Guide to Translation into and from Nûrlâm

Translation from Nûrlâm

When translating from Nûrlâm the so-called interlinear glossing may be useful. A series of brief explanations (usually for grammar) is placed between the line of original text and it's translation into English (or any other target language). This method is often used at various pages of this wiki. The order for interlinear glossing is the following (except source and target lines):

  1. You should correctly split words into roots, clitics, prefixes and suffixes. Usually it's easy, because most morphemes are single-syllable. Some ambiguity is still possible (should “pushdug” be split as “push-dug” or “pushd-ug”?).
  2. Replace each element describing grammar (such as tense or case markers) with abbreviation of it's grammatical form. In serious linguistics these markers should be separated differently depending on their types:
    • Clitics should be separated by sign of equality (“=”) instead of hyphen. But for example case markers of Nûrlâm may be treated either as clitic postpositions or case suffixes (separated by hyphen then). So this rule is not always followed on these pages.
    • If one suffix describes several grammatical categories at once (e.g. suffixes of Nûrlâm's participles), each of them should be separated by dot (“.”). For example suffix “-uga” may be glossed as “-PTCP.PST.PASS” (participle.past.passive)
    • If grammatical form cannot be separated into root and suffix then meaning is separated from grammatical gloss either by dot with grammatical form after it or by backslash with gloss before it. For example “kub” may be analyzed as “kul.FUT” or “FUT\kul”
  3. Translate each root and grammatical affix or clitic into English.
  4. Determine syntactical role of each word or their combination.
  5. Change word order according to the rules of English language. Usually done together with other simplification, beautification or some other stylization of sentence.

Please note that step 1 can be done in the mind without writing it. One of the steps from 2 to 4 is often skipped or merged into one (translate roots first, replace grammatical elements with abbreviations; or translate everything at once but keeping Nûrlâm's word order).

Example

more examples needed

Shauksi fib dathrâham narukhat zîginu
1. shauk-si fi-b da-thrâh-am nar-ukh-at zîg-in-u
2. shauk=ESS fi=GEN 1SG=thrâh=2SG.OBJ NEG=ukh-GERV zîg-in=ALL
3. friend=as you=of I=advice=thee not=go-to that-place=to
4. ADV DET SBJ V. O. PRED ADV
5. As friend of you I advice thee not to go to that place
As your friend I advice you not to go there

On most pages such analysis is usually shortened to something like this:

Shauksi fib dathrâham narukhat zîginu
friend=ESS you=GEN 1SG=advice=2SG.OBJ NEG=go-GERV there=ALL
As your friend I advice you no to go there

make list for interlinear glossing abbreviations


Translation into Nûrlâm

To be done

While there is no full guide for translation from English into Nûrlâm, I suggest to see examples for translations of some real texts.


translation.txt · Last modified: 2023/09/07 19:38 by 127.0.0.1