link's awakening translation project

[Fetian]

FVmH94fUYAASOds.jpeg

Okay! I am working on translating Link's Awakening into Teket Lau, switching focus from the Stardew Valley mod because it'll be a much less intensive project. However, I'm also making it harder on myself because I want to present it as an old-school screenshot let's play with commentary, also in Teket Lau. This thread will be documenting the workflow and brainstorming ideas for it.

[Fetian]

I have spent weeks thinking about how to translate the title and I have not yet arrived at the final answer. I have decided to translate the franchise title as 'Zelda's Legend', and to translate Zelda's name (because 'z' and 'd' aren't phonemes that exist in Teket Lau) as Seltha. 'Link' I have not decided what I'm going to do with or if I'm going to leave it as-is. I'll probably leave it, all those phonemes exist and the language leans toward accepting foreign constructions as calques. 'Nintendo' is also going to be left as-is as a trademark even though there's a D in it.

'Link's Awakening' will get translated as 'awake(noun) belonging to Link', and 'awake' will probably be 'un-sleep', but I'll actually poke at that when I have the franchise named.

'Legend' is the one I'm most hung up on, it's a weighty sort of word to translate. Need a term with some history behind it, not just "story" or "tale". 'Storytime with Zelda: Link's Nap'.

I've checked the dictionary for precedence and there are words with the 'nk' construction in them, including "enk" which has it word-final, so "Link" should be fine.

m[legend] Seltha: mIunietha Link

I kind of hate it. I think I'll find an alternative for un-sleep, I think that's too on-the-nose anyway

[Fetian]

Teket Lau doesn't have relative direction terms -- no "left" or "right". Instead, direction terms are based on relativity to the sun (or the moon). So, no "left", but "to the left of the sun", no "right" but "to the right of the sun". This raises problems in situations where I need to translate a direction but don't know where the sun is going to be -- asynchronous communication being the big one (I don't know what time it is when you're reading this).

The shoulder buttons on a nintendo switch are labelled L and R for "left" and "right" (obviously). I can't just label those with directional terms because not only do I not know where the sun is, I don't know what direction your switch is facing, so I don't know where the sun would be in relation to it even if I do know what time it is when you've picked up your switch to start playing with it.

I've solved this problem in most situations by assuming that the message will be read at sunset. By making that the assumption made in asynchronous communication -- 'for the sake of communication, assume the sun in a default position'. I haven't been super happy with this solution but don't really have a better one, but also, as above, it doesn't work here. 'Assume the sun is in default position and also assume you are facing it' just turns the entire system into absolute directions and I may as well rename it all 'north', 'west', 'east', and 'south'.

I still don't have a solution for the whole mess, but in this specific case what I'm going to do is put a little sun symbol between the buttons and make that quo for Teket culture. 'Left of this sun'. Might use the symbol for the actual word 'Sun' but I think it's more in fitting with Nintendo's aesthetic to just do a little cartoon sun

[Fetian]

I ran into this when translating one of Abigail's lines in the unfinished Stardew Valley mod-

Sien láu eté rhaturé kuu ta hUilé cen etéat tii tuun kit leg tatuucén varúnia a seikét.

I'll talk to Willy and ask, "can we go the scenic route north?"

Originally

I'm gonna ask Willy if we can take the scenic route back.

The translation notes of which explain:

Usage note: Teket Lau does not have relative direction terms, and encodes relationship to the sun into absolute direction terms. I've based this translation on the assumption that Avegil and Uile will be travelling north on their return, and that Avegil will be saying this line when the sun is west of noon

[Fetian]

I was stuck for a while on deciding whether "legends" should belong in Wind's domain or Dream's -- ket culture divides stories up into these two categories, roughly but not exactly lining up as being fact or fiction. Should legends be treated as historical accounts, and therefore facts? Or should they be treated as stories the audience knows probably didn't actually happen? I couldn't decide.

But then I realised I was coming at the question wrong. It is not a question of whether all "legends" are one or the other, it's a question of what this specific "legend" is -- because obviously ketal would have a word for legends of one kind and a word for legends of another

Meet "eiva":

Screenshot_2022-08-18 Teket Lau.png

Now I'm thinking about the construction of the title (and still ruminating on how I want to translate "awakening"). It should have a verb in it, and I've now set myself up to be able to use 'eiva' as the verb -- 'this is the telling of the legend of Zelda' -- but if I do that then I can't use it as the object and therefore Zelda can't possess it. Unless I do as above, 'this is the legend-telling of the legend'. Eivasa meiva Seltha. That could work, I kind of like it. Eivasa cat Seltha, legend because Zelda. Eivasa vhir Seltha, legend covering Zelda. Eivasa at Seltha, legend for Zelda's benefit.

I'll come back to it.

[knightofcups]

Teket Lau doesn't have relative direction terms -- no "left" or "right". Instead, direction terms are based on relativity to the sun (or the moon). So, no "left", but "to the left of the sun", no "right" but "to the right of the sun". This raises problems in situations where I need to translate a direction but don't know where the sun is going to be -- asynchronous communication being the big one (I don't know what time it is when you're reading this).

The shoulder buttons on a nintendo switch are labelled L and R for "left" and "right" (obviously). I can't just label those with directional terms because not only do I not know where the sun is, I don't know what direction your switch is facing, so I don't know where the sun would be in relation to it even if I do know what time it is when you've picked up your switch to start playing with it.

I've solved this problem in most situations by assuming that the message will be read at sunset. By making that the assumption made in asynchronous communication -- 'for the sake of communication, assume the sun in a default position'. I haven't been super happy with this solution but don't really have a better one, but also, as above, it doesn't work here. 'Assume the sun is in default position and also assume you are facing it' just turns the entire system into absolute directions and I may as well rename it all 'north', 'west', 'east', and 'south'.

I still don't have a solution for the whole mess, but in this specific case what I'm going to do is put a little sun symbol between the buttons and make that quo for Teket culture. 'Left of this sun'. Might use the symbol for the actual word 'Sun' but I think it's more in fitting with Nintendo's aesthetic to just do a little cartoon sun

THIS IS SO GOD DAMN COOL.

I'm really into the idea of there needing to be a little sun symbol on anything that's going to require directional navigation.

Like, instead of a map having a compass rose, it's got the map's sun. Different projections put suns in different places.

I dunno if they even do mapping. But this is fascinating to me.

[knightofcups]

But then I realised I was coming at the question wrong. It is not a question of whether all "legends" are one or the other, it's a question of what this specific "legend" is -- because obviously ketal would have a word for legends of one kind and a word for legends of another

This is also fantastic, and I love it.

[knightofcups]

Your work on this is going to push me to go back and finish the Grammar. Which is good. I want to finish it.

I also need to draw some kind of arbitrary line at where the first volume, so to speak, ends. Because as you develop more stuff, there'll be more complicated rules.

I /think/ I should be good just adding the articles section to what I currently have, then getting you to go through the whole thing for accuracy, then making THAT Book 1. I'm going to give myself the reward of doing its layout before I do Workbook 1. Book 2 I think is going to need to be an introduction to /writing/ it, before I move on to more advanced grammar and content.

But. Finish Book 1, lay it out, make and lay out Workbook 1.

[knightofcups]

cu iulnekimen te kuu ene varusa kuu lau ket

[Fetian]

After looking into how Link's Awakening, the title, was translated into other languages, I've decided to move away from trying to translate it literally and just localise it into something that will have the same sort of meaning. So I'm going to build on a paradigm of travelling to 'other worlds', ie in a spiritual sort of sense, with terms that are also used in modern speech to talk about travelling to foreign lands.

I'm only partly doing it this way so I can translate the translation as Link's a-Walk-ening.