nì-txan         l<ol>atem
and i-GEN life   this-ADV-great change<PFV>

As far as i can tell the participle infix <us> creates a present participle, and you would need a past participle to translate this accurately; so i went with "my life has so changed."  At least, i think that's what i did.

That my Beloved One has become mine
Taweyk oeyä 'Awpo Ayawne a oeyä slolu
Taweyk(a)  oe-yä  'awpo           a-yawne         a       oe-yä  sl<ol>u
from.cause i-GEN  one(person)  ATTR-beloved  SBRD i-GEN   become<PFV>

I saw "taweyk(a)" in Dr. Frommer's e-mail, but i'm not certain i'm using it correctly.  And then the subordinate "a"--i'm seriously shooting in the dark with that.  I vaguely remember there being something similar in Turkish, but my Turkish grammar is so spotty as to be of no help at all.  Also, i didn't see it attested anywhere, but i went out on a limb and guessed that the subordinate could be used to form a possessive noun.  I could be way wrong.

And without a doubt I am his at last
Ulte fìswaw oe nìlaw a peyä lu
Ulte  fì-swaw        oe     nìlaw      a       peyä        lu
and  this-moment  i.NTR certainly SBRD (s)he-GEN be

I couldn't find some of the vocab i needed, so i went with a translation that was less literal but still conveyed the same idea.  Also, i'm not sure about my verb tense.  I get that, basically, the perfective is for a completed action while the imperfective is for one that's ongoing, so... i'm torn.  I kinda feel like the "here-and-now" sense of this phrase means i should use the imperfective, but the "at last" makes me think that it's a done deal, and should be perfective.

Also, i would think the speaker is happy about all of this, but it seemed overkill to toss the laudative <ei> into the middle of every single verb, so... i didn't use it.

Your thoughts/help would be greatly appreciated.  In the meantime, i'm working on the other two stanzas.

Irayo ma smukan.  Eywa ngahu.

[Alìm Tsamsiyu]

I gave all my heart to the Lord of Love
Oeyä txe'lanit talmìng nìwotx oel Tìyawnä Nawmeyktanur

Here I think talmìng is not quite right.  The past perfective infix here suggests that "I gave my heart at one particular point in the past and no longer do or will." Since, presumably, the "Lord of Love" still has your heart, I don't think the perfective aspect should be used. Tamìng should suffice.

Also, tìyawnä nawmeyktanur works pretty well for "Lord of Love," but I wouldn't mind seeing the -a- attributive in there somewhere, even if it might be audibly dropped in fluent speech.  Maybe tìyawnä nawmaeyktanur (which might interestingly enough come out something like nawmäyktanur audibly).  Either way it should work, though, since it is a compound word, it'd likely be OK to leave off the ATTR.

And my life is so completely transformed
Ulte oeyä tìrey fìnìtxan lolatem

The attested use for "so" as you have used it there is fìtxan.  For "completely" you need nìwotx.

With lolatem I agree that you need the past participle, but I think here the adjective modifier may help convey your message more.  You are wanting to say "(Now) my life is changed" rather than "My life has changed (some indefinite time ago)."  I suppose you could say Ulte set...lolatem for "And now, my life has changed,"  but I think lelatem for ADJ-change with lu for "is" might work better.

After suggested changes: Ulte oeyä tìrey fìtxan nìwotx lelatem lu

That my Beloved One has become mine
Taweyk oeyä 'Awpo Ayawne a oeyä slolu

Looks good except that yawne is a noun, and to use it as an adjective you'd need to put le- on it rather than -a-.
Also, I'm not sure why you'd need a between leyawne and oeyä.
Taweyk oeyä 'Awpo Leyawne oeyä* slolu
*see note at bottom

And without a doubt I am his at last
Ulte fìswaw oe nìlaw a peyä lu

You could use set rather than fìswaw, but I think "this moment" has more of a poetic feel and better conveys "at last." Well done.
You don't need a between nìlaw and peyä
Ulte fìswaw oe nìlaw peyä* lu
*see note at bottom

All in all, ngal fì'ut ngolop nìltsan!

*Note: I'm not sure if oeyä and poyä by themselves with nothing to attach to work as the adjectives "mine" and "his" - I really doubt it but maybe they would take the adjective modifier. I'll ask around and see what I can come up with on the issue.

[Lance R. Casey]

With lolatem I agree that you need the past participle, but I think here the adjective modifier may help convey your message more.  You are wanting to say "(Now) my life is changed" rather than "My life has changed (some indefinite time ago)."  I suppose you could say Ulte set...lolatem for "And now, my life has changed,"  but I think lelatem for ADJ-change with lu for "is" might work better.

Thinking about whether le- can be used with verbs as well as nouns I came across letsunslu possible which suggests that it can, even though that may be a special case; otherwise I'd expect participles to serve this role exclusively.

Frankly, though, I don't really see a problem with the straightforward aspect-modified phrase: oeyä tìrey lolatem or oeyä tìrey *lalmatem

Looks good except that yawne is a noun, and to use it as an adjective you'd need to put le- on it rather than -a-.

No, it is indeed an adjective -- the noun is tìyawn.

*Note: I'm not sure if oeyä and poyä by themselves with nothing to attach to work as the adjectives "mine" and "his" - I really doubt it but maybe they would take the adjective modifier. I'll ask around and see what I can come up with on the issue.

Discussed here.

[Kì'eyawn]

Irayo, ma eylan!

The reason i put the "a" in so many places was that i was trying to invent a way to create a possessive pronoun, since "a" is a sort of grammatical stand-in for something earlier in the sentence.  The Wikipedia article mentions that the "a" functions similar to other place-holder structures found in verb-final languages like Turkish.  So, for example, in Turkish you might literally say something like, "His house than the-one-that-is-mine bigger is."  So, i was using "a oeyä" to mean "the-one-that-is-mine"--i always put the genitive after the "a" because i thought if i wrote it "oeyä a" the "a" would be impossible to hear.  And Na'vi is a spoken language, after all.  I dunno; i'd love to know if Dr. Frommer has secretly cooked up a plan for this sort of thing.

I'm very much still getting the hang of the verb tenses, since i've always had trouble wrapping my head around them in any language.  I appreciate your taking the time to look at this little endeavor of mine.

Eywa ngahu

[Alìm Tsamsiyu]

Yes - I'm not 100% certain le- can be put on verbs either, but to me using lolatem doesn't convey the correct point.

"And my life has so changed" is close to "And my life is so changed," but no cigar.

In the intended meaning, "is so changed," changed is an adjective/state describing life, whereas in the actual meaning it is a verb describing an action that "my life" performed and completed.  Granted, you'd probably still get the point across, but it wouldn't be as close as it could be to the original meaning.

And yeah, I must've missed the memo about yawne being an adjective, sorry about that one.

[Kì'eyawn]

Yes - I'm not 100% certain le- can be put on verbs either, but to me using lolatem doesn't convey the correct point.

"And my life has so changed" is close to "And my life is so changed," but no cigar.

In the intended meaning, "is so changed," changed is an adjective/state describing life, whereas in the actual meaning it is a verb describing an action that "my life" performed and completed.  Granted, you'd probably still get the point across, but it wouldn't be as close as it could be to the original meaning.

And yeah, I must've missed the memo about yawne being an adjective, sorry about that one.

I kept going back and forth on that...  I mean, "My life is changed" sounds like it should become "oeyä tìrey a-[changed] lu;" but, then again, my understanding is that this is an archaic sort of past tense in English--i mean, you'll see things in older (or older-sounding) texts like "I am come to do x," whereas a modern English speaker would say "I have come."  I don't know if you're familiar with French, but it uses two different let's say helper verbs to form the past tense--either être (to be) or avoir (to have), depending on what kind of verb the past participle is--"to be" gets used with verbs of movement and state of being--coming, going, being born, dying... while "to have" is used for most anything else.  So, in French, you literally would say "i am become x" where a modern English speaker would say "i have."  So, yeah, ideally we need some sort of past participle.  In my first draft i wrote "lusatem," but that <us> infix seems to be for present participles, so it would mean "my life is so changing," which is...not right.

No sweat on the yawne; i saw it glossed as "beloved" and thought it was a noun, too, until i saw it used in the expression Dr. Frommer gave for "i love you"--Nga yawne lu oer," which i take it means something like "you are beloved to me."  At any rate, i appreciate all your help.  I've got a lot of work i have to do in the "real world," but hopefully i'll be able to post the next stanza soon--which is worse, by the way =P

Irayo, ma tsmukan, ulte Eywa ngahu.

[Kì'eyawn]

Okay, so, with the recommended changes (but leaving in my Frankensteinian possessive noun...things until we get an answer on those), here's what we have:

I gave all my heart to the Lord of Love
Oeyä txe'lanit talmìng nìwotx oel Tìyawnä Nawmeyktanur*

And my life is so completely transformed
Ulte oeyä tìrey fìtxan nìwotx lolatem

That my Beloved One has become mine
Taweyk oeyä 'Awpo Ayawne a oeyä slolu

And without a doubt I am his at last
Ulte fìswaw oe nìlaw a peyä lu

*I left out the -a in Nawm(a)eyktan because not only do i think it would get dropped in fluent speech anyway, but i don't know if i've seen "ae" attested anywhere in the known Na'vi--"ea" yes, plenty, but not "ae".

The last three lines of the first stanza are repeated in both subsequent stanza, so i've omitted them here to save space.  With that in mind, here is stanza two:

When that tender hunter from paradise
Krrpe a tsataronyu asìltsan ta Eywamepun
Krrpe a       tsa-taronyu a-sìltsan    ta     Eywa-me+pxun
When SBRD that-hunter ATTR-good from Eywa-2+arm

We don't have a word for "paradise" that i know of, and since in this poem it's referring to heaven i decided to go with "the Arms of Eywa."  I thought about throwing the genitive on "Eywa," but since we have attested "Eywa'eveng" i figured it was okay as-is.

Released his piercing arrow at me
Peyä swizawti *apxi lamonu oene
Po-eyä      swizaw-ti    *a-pxi       l<am>onu     oe-ne
(s)he-GEN arrow-ACC ATTR-sharp release<PST> i-at

*I substituted "sharp" for "piercing" for now, but ultimately what we want is a verb for "pierce" with the participial infix <us>--right?

Should "lamonu" be imperfective also?  Shooting an arrow is a finite event in time, so my guess is no; but that action's relation to the "falling" in the next line makes me wonder...  And am i using "ne" right?  I'm not sure where those prepositional particle...things are supposed to go, or how they do (or don't) connect to the words they modify.

My wounded soul fell in his loving arms...
Oeyä tirea a-[?] peyä nemìmepun letìyawn [?]<ol>...
Oe-yä  tirea  a-[?]              po-eyä     ne-mì+me+pxun le-tìyawn [?]<ol>
i-GEN spirit  ATTR-wounded (s)he-GEN at-in+2+arm      ADJ-love  fell?<PFV>

I was thinking of using "tusakuk" here for "wounded," but "tusakuk" wouldn't mean "stricken" but "striking," which, again, is why i'd love to have a past participle.  I couldn't think of any word that seemed like it meant something even remotely like "fall," so i left it blank.  Any ideas?

I hope that you can take a moment to look this over, ma smukan; i appreciate all your help.

Irayo, ulte Eywa ngahu
 

[omängum fra'uti]

Without commenting on the rest, when you say "When" in English, it's not always a question.  When you say "krrpe" in Na'vi though, it is.  The sense of "When" you are doing can be achieved by plopping "a krr" on the end of the clause.

[Kì'eyawn]

Without commenting on the rest, when you say "When" in English, it's not always a question.  When you say "krrpe" in Na'vi though, it is.  The sense of "When" you are doing can be achieved by plopping "a krr" on the end of the clause.

That makes sense; i just thought i remembered seeing "krrpe a x..." being used to mean "at which time x happened" sort of thing.  But it's highly probable that i misunderstood.

Edit:  I didn't misunderstand, i misremembered.  This is what i saw:
http://forum.learnnavi.org/language-updates/auxilary-verb-si-possessive-dative-krr/msg63630/
So i remembered the "a" and how it made a "when" statement, but then got it all muddled in my head. 

Irayo, ulte Eywa ngahu

[Lukxasì]

Nice topic

[Kì'eyawn]

Okay, so in the absence of any further corrections, stanza 2 reads:

When that tender hunter from paradise
Tsataronyu asìltsan ta Eywamepun

Released his piercing arrow at me
Peyä swizawti apxi lamonu oene a krr

My wounded soul fell in his loving arms
Oeyä tirea a-[?] peyä nemìmepun letìyawn [?]<ol>

And my life is so completely transformed
Ulte oeyä tìrey fìtxan nìwotx lolatem

That my Beloved One has become mine
*Taweyk oeyä 'Awpo Ayawne a oeyä slolu

And without a doubt I am his at last
Ulte fìswaw oe nìlaw a peyä lu

This is obviously temporary, until we get some additional vocabulary and the rules for forming those pesky possessive noun...things.  Alas.

*Also, having looked at the Na'vi Wikibook again, i'm now quite certain the word taweyk(a) is being grossly misused--but i don't know what should go there.  Thoughts?

Irayo ma oeyä smukan, ulte Eywa ayngahu