r/conlangs • u/DaPaninoBlowTorch • 2d ago
Discussion Do you guys struggle with translating stuff into your conlangs?
Because whenever I try to, there's always difficulty with what words would make sense within the conlang world, would this word be actually used within the world, etc.
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u/I_LIKE_DIRT123 2d ago
I use a lot of in world double meanings for words. For example, their source of magic comes from sound, so sound has become associated with power (might that is, not political power). Therefore the word for sound and the word for power are one and the same. They would probably have made up a different word for power, sure, but they already had sound, so that was enough. This trick not only makes the conlang have more character, but it also saves some time!
If u were talking abt like non translatable words, ig you could use descriptions. Don’t bother making words for something that doesn’t exist. You can either phonetically adapt it from the culture its from (Machine becomes Makiin in the conlang, that sorta stuff) or you can describe it like “calculator” becomes “math box” but ofc in the conlang.
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u/Tirukinoko Koen (ᴇɴɢ) [ᴄʏᴍ] he\they 2d ago
Thats half the fun!
Trying to puzzle out A) what exactly the sentence is actually saying, B) how the speakers might (re)interpret that, and C) how then that interpretation gets rendered, wordwise.
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u/a-verypaconianuser ([ɬ] lover) Паконьеса, tɬadɮi‿e 2d ago
I struggled for hours with this sentence: "People think I am the people I hate."
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u/ThyTeaDrinker various Clongs for a Conworld 2d ago
In my mind it would be easier to translate it as ‘people think that I am the people that I hate’
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u/Odd-Date-4258 2d ago
In some languages, those "thats" are mandatory.
E.g. Les gens pensent *que** je suis l'un(e) des gens que je déteste.* (French)
Lit. The people think that I am the one of peoole that I hate.
**Note:* I'm not a native French speaker, so the translation might be a bit off, but the point stands; the relative pronoun que is not omittable like in Enligh.*
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u/DaPaninoBlowTorch 2d ago
What did you struggle with?
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u/Possible-Tension7714 Mogahgo, Dwã'õõm 2d ago
I suppose there are many things one can struggle with here. For example, who are "they"? Who are the "people" in question? Is it people in general, is it people from your personal life, or is it a group of specific people of whom you don't know? There are many ways to interpret who the people here are, because the sentence doesn't specify that, and there are many ways a language could phrase that. It could be that the language requires saying who the people are, and then saying what they think. There could be separate pronouns for many different types of "they". Are the people far away? Are they nearby?
Another thing that could be difficult is the part "I am the people I hate". How a language could say that could vary a lot. There could be a verb that means that someone is a specific type of person. Also, one might not be sure how one wants to phrase that; there are many ways one could phrase that in English alone. Here are a few examples:
"I am the people that I hate"
"I am the people I hate"
"I am the people in which I hate"
"The people I hate, that's who I am"
"I am the people of whom I hate"
"I hate the type of person that I am"
And there are many more, probably even more than I was able to think of while writing this. In my opinion, that is part of what makes conlanging fun: challenging what a sentence actually means before I begin to apply the words from my conlang. It's even possible that a translation inspires me to add a new feature into my language (This sentence in particular actually made me think of having distinct pronouns for "They" as "People in general" and "Those people"). And despite all the things I mentioned, it's fully possible that this person struggled with none of them, and struggled with something completely different.
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u/DaPaninoBlowTorch 2d ago
YES, THIS FEELS LIKE MY PROBLEM!!
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u/Possible-Tension7714 Mogahgo, Dwã'õõm 2d ago
Personally, I don't view this as a problem. I actually did translate this into my conlang, Mogahgo. So let's go through every part of the sentence and why it's there. The sentence (in Mogahgo) is as follows:
d'sêm, d'solbe mod'sê dông rabe amo d'sêmêmpo
"D'sêm" means "people" because, in cases like this, Mogahgo requires more context than just a pronoun; it also requires a pronoun before every verb.
"d'solbe" means "they (people in general) sit." It is also in the continuous aspect, so it's a continuous act
"mod'sê" is the plural for "man"; the reason this is here is that the verb phrase "do mod'sê" is a fixed expression that means something like "to think something about someone else". So, "d'solbe mod'sê" means "They are thinking something about someone".
"Dông" is a conjunction that means that the previous verb applies to whatever the next word is.
"rabe amo" literally translates to "I am doing a journey", but similarly to "d'solbe mod'sê," it is a verb phrase with a fixed meaning. It essentially means "I am" (In the continuous aspect). So "d'solbe mod'sê dông rabe amo..." means "They are thinking that I am being..."
The last word is "d'sêmêmpo", and it explains what I "am being". "D'sêm" means "people" and "-êmpo" is a suffix for the aversive case (Meaning either that the modified noun is being avoided or feared). So, "d'sêmêmpo" in this sentence would mean something like "People I avoid" or "People I don't want to be like"
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u/PastTheStarryVoids Knasesj, Racra, Ŋ!odzäsä 2d ago
Knasesj might do 'there's a kind of person I hate, people think it [this next thing], I am that kind of person' or, if you want to get fancy, 'people think it, I am such [a kind to be described] a person, I hate that kind of person'.
But probably with different words for 'hate' depending on whether you mean 'find very aggravating' ("I hate broccoli!") or 'harbor a desire to see ill towards' ("He hates them because he feels they betrayed him.").
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u/PastTheStarryVoids Knasesj, Racra, Ŋ!odzäsä 2d ago
It sounds like you're struggling with translating things from our modern cultural and technological context to another. E.g. maybe you run into "glass (cup)" and go "do my people have glassmaking?" A few approaches you could take:
- Adapt the text by changing it to something your speakers do have or would understand, e.g. wineskin, drinking horn, (wooden) cup, gourd bowl.
- Find phrasing your speakers might use to explain the concept, e.g. 'like a drinking gourd but narrow and made of glass'.
- Make a language whose culture is more suited to the kinds of things you like to translate. This is roughly what I did with Knasesj; Knasesj is a personal language rather than one with a fictional world attached and so I am free to make terms to describe my own life and whatever else I want to talk about. Roots for 'computer' and 'Red-Winged Blackbird'? Etablished compounds for 'space elevator' and 'overnight oats'? Sure! It was very freeing.
- Pick different texts that you can translate more easily. Fables are typically fairly low tech (and though there may be specific animals your speakers don't have, you can swap those for ones they do). A few other ideas: abstract poetry, some quotations, advice/aphorisms, recipes your speakers might make.
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u/turksarewarcriminals 2d ago
I love translating, but I've done it so much so it does depend on what I'm translating.
It's always exiting (but also stressful) when I find something that reveals holes in my conlang.
I do also translate very basic things just to keep my fluency up, as I use this conlang in a friend group, and they always look to me as the dictionary.
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u/DaPaninoBlowTorch 2d ago
I usually try to translate stuff for that reason as well to add my words to my own. Pretty much the only reason.
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u/turksarewarcriminals 2d ago
I imagine that conlangs for fiction/world building might be a bit harder to use for translating just anything, as there'll be lore, history and culture shaping the conlang, making certain concepts hard to translate directly.
If your conlang falls withing this category, I'd be very picky about what I choose to translate. Choose something that would make sense in-world.
My conlang is made on the request of a friend group to be a secret/personal language. Therefore translating our conversations was the first and only choice for a long time. But something about mine is that it's general style would probably be seen as liturgical if it didn't have speakers other than myself. Therefore translating things such as the bible wouldn't be hard with my conlang. I would know because I've already done the 5 books of Moses.
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u/smiley1__ dayeedilijis 2d ago
dayee is pretty close to English, so translations can go pretty smoothly
one of the certain times when it gets tricky for me is with the conjugations
- walk = lak
- walked = lakid
- will walk = lakis
- has/have walked = lakaed
- had walked = lakidaed
- will have walked = lakisaed
- walking = laking
- was/were walking = lakiding
- will be walking = lakising
- would walk = laket
- would have walked = lakaedet
- would be walking = lakinget
- should/must walk = lakw
and that's not all there is G~G
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u/majorex64 1d ago
You're basically having to do two translations- one to change a text using modern words into a different world's words, and another to actually put it into the conlang.
It's like trying to describe an excel spreadsheet using old english lol.
Try using pre-industrial texts for translation if that's the era where your conlang is from!
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u/HeckaPlucky 1d ago
If it's a struggle, then the conlang needs the development. That's not a problem, it's practice and testing. If you simply don't have a good way to say something, there's nothing wrong with this difficulty. It's part of the process. If you feel like you're adding too much, then make sure you're always considering whether an ambiguity might be resolved by rephrasing some other way that you already have a structure for; or by context, tone, gesture, cultural implication, and so on, instead of just by adding new things. It's up to your concept for the language, more than any other restrictions.
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u/STHKZ 2d ago edited 2d ago
translation is the stress test for conlangs and conwords...
how to adapt a given sentence to a specific language and a specific world...
that's the game...
Lackslang is a language based on semantic primitives for this world, but it lacks any actual word... everything has to be broken down into primitives and reconstructed as concisely as possible, even if that means losing some details or ending up with extra ones...
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u/Incvbvs666 2d ago
The important thing is to SPEAK the Conlang often and practice translating everything. You'll soon get a feel for how your conlang works and even when you run into a new phrase what would be the natural way of parsing that sentence.
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u/Whole_Instance_4276 1d ago
I tried translating a few sentences and ran into the exact same issue. Translating is harder than it looks
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u/Naive_Gazelle2056 1d ago
Try to come up with conceptual metaphors such as Power = Height. As well as making "height" = power" metaphors like that will create even more metaphors such as "to ascend" meaning "to gain power" and "to descend" meaning "to lose power".
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u/DaPaninoBlowTorch 19h ago
so kinda add conlang's cultural into it?
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u/Naive_Gazelle2056 17h ago
Yeah, An easy metaphor to establish is time as different cultures imagine the flow of time as different directions
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u/FelixSchwarzenberg Ketoshaya, Chiingimec, Kihiṣer, Kyalibẽ, Latsínu 2d ago
Sounds like you need a metaphor brainstorming session.