StarDestroyer.Net BBS

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-16 02:23pm 

Wow. Almost makes me wish I had taken more than one linguistics course.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-18 04:17pm 

So, Latin stuff.

If I were to want to have, say, "Republic of the Moon" in Latin, is Respublica Luna good? Respublica Lunae? Res publica Luna/Lunae? That's what Google Translate gave me, anyway.

Also, if I use the ae in the proper 'together' form, should I use any other special characters or just that one?

Yes, I'm going for "Lunar Republic" in Latin, but since Lunar is kinda-sorta-already-derived-from Latin I'm not sure how to accomplish that, other than simply making it "Republic of the Moon" because "Moon Republic" just looks silly. Unless the language gurus have better ideas?

Also: Knight of the Moon. In the coolest looking way possible. Kinda same as above as I'm looking for "Lunar Knight" so yeah.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-18 04:29pm 

Oh my god.
Seriously, RogueIce?

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-18 04:42pm 

The proper translation would be "res publica pedicatorum". In the same way, knight of the moon would be "Equites pedicatorum".

*Mutters hatefully*: "Bronies"

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-18 04:57pm 

Yes.

Why not?


So why was Google giving me Luna? Aside from "it sucks".





Waaaaaiiiit a minute, here...

Should I get a second opinion?

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-18 05:01pm 

No no, you should definitely not do that. Don't trust wiktionary, it lies. LIES, I SAY.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-18 05:02pm 

This only makes me more suspicious.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-18 05:03pm 

No no, you should definitely not get a second opinion. Don't trust wiktionary, it lies. LIES, I SAY.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 08:31am 

Oh you Thanas. I'm going to take pity on the poor man.



Respublica Lunae = Republic of the Moon/Moon Republic.

Respublica Lunaris = Lunar Republic.

You mean the ligature æ? Nah, no need. There's no proper form for writing Latin.



Eques Lunae = Knight of the Moon/Moon Knight

Eques Lunaris = Lunar Knight

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 09:46am 

Now I shall torture RogueIce by not revealing the four mistakes in that translation.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 09:55am 

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 02:23pm 

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 05:00pm 

I don't see any huge mistakes, so I think Thanas is simply taunting you. Otherwise he should put his money where his keyboard is and demonstrate his superior Latin knowledge to me.

Eques could be "Miles". Closer in meaning (in medieval latin at least) to the concept of the knight you're looking for, as there weren't really Chivalric Knights. "Eques" is 'dude on a horse' more than 'warrior of chivalry', and Miles is in classical latin 'soldier', and the professional implication of the latter came to be applied to the warrior caste of later europe for whom fighting was their profession, as opposed to levies, and thus gained a veneer of honour. Eques meanwhile came to mean 'guy on a horse' and seems more common in chess than warfare descriptions, although almost all medieval Miles could presumably be described as Eques (but not all Eques are Miles in medieval latin, I would further guess).

I don't think "Respublica Lunae" is incorrect, but it's certainly not what would spring to mind for me. Let me run you through my idea.

To name the republic we really need the name of the ethnicity of people who live on the moon. Let's give some options, and english glosses:
Lunatici ('Lunatics', with the same implication, but -ticus is a common 'of X' suffic like 'Helveticus')
Lunari ('Lunars', akin to Romanus or Gallus from Roma and Gallia)

In those the proper genitive would be Lunaticorum, Lunarorum.

I would suggest Respublica Lunarorum, completely arbitrarily, because it has a good ring. There is no established roman word for which particular possible luna-derived adjective people on the moon would take so it's not that bad.

If it really is 'Republic of the Moon (the geographic area)' rather than 'Republic of the [People who Live On The Moon]' Respublica Lunae or Lunaris seems reasonable to me.

Although if it's led by a monarch, it should probably be a Regnum, so that's kind of weird.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 05:25pm 

Thanks Duckie!

And yeah, more properly it would be Lunar Principality/Principality of the Moon, being led by a Princess and all. But for whatever reason all the fan songs used Lunar Republic so that's what I was going for.

As far as naming it, that is a tricky question. Do they live on the moon? Well no, it's mostly named because the Moon is, basically, the symbol of their leader. Or something like that. So "Republic of the Moon [geographic area]" would probably fit as such. Since they're referring to the moon (or a moon) itself.

EDIT: To expand, I suspect the form "Lunar [Whatever]" is referring to the Princess herself*, whereas "[Whatever] of the Moon" uses the moon as a symbol.

*Or simply "Lunar" being a way to refer to things relating to the moon (lunar eclipse, lunar explorer and so on) which probably doesn't help, since "lunar" is derived from the Latin anyway I think.

Of course Luna herself says she's "Princess of the Night" so maybe "Night [Government form]/[Government form] of the Night" would also work.

I think "Knight of the Moon" works, because that's a title and all. Kinda like a shorter version of "Knight of the Moon Princess" and such. Although "Knight of the Night" would be amusing.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 05:44pm 

Knights of the Night ?

"What, are you dense ?
Are you retarded or something ?
Who the hell do you think I am ?
I'm the goddamn BatMare !"

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-21 05:47pm 

As an organization, sure. But in my head I was thinking of it being a singular person with that title. With lesser knights and soldiers having some as-yet undefined title(s).

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-22 07:22pm 

And a couple more.



I'm guessing "Why are you here?" Maybe more literally "Whatfor are you here?"



[Hell?] will [do something really terrible to me]. No good guess on this, though I can guess the tone.

Are these still in the same Scandinavian language? Also, isn't there something about how the different Scandinavian languages could be considered dialects of the same one, or am I just being stupidly ignorant here?

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-22 07:49pm 

hwor=where (hwer), so wherefore = why (as in 'wherefore art thou romeo')

so it's "Why are you here"

Helvete, Switzerland Hell
Spise, Eat, as in german 'Speisen', apparently from a latin loan into old germanic 'spensa' meaning 'provisions' (things spent for) that came to mean food.
deg, undoubtedly the object form of du (equivalent to thou/thee or tu/te)
levende, living, akin to german 'leben' (life)

"Hell will eat you alive"

Undoubtedly still Norwegian.

It is true that Norwegian and Danish (and t a lesser degree Swedish) are very close. There are two forms of Norwegian, Bokmal and Nynorsk. The latter is more conservative and is the closest to Danish, sort of like how North German german dialects are closer to Dutch while still being German. Swedish is sort of like English, German's cousin that is mostly incomprehensible to any of the german dialects besides in simple phrases but still recognizably related. Icelandic is like if somewhere in ireland they still spoke perfect old english with like 2 or 3 changes since Beowulf- understandable to the Germans (Norwegian and Danish) more than the English (Swedes), but mostly incomprehensible due to time changing the germans and english's languages much more than these peoples. Finnish is absolutely unrelated, being as closely related to Swedish as Japanese is to English (some loanwords but different family entirely), but often gets mistaken for scandinavian even though it sounds nothing like it because the finns happen to live in the same geographic region (unlike japanese, mind, the metaphor breaks down there).

Whether that makes Norwegian and Danish the same language just because they can sort of understand eachother is unclear. It is like the biological definition of species- if two languages can intercommunicate with varying degrees of difficulty, at what point do they cease to be 'the same species/language' and start being more like horses and donkeys or lions and tigers? Back in 1000 they were obviously the same language (Old Norse) with east and west dialects (future swedish and future everything else), but it's messy now as they're not fully apart.

Most linguists make Danish and Norwegian different languages but Bokmal and Nynorsk part of the same language, but that's completely arbitrary and influenced by the political borders as much as facts. This same problem occurs in many places- is Scots a distinct language that happens to be very close to English? Linguistically the answer is perhaps yes, but anglophones would never accept 'bad english' as another language. And whether Valencian is a language separate from Catalan depends on whether you're from Valencia or Catalunya.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-23 08:37am 

It's furryspeak - it sounds as if you were stomping on a cat that begs for mercy. I always expect them wearing a fur-suit when thea talk like that - Mao-wao-how-gao-meow... (Personal experience after living in Alicante for years...) Don't get me started on Catalan and their spelling vs. pronunciation...

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-24 10:06am 

Look what I have here...



P.S this is in good Latin, no internet translator crap.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-24 11:22am 

Except the guys forgot the negative association of magia in latin.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-24 12:37pm 

@Duckie vs scandinavia

Norwegians and Swedes understands each other quite well. Its those danes that none can understand. Which has little to do with written language or how close related they are but rather that their "dialect" has been sodomized by germans. While the norwegians were sodomized by the swedes for a hundred years or so. So the further north you go in denmark, ie away from ze germans, the easier they are to understand for other scandinavians. With the same being true for norwegians in the ultima thule (NW) of norway the pronounciation/dialect is the least sodomized by swedes so none understand them either.
So the norwegians got their writing and language base from being sodomized by the danes while their pronounciation and articulation they got from being sodomized by the swedes.
Lots of norwegians watch swedish television for instance, while very few of them watch danish tv.

The Icelanders usually understand danish better than what norwegians and swedes do, probably because they were sodomized by the danes until 1944. (Officially, it really ended with the british invasion on the 10th of May 1940 which then handed them over to the yanks until the germans stopped oppressing everybody else).

So in all the scandinavian settings while growing up, norwegians and swedes would use their own languages, while when talking to danes and icelanders we would switch to english. The finns got tought swedish in school back then so they usually were pretty good at swedish if they came from the urban areas (Which is a leftover from when the finns were sodomized by the swedes, ending with their being sodomized by russians instead from 1809 until the commie revolution in 1917).

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-24 02:52pm 

At least for post-Roman Latin, Giordano Bruno didn't seem to think so. Any negative implications were probably lost in the shift to garbage latin medieval latin, so it's technically valid.

Extra Credit Exercise: Consider the similar varying positive to neutral to negative, scary to not scary even to cute implications that vary along Japanese makai vs akuma vs majin vs vs mahou (modern meaning) vs majo vs majokko vs mahou shoujo for a word that probably could be translated in its original historical use as 'demon' best, yet can be used as a translation for the Zauber in Zauberflotte without weirdness.



Oh, right. My information was for a while ago, like a few hundred years. I forgot about the recent (in the grand scheme of things) Danish shifts which make their language quite bizarre sounding to other scandinavians as I understand it. I also was under the impression Bokmal was genetically closer to Danish than Swedish, but given the recent changes it's likely it might not sound it.

Nonetheless genetically it does go as I stated in my previous post as far as separation, even if comprehensionwise it doesn't (I conflated the two, figuring it was probably correct). Sort of like, I guess, how you can look more like your cousin than your sister but you're still closely related to the latter even if people would intuitively guess you're closer to the former.

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-24 02:57pm 

Huge difference to the Romans though in late Antiquity, who had laws against "magi".

 Post subject: Re: Translation Request Sticky

Posted: 2012-01-24 02:58pm 

Maybe they were writing in medieval latin.