Category Archives: Translations

Talk about translations. You can find more translations, recordings and related things on the “Examples” page.

New text on the frontpage, and a cause for celebration

The text on the Ayeri website’s landing page (itself an anacronism these days?) with its evocation of strange, fictitious lands where the language is supposed to be spoken has long slightly bothered me, seeing that I haven’t come up with substantial world-building for this long-running conlanging project of mine so far. Thus, I have recently—and rather ad hoc—come up with a new text that is more plain about Ayeri. Just as with the old text, I’ve tried translating it into Ayeri to give a taste right off the bat.

Manisu ya Benung. Bukuno narānena Ayeri! Ang Ayeri narānas manisa (narāntiyanas), sinā le ringyang suyan berdayyena luga pericanjya-ikan. Eng da-lomasāra edanya yām ku-ibangas tiyo, siyā ang ming ajāy narāneri nay sungkoraneri narān. Eng kadāra eda-baloybenung nilanjyas si ang avancon macamley vehanena, linyeley tiyo palung naynay si ang tiyāy ling pericanjya misisānyam neprisānena nay valyanyam sinā tiyayang. Valyu pecamanas eda-baloyyena!

The text goes as follows. I hope it’s in line with the Grammar, since I’m feeling quite out of practice. A thing I noticed is that there’s no way to handle clauses that function as constituents (object clauses, adverbial clauses, etc.) in Ayeri in the same rather elegant and concise way you can do this with ing-participles in English (“[…] working out ever more details of which has served me as a creative outlet for playing with language and linguistics for many years”). I thus had to rephrase the translated text a bit.

  1. Manisu ya Benung. Bukuno narānena Ayeri!
    welcome LOC=Benung storage language-GEN Ayeri
    ‘Welcome to Benung. The Ayeri Language Resource!’
  2. Ang Ayeri narānas manisa (narāntiyanas), sinā le ringyang suyan berdayyena luga pericanjya-ikan.
    A.AN=Ayeri language-P.AN fictional conlang-P.AN REL.P.AN.GEN P.INAN.TOP=raise=1SG.A amount[TOP] detail-PL-GEN for year-PL-LOC=many
    ‘Ayeri is a fictional language (a conlang) whose amount of detail I have raised for many years.’
  3. Eng da-lomasāra edanya yām ku-ibangas tiyo, siyā ang ming ajāy narāneri nay sungkoraneri narān.
    A.INAN.TOP=such=serve-HAB-3SG.INAN this[TOP] 1SG.DAT as=field-P.AN creative REL.P.LOC A.AN.TOP=can=play-1SG.TOP language-INS and science-INS language
    ‘It has thus served me as a creative field where I can play with language and linguistics.’
  4. Eng kadāra eda-baloybenung nilanjyas si ang avancon macamley vehanena, linyeley tiyo palung naynay si ang tiyāy ling pericanjya misisānyam neprisānena nay valyanyam sinā tiyayang.
    A.INAN.TOP=gather-3SG.INAN this=site.web[TOP] thought-PL-P.AN REL A.AN.TOP=document=3PL.AN.N.TOP process-P.INAN construction-GEN thing-PL-P.INAN creative other and.also REL A.AN.TOP=make=1SG.TOP during year-PL-LOC realization-DAT theory-GEN and enjoyment-DAT REL.DAT.GEN create=1SG.A
    ‘This website gathers thoughts documenting the construction process, and also other creative things I made over the years for the realization of theory and the enjoyment of what I created.’
  5. Valyu pecamanas eda-baloyyena!
    enjoy-IMP browse.through-P.AN this=page-PL-GEN
    ‘Enjoy browsing through these pages!’

Unfortunately, WordPress’ WYSIWYG editor makes it rather impossible to properly align interlinear glosses in linguistic examples anymore, to my best knowledge. On the other hand, I suppose that this kind of markup is a very special need of very few people (insert Star Trek joke here).

In other news, you can also tentatively follow this blog on the Fediverse at @/blog@/ayeri.de now (remove the slashes after the @ signs), because I wanted to try out Matthias Pfefferle et al.’s cool new ActivityPub plugin (markup beyond basic HTML would likely be gone anyway if viewed through the likes of Mastodon, Firefish, Lemmy, or Kbin). There’ll also be great news about my Ph.D. endeavors coming up soon-ish, I hope. 😀 A blog post giving a glimpse into what I wrote my thesis about that’s hopefully accessible enough for other conlangers as well is already in the pipeline for this occasion.

Incidentally, Ayeri is celebrating its 20th birthday this December, and this realization has just completely caught me by surprise. 😅 Bavesangas mino, I suppose, and briyu-briyu! 🎉🥂

“Silent Night” in Ayeri

In December 2022 I posted on my Mastodon account a photo from the Berlin State Library’s Unter den Linden branch featuring a pinboard on which were posted festive tags with Christmas greetings in a slew of languages spoken by library patrons. User Scott Hühnerkrisp wondered whether there already exists a translation of Stille Nacht into Ayeri. I replied that it would be a challenge for the Christmas break. Even though it’s past Christmas now and this year’s is still a ways off, I wanted to make good on it. This is Sirutay ternu kaluy, my attempt to translate the Austrian Christmas carol Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht—to English speakers known as Silent Night—into Ayeri.

🔽 Download the PDF file
⚙️ View the LaTeX source

Other than that, I submitted my PhD thesis in May last year and defended it in September, at long last—it’d been over five years since I started working on it formally. Add to this my subsequent relocation halfway across Germany to Berlin, where I’m teaching an Old High German intro class this semester and continue working for my doctoral advisor at least until spring 2024 (see also: academic job insecurity, short-term contracts, “perpetual interim”). That doesn’t mean I’m done PhDing yet, since my alma mater requires theses to be published to award the title. So, I’m also trying to find time to revise my manuscript again. I already have a publisher to offer it to in mind and hope to do so by summer.

Just a quick status update on the Grammar: I’m currently trying to come up with example sentences in order to figure out the status of various elements regarding their classification as an affix or a clitic. Not everything I’ve been calling ‘clitic’ so far is one, most probably, since my understanding had been faulty. Especially the declined person markers (-yang, -vāng, -yāng etc.) seem to behave more like affixes, in fact.

The North Wind and the Sun, Revisited

For the past few days, I have been retranslating the story by Aesop, “The North Wind and the Sun.” While translating, two things came up to consider:

  • How does Ayeri deal with gender resolution (Corbett 243–253)?
  • How does Ayeri handle “the … the …” and “as … as …” constructions? Does it have them at all, or will rephrasing be necessary when translating from e.g. English?

Regarding the latter question, there is a blog article, “Correlative Conjunctions” (2012-12-10), but it fails to account for the two combinations mentioned above.

  • Aesop. “The North Wind and the Sun.” Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Ed. International Phonetic Association. 9th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 39. Print.
  • Corbett, Greville G. Agreement. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics 52. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.

Translation Challenge: Fences and Gardens

Excerpt from Heidelberg Univ. Lib., Cod. Pal. germ. 164, fol. 17r (CC BY-SA)
Excerpt from Heidelberg Univ. Lib., Cod. Pal. germ. 164, fol. 17r (CC BY-SA; Source)
I am still busy collecting data for my MA thesis, but what with all the work during the day, I still needed to do something creative at night (and weekends), so I spent the last two-ish weeks working on a translation challenge I gave myself: one of the 13th century deeds I had come across during work that looked rather straightforward.

So if you’re curious about part of my current day job, want to see a first attempt at making up a sentence fragment in ‘Vaporlang’ and also look for some thorough annotation pointing out some Middle High German idioms (English translations provided and everything), you can download my translation here:

Fences and Gardens: An Ayeri Translation of a Medieval Neighborhood Dispute.

  • Demske, Ulrike. Merkmale und Relationen: Diachrone Studien zur Nominalphrase des Deutschen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001. Print. Studia Linguistica Germanica 56.
  • Eike von Repgow. Sachsenspiegel. Heidelberg Manuscript, Cod. Pal. germ. 164. 17r. Eastern Middle Germany, 14th c. Heidelberger historische Bestände digital. Heidelberg University Library, n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2015. ‹http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg164/0047›. CC BY-SA.
  • “N 163 (381 a).” Corpus der altdeutschen Originalurkunden bis zum Jahr 1300. Ed. Helmut de Boor et al. Vol. 5. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2004. 127. Print.

Translation Challenge: The Beginning of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”

Text in English

The text to be translated in this Translation Challenge is the initial passage of Tolstoy’s 1878 novel Anna Karenina.[1. Hat tip to Steven Lytle for suggesting it.] The Ayeri translation here follows the English one by Constance Garnett (1901), which can be found on Project Gutenberg.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning. (Tolstoy 2013)

Ayeri translation

Translation Challenge: The Beginning of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

Kamayon pandahajang-hen mino; minarya miraneri sitang-ton pandahāng-hen minarya.

Enyareng atauya kāryo nangaya pandahana Oblonski. Silvisaye sarisa envanang, ang manga miraya ayon yena cān-cānas layeri Kahani, seri ganvayās pandahaya ton, nay ang narisaye ayonyam yena, ang ming saylingoyye mitanyam nangaya kamo kayvo yāy. Eng manga yomāran eda-mineye luga bahisya kay, nay tong vakas ten pulengeri, sitang-tong-namoy ayonang nay envanang, nārya nasimayajang-hen pandahana nay nangānena ton naynay. Ang mayayo nyān-hen nangaya, ming tenubisoyrey, mitantong kadanya. Ang engyon vihyam miromānjas keynam si sa lancon kadanya apineri kondangaya, nasimayajas pandahana nay nangānena Oblonski. Ang saroyye envan sangalas yena, ang manga yomoyya ayon rangya ton luga bahisya kay. Sa senyon ganye nangaya-hen; ang ranye ganvaya Angli kayvo lomāyaya visam nay ang tahanye ledoyam, yam mya balangyeng pinyan yanoley gumo hiro ye; ang saraya ersaya bahisya sarisa pidimya tarika sirutayyānena; ang narisaton lomāya risang nay lantaya vapatanas ton.

More information

I also made a PDF containing interlinear glosses and commentary for this translation.[1. Also, please let me add that XƎTEX is pretty darn awesome.],[1. Updated with some corrections on Dec 11, 2014. See the diff on Github for changes.]

  • Plank, Frans, Thomas Mayer, Tatsiana Mayorava and Elena Filimonova, eds. The Universals Archive. 1998–2009. U Konstanz, 2009. Web. 26 Oct. 2014. ‹http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/intro›.
  • Schachter, Paul. “The Subject in Philippine Languages: Topic, Actor, Actor-Topic, or None of the Above?” Subject and Topic. Ed. Charles N. Li. New York: Academic P, 1976. 493–518. Print.
  • Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Eds. David Brannan, David Widger and Andrew Sly. Trans. by Constance Garnett. Project Gutenberg. 11 Oct. 2014. Project Gutenberg, 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2014. ‹http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1399›.

Some Toponyms

When doing translations, I sometimes also need real-world toponyms besides the ones for (more or less) independent countries and their capitals. Here’s an assortment of more or less recent coinings:

Cities
Braunschweig – Ruminkay < aruno ‘brown’ + minkay ‘settlement’
Marburg — Litareng < lito ‘border’ + -areng ~ ayron ‘fortification, town’
Frankfurt — Kahalukay < kahan ‘spear’ (cf. France) + lukay ‘ford’
Victoria — Sikatay < sikatan ‘victory’

Territories
Britain — Dahasi < dahas ‘shape, form’ (cf. Wikipedia, “Britain (place name)”)
British Columbia — Ruhayani Dahasi (cf. Britain, Colombia)
England — Angli (etymology uncertain, possibly related to the shape of the Anglish homeland)
Hesse – Hassi (no information on etymology found)
(Lower) Saxony – Rajumin (eyreng) < raju ‘dagger’ + -min ~ mitan- ‘live, dwell’ (+ eyreng ‘lower’)

Pangram (revisited)

This is in continuation of an earlier post I wrote on trying to construct a pangram in Ayeri. I just played around with my dictionary a bit again tonight and came up with the following sentence:

4248-pangram
[gloss]Da-bahatang, sa akaya para vaga lamana.
Da=baha-tang, sa aka-ya para vaga-Ø lama-na.
so=shout-3PL.M.A, PT swallow-3SG.M quickly pig-T restaurant-GEN[/gloss]
‘So they shouted that the restaurant’s pig was quickly swallowed.’

This doesn’t make too much sense, but it’s grammatical (vaga ‘pig’ might better trigger neuter agreement on the verb, but whatever – let’s assume this is a boar), uses all consonant characters available in the Ayeri alphabet as well as the virama diacritic (‘gondaya’) only once, and no other diacritics are involved. Also, I didn’t have to make up new words specifically tailored to use up remaining consonants like last time: I admit, I had to make up daga ‘turtle’ in my previous article on pangrams for this purpose.

Translation Challenge: Honey Everlasting

I came across a website called The *Bʰlog recently, a blog about Proto-Indo-European edited by a lecturer from the University of Kentucky’s linguistics department, Andrew Byrd. The *Bʰlog was started as a reaction to the success of an article on the website of the journal Archaeology, which featured sound recordings of two short texts Byrd made using a reconstruction of the Indo-European proto-language, one of the texts being Schleicher’s “The Sheep and the Horses”.

I found one of the texts presented on The *Bʰlog“Everlasting Honey” by Erica Mattingly and translated into PIE (according to what we know about it) by Byrd’s 2014 PIE class – pretty neat and thought it may well be a nice, short text to translate into Ayeri. If you’re a longterm reader of my blog, you may remember a little translation on a similar topic – a 100-word story called “The Sugar Fairies”. I recommend you also try your hands on this other fun little text if you haven’t yet. The blog article, “Composing *Médhu n̥dhgwhitóm“, at The *Bʰlog also contains another, slightly longer story by Leah Hatch that may be of interest as a translation challenge for the more advanced conlanger or if you have a bit more time. I may try translating Hatch’s text again later, too.

Here is my translation of Mattingly’s text into Ayeri:

[gloss]Biling saroyo
honey everlasting[/gloss]
‘Everlasting Honey’

[gloss]Sa yomareng envan lanyana.
sa yoma-reng envan-Ø lanya-na
PT exist-3SG.INAN.A wife-T king-GEN[/gloss]
‘There was the wife of the king.’

[gloss]Ang səsarayo tadoy denan bilingena paso yena.
ang sə-sara-yo tadoy denan-Ø biling-ena paso yena
AT FUT-cease-3SG.N never fame-T honey-GEN sweet 3SG.F.GEN[/gloss]
‘The fame for her sweet honey would never cease.’

[gloss]Le veryaya patasang biling, nay ang saraya lepadayam nangaya yena.
le verya-ya patas-ang biling-Ø, nay ang sara-ya-Ø lepada-yam nanga-ya yena
PT.INAN smell-3SG.M bear-A honey-T, and AT go-3SG.M-T taste-PTCP house-LOC 3SG.F.GEN[/gloss]
‘A bear smelled the honey, and he went to taste it at her house.’

[gloss]Ang silvaye envan patasas nay paronayeng, ang tahaya nivajas paso.
ang silva-ye envan-Ø patas-as nay parona-yeng ang taha-ya-Ø niva-j-as paso
AT see-3SG.F woman-T bear-P and think-3SG.F.A AT have-3SG.M-T eye-PL-P sweet[/gloss]
‘The woman saw the bear and she thought he had sweet eyes.’

[gloss]Yam tapyyeng bilingley patas marin mehirya tibenanya.
yam tapy-yeng biling-ley patas-Ø marin mehir-ya tibenan-ya
DATT put-3SG.F.A honey-P.INAN bear-T surface.of tree-LOC dawn-LOC[/gloss]
‘She put honey onto a tree at dawn for the bear.’

[gloss]Ya sahaya lanyāng gino nanga, sa silvyāng patas si ang tahaya bilingley vinaya, lāya nay bantaya yana, nay lanyāng sigi.
ya saha-ya lanya-ang gino nanga-Ø sa silv-yāng patas-Ø si ang taha-ya-Ø biling-ley vina-ya lā-ya nay banta-ya yana nay lanya-ang sigi
LOCT come-3SG.M king-A drunk house-T PT see-3SG.M.A bear-T REL AT have-3SG-T honey-P.INAN nose-LOC tongue-LOC and mouth-LOC 3SG.M.GEN and king-A furious[/gloss]
‘The drunk king came to the house and saw the bear, who had honey on his nose, tongue and mouth, and the king was furious.’

[gloss]Ang praysaya tupoyas kayvo runuya-ikan, nay saraya patasang.
ang praysa-ya-Ø tupoy-as kayvo runu-ya=ikan, nay sara-ya patas-ang
AT kindle-3SG.M-T fire-P with smoke-LOC=much, and leave-3SG.M bear-A[/gloss]
‘He started a fire with much smoke, and the bear left.’

[gloss]Silvoyya lanyāng gino, sahaya segasang kāryo sang sa gesyāng lanvaya.
silv-oy-ya lanya-ang gino, saha-ya segas-ang kāryo s-ang sa ges-yāng lanvaya-Ø
see-NEG-3SG.M king-A drunk come-3SG.M snake-A big REL-A PT rob-3SG.M.A queen-T[/gloss]
‘The drunk king didn’t see that a big snake came, which robbed the queen.’

[gloss]Ang sa-sahaya nārya patas tombānyam segasena, nay ang ninya lanvayās mangasaha nangaya yena.
ang sa~saha-ya nārya patas-Ø tomba-an-yam segas-ena nay ang nin-ya-Ø lanvaya-as mangasaha nanga-ya yena
AT again~come-3SG.M but bear-T kill-NMLZ-DAT snake-GEN and AT carry-3SG.M-T queen-P towards house-LOC 3SG.F.GEN[/gloss]
But the bear came back for killing the snake, and he carried the queen to her house.

[gloss]Ang kutaye lanvaya patasas padangeri ikan, nay ang tavya patas ayonas.
ang kuta-ye lanvaya-Ø patas-as padang-eri ikan, nay ang tav-ya patas-Ø ayon-as
AT thank-3SG.F queen-T bear-P heart-INS whole, and AT become-3SG.M bear-T man-P[/gloss]
‘The queen thanked the bear with her whole heart, and the bear became a man.’

The whole text without interlinear glossing:

4177-honeyeverlasting

Biling saroyo

Sa yomareng envan lanyana. Ang səsarayo tadoy denan bilingena paso yena. Le veryaya patasang biling, nay ang saraya lepadayam nangaya yena. Ang silvaye envan patasas nay paronayeng, ang tahaya nivajas paso. Yam tapyyeng bilingley patas marin mehirya tibenanya. Ya sahaya lanyāng gino nanga, sa silvyāng patas si ang tahaya bilingley vinaya, lāya nay bantaya yana, nay lanyāng sigi. Ang praysaya tupoyas kayvo runuya-ikan, nay saraya patasang. Silvoyya lanyāng gino, sahaya segasang kāryo sang sa gesyāng lanvaya. Ang sa-sahaya nārya patas tombānyam segasena, nay ang ninya lanvayās mangasaha nangaya yena. Ang kutaye lanvaya patasas padangeri ikan, nay ang tavya patas ayonas.

Some Legal Ponderings

If you look at the “Media” page, there hasn’t been much new material for 2013 and none so far for 2014. This is for one due to my university studies (graduating from my undergrad studies and starting work on an M.A.), but also because I had been working on and off on a partial translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic novella Le Petit Prince into Ayeri for the past year, consisting of the first two chapters. I’ve long had an itch to try this, especially since Le Petit Prince has been translated into over two hundred languages already. However, it turns out that a publication of such a translation here raises some legal questions. Note: I am not a lawyer!

Saint-Exupéry went missing on a flight in July 1944, which is almost 70 years ago. Now, according to German copyright law at least,[1. I am German, living in Germany. However, since this website is hosted on an American server, the question is if German law applies at all, or possibly both American and German law.] an author’s work becomes Public Domain 70 years after an their death, calculated from the end of the year of their passing away (cf. Urheberrechtsgesetz, articles 64 and 69, in German). However, I’ve only recently learnt from Wikipedia that

[d]ue to Saint-Exupéry’s wartime death, his estate received the civil code designation Mort pour la France […]; thus most of Saint-Exupéry’s creative works will not fall out of copyright status in France for an extra 30 years. […] Note that although Saint-Exupéry’s regular French publisher, Gallimard, lists Le Petit Prince as being published in 1946, that is apparently a legalistic interpretation possibly designed to allow for an extra year of the novella’s copyright protection period […]. (Wikipedia, “The Little Prince”)

This means that contrary to my assumptions of when I started out translating with bold enthusiasm last May, Le Petit Prince is not strictly in the Public Domain yet, though the question is whether this only applies to France or in general. Furthermore, there is an estate administration to capitalize on Saint-Exupéry’s literary inheritance by licensing any derivative works. On their Twitter, they show off fan-created artwork, but as I see it, my translation of about six pages of the original text including the images from the book may well exceed the status of fanart and the bounds of Fair Use, in spite of scholarly annotation consisting of the interlinear glossing for everything and no expressed commercial interest.

Of course, I would like to avoid getting into legal trouble if I were to publish my efforts here, especially since I’d really like to include the illustrations from the book, which really are an intrinsic part of the text. However, at least as far as German law goes, I would only be able to put my translation online in January 2015 anyway, otherwise only in 2047.

I suppose that if I really want a definitive answer, I’ll have to write to Gallimard’s licensing department. For the time being, as much as I’m sorry about it, I will not make my Ayeri translation publically available out of caution about copyright issues.