Kxì ma frapo,
Maw fpxamoa kintrr afpxamo mì tanlokxe oeyä, fula tsun lefkrra sìlenit tswiva’ hìkrr ulte livawk nìmun lì’fyati awngeyä oeti ’eykefu nitram nìtxan.
To all who responded to the T3C (Teaser Trailer Translation Challenge), thanks so much! I was impressed and delighted—although not surprised—by the creativity, nuance, and linguistic sensitivity that went into your responses. Oeri leiu fìlì’fyaolo’ lawnoltsim.
lawnoltsim (n., LAW.nol.tsim; colloquially, LAW.no.tsim) ‘source of (great) joy’
Obviously there’s no “correct answer” here, and the responses contained a lot of viable options. Although everyone had something useful to say, let me comment on a few things that particularly struck me.
Translation of “fortress”
Lots of good options. The most popular seemed to be the existing word zongtseng, which is glossed in the dictionary as ‘safe place’ or ‘refuge.’ That can certainly be the function of a fortress.
I’m not sure, though, that zongtseng fully conveys the idea of strength, of something impervious to attack. We can’t know what was actually in Jake’s mind, but as a former military guy, he may have been picturing “fortress” in its original sense in English, i.e., as a military fortification or stronghold, and using it metaphorically. With that in mind, I myself, like some of you as well, had come up with txurtseng—a place of strength, or as was mentioned in the comments, a bulwark. What we don’t know is whether this concept already existed in Na’vi culture. Did the Omatikaya think of Kelutral as both a zongtseng and a txurtseng? Or were there other physical structures in their culture and experience that were more clearly txurtseng? Hard to say at this point.
Some other ideas I liked:
- zongku (zong ‘defend’+ kelku ‘home’)
- kelhawn (kelku + hawnu ‘protect, shelter’ = ‘house of protection’)
- hawntseng (‘place of protection’)
- ekxakxemyo (ekxan ‘barricade’ + kxemyo ‘wall’)—nice, although a bit challenging to pronounce!
- tìslan aseykxel (tìslan ‘support’ + seykxel ‘confidently strong’)
- tìtxur (‘strength’)—the simplest of all, but it might very well be that “fortress” in the sense of a physical structure used metaphorically is an ’Rrta concept and not part of Na’vi thinking, in which case “strength” could best convey Jake’s intent.
In the end, I’m going to add txurtseng to the dictionary, and reserve zongtseng for ‘refuge’:
txurtseng (n., TXUR.tseng) ‘fortification, fortress, bulwark’
Translation of Jake’s complete statement
I thought there were three main considerations here: Jake’s statement should—
- Be concise
- Be idiomatic and true to the spirit of Na’vi
- Have good rhythm, flow, and emphasis
(It’s true that conciseness isn’t a necessary requirement, and I appreciated the spirited defense of a wordier version. 🙂 But I think this is a case where less is more.)
There was broad agreement about how this should go, but also some interesting differences.
“I know one thing . . .”
The question here is whether “one thing” should be translated literally. For those who did it that way (I was among them—at first!), it comes out:
Omum oel (or: Oel omum—there’s no difference) fì’ut a’aw (or: ’awa fì’ut) . . .
Why not just ’ut(i) a’aw, without the fì-? I don’t believe we’ve had a hard and fast rule about this, but ’u ‘thing’ isn’t used much by itself; instead, it usually has some modifier: fì’u, tsa’u, ’uo . . . So a more literal, although still idiomatic, English parallel would be, ‘I know this one thing:’
However, what does “one thing” here really mean? Jake can’t be saying he knows just one thing in his life! He may not be an intellectual giant, but his knowledge base is wider than that! Rather, he’s saying: “I am completely certain of what I am about to say.” That’s why I really liked the suggestion to use the idiomatic Na’vi word nì’pxi, which is glossed as ‘pointedly, especially, unambiguously.’ That is, Omum oel fì’ut ni’pxi . . .
“Wherever we go . . .”
Most everyone realized this was a perfect place to use the conjunction ketsran, which means ‘no matter’: ketsran tsengne kivä . . .
Note that we use the subjunctive (-iv-) form of the verb with ketsran. It’s like saying in English: “no matter where we may go.”
Someone submitted a wordier structure that’s perfectly grammatical: ketsrana tseng a kivä tsawne, which is closer to ‘whatever place we may go to.’ (Here ketsran is not a conjunction but an adjective.) But in the present context, I think the more concise version wins.
Related to the above construction, I was intrigued by the suggestion that ketsrana tseng ‘whatever place’ might contract to *ketsreng ‘wherever.’ Some parallels might be:
ketsrana tute ‘whatever person’ à *ketsrute ??? ‘whoever’
ketsrana krr ‘whatever time’ à *ketskrr ??? ‘whenever’
ketsrana ’u ‘whatever thing’ à *ketsru ??? ‘whatever’
These contractions, of course, aren’t necessary. The question is, would they have arisen naturally, and if so, are they useful? I’d be interested in your thoughts about this!
“this family is our fortress.”
Several of you noticed something important about how Na’vi likes to handle personal pronouns.
Here’s an iconic sentence (well, part of a sentence) from American history, the last words of the Declaration of Independence (1776):
“[W]e mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” (It’s interesting that English used to capitalize common nouns the way German does today!)
How would you translate that into Na’vi? In particular, what would you do with “we,” “our,” “our,” and “our”? If you use ayoe once and ayoeyä three times, you’ll get a grammatical but awkward and repetitive-sounding sentence. English gets away with this kind of repetition because English pronouns are so short and sweet. But personal pronouns in Na’vi are often two and three syllables.
Instead, idiomatic Na’vi does something different: It uses the topical to “set the stage,” so to speak, in this case placing the whole sentence in the context “as for us . . .” Once that’s established, the related personal pronouns can generally be omitted. So for Jake’s statement, we need only say awngari once; after that, we don’t need further pronouns for we and our:
Awngari ketsran tsengne kivä, fìsoaia lu txurtseng.
Finally, there was the question of what word would be the most impactful at the end, “family” or “fortress”? In English, Jake wound up with “fortress.” But he could have said, “. . . our fortress is this family.” Likewise, the Na’vi version could be either fìsoaia lu txurtseng or txurtseng lu fìsoaia. I’m not sure which one I like better. Part of the decision would rest on the prior context of the statement. Has Jake already mentioned soaia? If so, it’s “old information,” in which case the “new information” (txurtseng) is better at the end of the sentence.
Thank you all again for your ideas! If I didn’t mention your particular contribution, it’s not because I didn’t value it. It’s just that this post has already gotten longer than I anticipated. 🙂
One last thing: Regarding the question about the future of the Na’vi language, although I can’t tell you anything specific about the upcoming movies, I’m happy to reassure you all that Na’vi will remain a vital part of the Avatar canon and the story world going forward.
Zusawkrr lì’fyayä leNa’vi leiu txur!
Hayalovay!
Wou, kosmana sìralpeng! Seysonìltsan ma frapo. Txasunu oeru lì’u amip, nìpxi (😉) pum alu ‘lawnoltsim’.
I think these ket- contractions would be very useful. It covers a nuance that I think the -o suffix does not (tuteo, tsengo, etc…). I can foresee myself using them quite a lot, to be honest, there have been times in the past where I definitely would’ve used them if they’d existed instead of using -o.
Kaltxì ma Karyu Pawl ulte vospxìpuk lefpom!
Mipa säomumìri lelì’fya nìfrakrr irayo!
Tsoleri oel kxeyeytsyìpit: nì’pxi/ni’pxi -> nìpxi.
I couldn’t agree more with your translation since it incorporates some great idioms (which I more or less correctly guessed hrh), i.e. nìpxi, ketsran and distributive topical pronouns.
Regarding the translation of ketsran and certain nouns:
> The question is, would they have arisen naturally, and if so, are they useful
Ketsreng, ketsrute (or perhaps ketsrantu) and ketskrr could have arisen naturally:
– Ketsreng(ne?) nga kivä, Eywa livu ngahu
Wherever you go, Eywa be with you
– Ketsrantu nivew yivom teylut, tsat ’em oeyä sa’nokä sa’nokìl nìksman.
No matter who wants to eat teylu, my (maternal) grandmother cooks them wonderfully.
– Ngari ketskrr ‘ivefu alaksi, rutxe tsmukanur livu txoa ngata.
Whenever you are ready, please forgive your brother.
I’m less sure about ketsru. Ketsru could be a word unrelated to ketsrana ‘u.
That being said, I think the regular structure is simple enough to use.
Hayalovay!
Tìsungtsyìp: Unrelated question, but what does “à” mean here? As a native French speaker, I cannot unsee the preposition.
And a small correction of my comment: Regarding the translation of ketsran and certain nouns -> Regarding the contractions of ketsran and certain nouns
A random thought occurred to me while reading this. It seems like Jake’s determined that this family is their fortress; it’s his comfort and a source of strength for him. It sounds a little funny to me, and it certainly isn’t concise (or very Jake-like, to my mind), but could one say something like “lasyeiu”? I’ve never seen it used. Is this just because it’s kind of overkill, linguistically speaking? After all, if you’re determined to do a thing, 99% of people will choose something that they believe will make them happy, right?
As far as I can tell, the s is asy can be added only if the subject (the doer of the action) is or includes the speaker. (Horen 6.7.9.)
I know that. So… “lu” was, upon further thought, a poor choice. (Although a case could be made for “this family” including the speaker, I won’t even try to go there…) My dreadful example would have to become something like “leykasyeiu”, for it to work, hrh. But what about, say… “slan”? Would that work? Would it work if I added a “fìtsap”? It was merely an idle thought.
Kaltxì ma Karyu!
Of course I have to chime in on the slang, you know I love theorizing about the natural evolution of the Language- though in this case I actually have mixed feelings about the proposed shortenings.
I’ve long felt that a noun/adj+tseng is a possible fast abstraction in casual conversation when reaching for a new “place” word, following the existing archetype and precedent we have for words created in that manner: kantseng, klltseng, fngä’tseng, txeptseng, sl. Because of this, overriding the -tseng “root” feels unnatural to me here. Taking a page from Vawmie’s playbook, when looking for an abstraction for these phrases (which I do believe would be common enough to warrant a colloquial shortening) I’d expect to see the following:
ketsrantseng – wherever
ketsrantu – whoever
ketsrankrr – whenever
ketsranfya – however
ketsranu/ketsranum – what/whichever*
They’re not much shorter than the full alternative, but a single syllable can often make the difference between formal and slang (especially in Na’vi, looking at you ke omum > komum!)
*of these four, this is the one I’m still mulling over- the loss of p from pum in ketsranum. Perhaps you have your own thoughts!
Those look nice. And seem to make a lot of sense…
I had less than no idea what was up with (especially the -m) in ketsranum, until I got here to the end where you said it came from (ketsran and) pum. In this case, I would have expected “ketsrampum”. This seems to me for some reason to be a lot more likely than “ketsranum”.
While I am not sure about both variants, what about something in between?
Like:
Ketsrana tseng -> ketsratseng
Ketsrana krr -> ketsrakrr
Ketsrana tute -> ketsratu/ketsrapo
Ketsrana ‘u -> ketsra’u (maybe, even with condensing it into ketsraw, but it might look like overshortening)
Ketsrana kem -> ketsrakem
Ketsrana fya’o -> ketsrafya
Though not sure about pum/zum one.
Kaltxì, ma Karyu. Tewti, fìtìn lolu ‘o’ ulte eltur tìtxen si nìtxan nang!
Ngeyä aysäfpìlìri ‘efu oe nitram sì ye. Sunu oeru tsalì’u alu txurtseng nìpxi, ulte sunu frato lì’ukìng alu awngari ketsran tsengne kivä, fìsoaia lu txurtseng. Oe zene ngian pivllngay san oeri, ìlä oeyä “*pllfya” (speech pattern/idiolect), lì’ukìngvi alu (fì)’u a’aw oeru tsun tivam sìk—melì’ukìngvi alu fì’u a’aw sì ‘u a’aw sunu nì’eng, ulte lu oer fyin sì tsuktslam nìwotx ta tìfkeytok alunta oe pivlltxe nì’eng. Slä leNa’via tute ahiyìk latsu oe kxawm, hrh!
Teri aylì’u alu ketsr-…
Tsaylì’u txo fkeytivok fuke, oeru tam! Slä tì’efumì oeyä, swey latsu aysreyo a nolawang nìnän, natkenong: ketsratseng, ketsrantu, ketsrankrr, ketsranu. (Ketsreng sì ketsru nìpxi oeru hek nì’it.)
New oe piveng, oeri lu tsaylì’u Tsyeykä txanwawe nìtxan nìfkrr, ha set fkeytok tìralpeng alaw a fì’u zawprrte’ oene nìngay. Lu lawnoltsim a txe’lanti tayok frakrr. Irayo seiyi oe, ma ‘eylan.
Irayo nìtxan ma karyu! Awngari fìsoaia Uniltìrantokxä lu txurtseng! 😉
Well, aside anything, I wanted to ask, what is the official stance on the word olo’eykte? Does that also mean a possibility of existence of olo’eyktu then? Or Na’vi is supposed to stay gender neutral and have the only word olo’eyktan?
By the way, there are ‘itan and ‘ite, which are only the pair with no neutral variant, I suppose? Or else?
The word *olo’eykte is to me a great displeasure, if it’s canon. 🙁 I really like the idea that olo’eyktan is a title that any person could have regardless of gender.
As for ‘itan and ‘ite, I would say that ‘eveng has long been filling the spot for a gender-neutral word for this.
I’ve seen something here before about such a thing as *’itu, but I think it only came up in the context of an ending alternative for Na’vi names where thus far there has been a binary of a name ending with -‘ite or -‘itan.
I saw this back in January:
Ma Pawl, what do you think? Any idea yet on if this is a thing or not? 🙂
I wouldn’t like too much having olo’eykte either, knowing there was just olo’eyktan for years, but I saw an article on the wiki of avatar and it is presented there as canon, with the release of a new source book.
Ma Nawma Karyu,
Thanks for the wonderful solution! Please correct the typo in this part: “Omum oel fì’ut ni’pxi”, it should be “Omum oel fì’ut nì’pxi”. So will the whole sentence be like that:
“Omum oel fì’ut nì’pxi: awngari ketsran tsengne kivä, fìsoaia lu txurtseng”?
What about using “-ei-” either in “omum” or “lu”?
Hayalovay!
Yeah, nice catch, it should actually be
Omum oel fì’ut nìpxi
Somehow I had missed that this entire time
tìkeftxo oeru fwa mì fìtsenge ke lu oe a trr atxan
I had hoped this conversation took place ever since I saw the trailer. Being late to the game, I thought about adding a vocabulary word, a contraction of txur and tseng. But these two words separatelyconvery the idea of a fortress so well (IMO) that tseng atxur or txura tseng would have been fine. Nevertheless, the community did its thing and we have txurtseng, I suspect we will se this word a lot going forward.
I sincerely look forward to being more active in the future as Unìltirantokx: keftxo Payä draws closer!