Landis963 Posted October 15, 2015 Report Share Posted October 15, 2015 (edited) Hey all, I'm looking to use Spook's dialect as the inspiration for a fictional language, but I'm not sure where exactly to ask this question so here goes: How exactly is Spook's dialect, "High Imperial," rendered in languages other than English? Italian would probably be preferred (as that's the cultural basis for the race that would get this language) but really, any language you can provide input on would be greatly appreciated. EDIT: I removed the reference to the audiobook, as it's not strictly necessary for my purposes. Edited October 16, 2015 by Landis963 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sera Posted October 15, 2015 Report Share Posted October 15, 2015 I'm confused about the audiobook part. Do you wish to hear the audiobook passage or something? The thing is, as far as I know, an audiobook is directly based on the book. The dialogue won't change, if you get your hands on the book translation, you should have the equivalent to the audiobook. Other than English I have only the book version, and it's in Portuguese. It has shared roots with Italian, thus might be of some help. If you feed the text to Google Translate you can listen to a more or less okay pronunciation—though the speaker is tremendously sluggish. Examples from The Final Empire: Chapter 24English: "Niceing the not on the playing without." (Spook)Portuguese: "Favor não brincar sem." (Spook) En: "Losing the stress on the nip. Notting without the needing of care." (Kelsier)Pt: "Perdendo força do aperto. Sem necessidade de cuidado." (Kelsier) En: "Riding the rile of the rids to the right." (Spook)Pt: "Enredar o enredo dos desembaraços do direito." (Spook) En: "Wasing the was of brightness. Nip the having of wishing of this." (Spook)Pt: "Sendo o ser da brilhanteza. Cortar o ter de querer isso." (Spook) En: "Ever wasing the wish of having the have." (Kelsier)Pt: "Sempre tendo que fazer isso." (Kelsier) They dropped the accent in the translation. I have no clue of where "wasing" comes from, no odd word equivalent was used in the translation. Some sentences read as unintelligibly as in English, others, due the different language structure, make perfect sense (e.g.; "Sem necessidade de cuidado.") and could be used in a formal context, sounding slightly terse at worst. It happens because our verbs inflections are a little more complex than English's. Our verbs make the pronouns implicit, allowing you to drop many of them* in Portuguese. I'm almost sure the same thing happens in Italian. *usually done at the beginning of the sentence, mostly for "I" and "you". We don't need to say "I like you", or "Did you see that?", we can say "Eu gosto de você" and "Você viu isso?". 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Landis963 Posted October 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2015 The main point is I'll be GMing, and therefore will need to speak this language (or fake it well enough for a group of player characters). The audiobook, while not necessary, would be helpful in that regard. Thanks very much for the Portuguese translations, BTW. It's amazing how intelligible google translate finds them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yata Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 The High Imperial in Italian: Chapter 24English: "Niceing the not on the playing without." (Spook)Portuguese: "Favor não brincar sem." (Spook) It: "Con la gente così giocare senza essendo bello" En: "Losing the stress on the nip. Notting without the needing of care." (Kelsier)Pt: "Perdendo força do aperto. Sem necessidade de cuidado." (Kelsier) It: "A te preoccupando non è il dovere. La pena del valore essendo senza" En: "Riding the rile of the rids to the right." (Spook)Pt: "Enredar o enredo dos desembaraços do direito." (Spook) It: "Il tuo segno del cogliere pensando è a me" En: "Wasing the was of brightness. Nip the having of wishing of this." (Spook)Pt: "Sendo o ser da brilhanteza. Cortar o ter de querer isso." (Spook) IT: "L'intelligenza della prova a lui è volento. Il desiderio nel agire così il suo dimostrando è. En: "Ever wasing the wish of having the have." (Kelsier)Pt: "Sempre tendo que fazer isso." (Kelsier) It: "Il suo sempre essere così è" To me the High Imperial it's like Old Italian (like Dante Alighieri) but with a bit of Master Joda (switch the order ot the words in the sentences). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sera Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 (edited) Landis, there's only a problem here: there might be no italian audiobook. The market varies from country to country. I.e.: Physical books are still pretty strong in my country, and you can see some ebooks now, but audiobooks are a rarity. There is no audiobook for Mistborn, actually, Mistborn is still being translated! They didn't release Hero of Ages yet, hah. I also suspect there might be restrictions to posting pieces of the audio—it's different than quoting text, it'd be an actual file. Not sure about the staff's views on this. Hence the suggestion to use the listen function in Google's Translate, so you get to listen the transcriptions Yata kindly provided. I can't speak for the quality of the Italian audio there, seems a bit slow. You might want use another text-to-audio, e.g.: http://imtranslator.net/translate-and-speak/speak/italian/ (I'm using Portuguese as my basis, it's okay and with the right cadence; italian might be. I'm no italian, after all.) Oh, and since you're building a dialect, this link might be of some interest. It's the annotation by Brandon for this chapter, with the meaning of the quoted conversation (except last line, I didn't transcribe it). I'm impressed by the Italian translation, it seems they referred back to these annotations to ensure the underlying meaning of the exchange wasn't lost in the translation. Edited October 17, 2015 by Sera Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yata Posted October 17, 2015 Report Share Posted October 17, 2015 Sorry Landis I didn't understand that you need the pronunciation. I made this little audio file with the speaked version of the previous sentences. they are in the same order and at the beginning I say it's number. I have sore throat today, therefore don't pay no attention to the voice please XD https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5CxVzPLZ0CpMGVlRE1CTnR5Zk0/view?usp=sharing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Landis963 Posted October 18, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2015 (edited) I'm not a native Italian speaker (obv.) so I'll be kludging the accent a bit anyways. (The audiobook thing continues to be confusing and unnecessary... ) Thanks so much for your help! EDIT: I do have a basic idea of how the vowels sound and such (even before listening to your file, thanks again for that BTW), so I at least have a starting point. (Go go gadget 2-semesters-of-College-French!) Edited October 18, 2015 by Landis963 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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