NEED TRANSLATION FOR TATTOO

[warrior1]

jake's quote "one life ends, another begins"  please I need this translated bad

I have two other ways of saying this, but i REALLY would love the real, complete one

One life end, one other begins.......'aw tìrey 'i'a lapo sngä'i
One life end, one more begins...... 'aw tìrey 'i'a aw' nì'ul sngä'i

[Kemaweyan]

'Awa tìrey 'oli'a, lahea pum sngolä'i.

I think so

[Ean Hufwetulyu]

i think second  one is correct

[Kì'eyawn]

Kemaweyan's translation looks correct to me; but seriously, if you're planning on having this permanently embedded in your flesh, i think that warrants asking Dr. Frommer directly.  'Cause wouldn't it suck to be wrong.

Just my 2¢.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

'Awa tìrey 'oli'a, lahea pum sngolä'i.

I think so

I'd drop the <ol>, Jake's referring to a general event that when a life ends (whenever that may be), another begins. Also, it's shorter. 

'awa tìrey 'i'a, lahea pum sngä'i

Kemaweyan's translation looks correct to me; but seriously, if you're planning on having this permanently embedded in your flesh, i think that warrants asking Dr. Frommer directly.  'Cause wouldn't it suck to be wrong.

Just my 2¢.

Quoted for truth. What we tell you might turn out to be wrong id we get a clarification on any number of new things, or sound clunky if we get a new construction, if you get it from Frommer, you can pretty much guarantee that it's ok.

[Kemaweyan]

I'd drop the <ol>, Jake's referring to a general event that when a life ends (whenever that may be), another begins. Also, it's shorter. 

'awa tìrey 'i'a, lahea pum sngä'i

Maybe. I translated meaning which I know from russian translation of the movie and there is perfective aspect

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Actually, thinking about it some more, whilst I'd certainly drop the second (the first implies it), I'd probably leave the first in because, as I understand it, a perfective is not necessarily a completed action, just a complete one in which case it would make sense here. (Which would be why the Russian translation used it). So actually I've changed my mind and would probably say:

'awa tìrey 'oli'a, lahea pum sngä'i

jake's quote "one life ends, another begins"  please I need this translated bad

I have two other ways of saying this, but i REALLY would love the real, complete one

One life end, one other begins.......'aw tìrey 'i'a lapo sngä'i
One life end, one more begins...... 'aw tìrey 'i'a aw' nì'ul sngä'i

I just realised that this thread, whilst being reasonably dense on suggestions for how to translate it, hasn't helped you learn at all, so I thought that, first of all I'd explain where you went wrong and then why kemaweyan and I are suggesting what we are.

So, in both your sentences you say "'aw tìrey". One of the important things in na'vi is that adjectives can go on either side of the noun they describe, but, to allow for this and prevent ambiguity, there has to be and -a or and a- on the side of the adjective nearest the noun so this should be 'awa tìrey.

lapo refers to another person and sounds odd whilst nì'ul is an adverb and means more in the sense of "he runs more" or "she falls of her ikran more".

What we (kemaweyan and I are saying) is something along the lines of "'awa tìrey 'oli'a, lahea pum sngä'i". You'll see that we've got the first clause ('awa tìrey 'oli'a) very  similar to yours, we've put the -a on, but we've also put an <ol> in the 'i'a. This <ol> is the perfective aspect which is usually translated into English as a simple past (e.g. taron + <ol> -> tolaron -> hunted) but actually refers to any complete action (although not necessarily a completed one, that would be a perfect aspect), as the end of a life is fairly instantaneous (in the context that Jake's referring to)  <ol> is appropriate.

In the second clause (lahea pum sngä'i) we've used the adjective "lahe" and -a, lahe is a generic adjective for "other" and the -a says that it refers to "pum" which is a generic dummy pronoun that takes the value of the previous noun (a bit like "it" in English) which, here, is "tìrey". Now, the start of a life ought to be just as instantaneous as the end of one you might say (at least in the context that Jake's talking about rather than in practical terms) and so you might think that I should use <ol> here, and you'd be right, if I hadn't put <ol> in 'i'a, but because of that, the perfective aspect is implied in all verbs until I explicitly state a different aspect (just <er>) or it ceases to make sense with it, so the second <ol> is actually implied so we don't need to write it.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

Very interesting discussion. This is a useful phrase to work through a translation of, burned into a tattoo or otherwise. It has a lot of useful meaning and applications as a kind of idiom.

That said, I am beginning to see a pattern here.

In other places, we have discussed words like the futa family, which are essentially dummy words that serve as clause dividers. I know it has a completely different meaning and application, but is pum that sort of a term as well? Are there other dummy words in Na`vi?

Second, we also recently talked about how the subject in the first clause of a series of clauses can be implied in the subsequent clauses. Is this also true of verbal infixes in general? (If this is really supposed to be a saying or an idiom, I am not sure if omitting the second <ol> is the best thing to do, even if syntactically correct.)

[kewnya txamew'itan]

fì/tsa'u are only really used as dummy pronouns when it needs to 'anchor' one clause to another, the only other ones we use are tsaw and pum IIRC and exactly where the distinction between them lies I am not sure.

I don't know if it applies to all infixes (I'd be surprised if <0> infixes were implied), but I'm almost certain that all <1> infixes are implied (I'm not entirely sure about <iv>) and I seem to remember that <2> infixes can be implied to. Also, if it's an idiom then its grammar is likely to be substantially different from the norm for us not to be able to guess it, if it's just a phrase, I'd probably still err on the side of the colloquial because it's likely to 'erode' due to its frequent use.