Translation: Life will find a way.

[Nì'awtua Eyktan]

I've just watched Jurassic Park and though about how to translate the phrase "Life will find a way". What I came up with was:
Life     will find   a way.
Tìrey-l r<asy>un fya'o-ti.

I went with <asy> since I'm positive that life will find a way. Or would <ay> be better?
And it should be -l on Tìrey since (ey) is considered a vowel, right?

Thanks in advance for any input.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

The word for way is fya'o not fya, if you're using anything else, I recommend you get the latest version of Taronyu's dictionary (available on the downloads page of the main site).

And, remember that all affect in na'vi is relative to the speaker so <asy> would make it mean that you, the speaker, are determined to help life find a way rather than life being determined to find a way. Therefore, <ay> is more appropriate. That said, the "will" here probably isn't a future tense, instead it is probably a subjunctive marker from "life will find a way [whatever you do]" so <iv> might be even better.

Diphthongs (ay, ey, aw and ew) have there own list of endings (which is available on the na'vi cheat sheet by wm.annis  also on the main downloads site) but -l is one of the possible endings.

Lastly, this metaphorical use of "to find a way" would probably be understandable to a hypothetical native speaker, but, if the metaphor isn't as lexicalised as it is in English it might take them a while to get it. In general, if anything you're trying to translate isn't literally true or a clear case of sarcasm, think very hard about whether there is a better way to translate it (for now I think that this reasonable).

[MIPP]

I'd go for:

Tìreyl rayun fya'ot (but it is like a metaphor, so, will find a way for what? It would help creating the sentence... What's the meaning of the metaphor? It will also help. Sometimes we have to think, not in the metaphor, but in its meaning).

[kewnya txamew'itan]

The full version (only a shortened version is said) is "life will find a way to survive whatever you/one do/es" where it is much closer to literally true, this entire thing though is often reduced to the lexicalised verb "to find a way" which will normally refer to surviving or succeeding.

Maybe "frakrr tìrey lu mi" might be a better non-idiomatic translation.

[Nì'awtua Eyktan]

The word for way is fya'o not fya, if you're using anything else, I recommend you get the latest version of Taronyu's dictionary (available on the downloads page of the main site).

Oops, that was just clumsy. Changed it.

Diphthongs (ay, ey, aw and ew) have there own list of endings (which is available on the na'vi cheat sheet by wm.annis  also on the main downloads site) but -l is one of the possible endings.

I had somehow missed that. Thanks for pointing it out.
Is it possible to know if a diphtong takes a vowel ending or it should have the normal ending (-ìl according to the cheat sheet)?

As for expanding the metaphor so that it makes more sense, that will give me something to think about at work

[kewnya txamew'itan]

You can choose between either ending listed on the cheat sheet under "D-ending" or the only one listed if there is only one (so it seems you can't say tìreyl, it would have to be tìreyìl, I misremembered). It's just like if the noun ends in a vowel you can choose between the "t" or "ti" ending or "r" or "ru" etc.

[Nì'awtua Eyktan]

It was this part from the 'Reference Grammar of Na'vi' by Wm. Annis

3.1.1.3. Sometimes words ending in diphthongs are seen with declensions we'd
expect on words ending in vowels, txo tsive'a ayngal keyeyt if you see errors.

In the example, keyeyt, the word have the vowel ending -t instead of the dipthong endings -ti or -it (vowels are listed as having the ending -t or -ti)


Time to go to work.