Who's up for a challange

[McFrenzy]

So this is a callout for a little help.

I am publishing my first novel this coming Christmas, and it is a
fantasy book about a world where everyone does magic.

At the moment I have characters casting spells, but all we see are the
names of the spell (Spell of Translation, for example)

I would love to show my publisher a proof of concept of how the
language of magic might look.

Basically I have 2 choices. I can translate the spell into Solresol,
and simply put in the phonetic spelling, or I can try and create a
version in the stenographic script.

Id like to see what both look like, but both require I have a
translation to begin with. Problem is, I am absolutely terrible at
languages (I can hardly get English right most of the time) and I am
also flat out with editing my manuscript in any spare time I have.

There are about 15 spells in the book so far, and I only really want
to show my publisher 2 or 3.

Anyone up for some translating fun?

Here is an example of a spell in english: "Tangle the feet of the one
I point to, lifting them into the air with a force equal to their
weight".

another is "Translate the words that I hear into the language I
understand, and Translate the words that I speak into the language of
the one I address."

a last one might be simply "kill the one I point at" or "Drain all the
power from the one I touch"

As you can see, I am trying to keep the spells direct and simple. It
is very practical magic, and my idea is that solresol would be the
perfect universal language for such a society to utilise. Almost like
a programming language.

Anyway, if anyone wants to have a go, I'd be most grateful. With
Garrison's recent work on the dictionary, It should be much easier.

Thanks in advance.

Travis.

[Garrison Osteen]

I'm definitely up for that; it sounds fun :) 

One thing I'm wondering, which could have an effect on the translation (or probably not, but it'd be nice to know): are the characters commanding something (spirits etc.?) to do the magic for them, or do they have innate power to do magic in themselves? 

[Garrison Osteen]

Okay, here's what I came up with:

Translate the words that I hear into the language I

understand, and Translate the words that I speak into the language of

the one I address.

Solsol soldosol l'a ladosi mire dore domiresi fa la solresol [mire?] dore falafa, re solsol soldosol l'a ladosi mire dore domilado fa la solresol lasi la dola fa mire dore domilado.

[imperative] translate the [plural] words that I hear to the language [that?] I understand, and [imperative] translate the [plural] words that I speak to the language of the one to whom I speak.

I'm not sure if the "that" in brackets needs to be there. It would add clarity, but I'm not sure it's necessary.

I couldn't think of or find a better way to say "the one I address" besides repeating the speaking again.

I couldn't find a good word for the sense of "into", I figured just "to" would suffice.

Here's the relevant vocabulary:

Soldosol - Translate

Ladosi - Word, term

Domiresi - To hear

Solresol - Language

Falafa - To understand

Domilado - To talk, utter, speak

Dola - One, someone, another person

La - The

Mire - That

Dore - I

Solsol - Imperative

Re - and

Lasi - Of

Fa - at, to

And I scanned an image of the relevant shorthand as I thought it should be written. 

(I think that certain words when written will merge to become more natural, for instance "mire" is a word that flows nicely and starts to become it's own symbol, appearing independent of the two elements it is made up of.)

Also, at some point we should address accentation when writing with shorthand, because one cannot specify if the accent is over a vowel or a consonant. I would propose an accute one for the plural ( ' or ´ ), a long one for the feminine ( ‾ ), and a pointed one for distinguishing forms of a word ( ^ or > ) 

(I say that because while Gajewski says that  this type of accent should be prolonged, this would cause confusion if a feminine is also marked. Sudre said that a "rinforzando", or a sudden emphasis, was the way to treat these accents. In that case, a musical looking accent like either of those would be appropriate I think.)

[M O]

hahaha So I was going to say I'm game...but looks like Gar beat me to it. But wow! Good translation, Garrison! I'm surprised. You even marked plurality correctly! The Force is strong with you, young Padawan. :P

Just two things. I think that the "mire" you're unsure about should be kept because a) like you say, it makes things clearer and b) it's grammatically correct. In French it wouldn't be left out, and since French grammar has a huge influence on Solresol, my guess is that it's needed in Solresol as well.

As for translating "into," prepositions are often problematic between languages. In French, to translate into a language, either "en" (en anglais) or "dans" (dans cette langue) is used, and so in Solresol: dans = dosoldola, en = misisimi. That said, I don't see why "fa" can't be used in some cases. It's just in this particular, it makes it confusing (at least to me) in the second part of the spell where it says "l'a ladosi mire dore domilado fa la solresol" (the words that I speak to the language), it would be ambiguous. Are you translating the words into the language...or to/for the language (this doesn't make sense I guess, but the language could be sentient, I suppose, or you could be translating between two other languages for a third...).

Anyway, ultimately, as Solresol evolves and becomes more international in character, I'd like to see its preposition usage (and grammar) reflect a general consensus from among various linguistic groups and not be so stuck to French constructions.

Oh, and "to address" would be "faredo" according to the pdf. But I think "domilado" works too and would actually be clearer.

And it's cool to see the spell written out in the Solresol stenography. I had wanted to learn it before, but it didn't seem like there was any consistent way to connect symbols. Like for example, why is "solresol" a zigzag and not "_|_ " or an a T-shape? Why are the "sol" signs connected at different ends of the "re" sign?

And yeah, that's the drawback with expressing Solresol in forms other than letters...how do you mark feminine/plural in colors? on fingers? with the symbols?  I think in some instances context would make it clear, and in others clever wording - like if you mean "men" instead of "man" you could add the word for "many" or a number before "man" without marking plurality and be understood.

But I like your idea of adding small marks, like the acute accent and the ‾. I'm not sure why the form of the word needs to be marked though...

[Garrison]

Thank you! :)

(This is going to be a scattered reply to what you guys said, without much logical order)

I agree, I like the "mire" there better; clarity is the most important thing.

Also, good point on using "to". It could be a bit confusing, possibly leading the reader in the wrong direciton. I like "Misisimi" better than "dosoldola", because the latter is defined as "Intérieur, dedans - Interne - Dans, intérieurement, dedans, la-dedans", which to me gives a more concrete "I am inside of something" feel (though I could be wrong; it's all French to me). 

I really like the stenography too! I thought it looked neat (like an alien language, as Travis said :D ). I think that from what I can tell, it follows some basic rules, in no particular order:

• The different symbols must be connected if they're in the same word (and double syllables are indicated with a line going through them).
• The order should be left-to-right and up-to-down (e.g. a circle with a vertial line coming down from it is "dore", but if the line is above it then it becomes "redo".)
• There shouldn't be "loose ends" within a word, and there shouldn't be more than two symbols touching at one point (This isn't explicitly stated anywhere, but I think it's implied in the examples we have. This rule would explain why Solresol shouldn't be _|_ ) 

Otherwise, I think one has considerable freedom to write it as one pleases, though the more general rule would be "whatever is easiest".

Also, I agree, I would like to see Solresol become as independent of other languages as it can. An international community would be ideal, but ultimately I think we might find that we have to just declare things to be a certain way, using our small communities general knowledge of other languages.

And w/r/t the colors and numbers and stuff... I think that it's just assumed and allowed that a certain amount of clarity is lost (but you're writing with colors! Come on!)

I think that, although it would definitely be difficult (impossible?) to create a font for the Solresol symbols, you could probably include them in your book if each word you need was digitized individually and treated as a single character. If you had people speaking Solresol a lot, that would be really inconvenient, but if it's less than 10 or so spells I could see it working. (Also, when I see the written stenography in the context of magic, I can't help but think of runes or something, carving the spell onto an object to give it magical properties :) if that was something you did then you could describe it and provide an image that's just imbedded in the text)

Also, regarding marking the form of the word, in some cases I think that different forms of the words would need to be marked in the shorthand, for the same reasons that the accents would be necessary in speaking and writing normally (namely, clarity). Of course, in some cases they aren't necessary. Then it doesn't matter :)

Thank YOU Travis, for providing us with translation material :) And I'm happy (and I assume others are too) to help with it. (and I'll keep that in mind, that the idea and precision of the spell is more important than the English phrasing)

I'll get to working on another spell tomorrow :)

(and that'd be cool to see some of your book)

[McFrenzy]

So here is a little bit of the book:

The monster lurched toward him, hissing a challenge, but The Hen
held his ground. Waiting until it was so close he could smell its
poison, The Hen whispered the spell he had been preparing to speak
since landing.

'Solsol soldosol l'a ladosi mire dore domiresi fa la solresol dore

falafa, re solsol soldosol l'a ladosi mire dore domilado fa la
solresol lasi

la dola fa mire dore domilado'

The great four-armed beast froze, its scales turning bright red
again as it raised its claws in protection. Then the spell took hold
of The Hen's throat as firmly as if the beast itself had caught him.
He had tried to prepare himself for the side effects of the magick
after his last communication with the monsters, but it was all he
could do not to claw at his neck as his Spell of Translation twisted
the muscles in his throat.

As you can see, the spell is probably too long at the moment. I think
something much shorter, with accents for emphasis would fit the flow
and pace of the passage better.

What do you guys think?

[Garrison Osteen]

Ah, yes. I see what you mean. Here's an attempt at shortening it:

Solsol soldosol fado dore domiresi mifafare dore falafa, re solsol fasolla midolala fa la dola mire dore faredo.

[imperative] translate what I hear so that I understand, and [imperative] do the same to the one which I address.

The new vocabulary:

Fado - What

Mifafare - So that, to ensure that, with the result that

Falafa - To understand

Fasolla - To do, make

Midolala - The same

Faredo - contact, address

How's that?

[Garrison Osteen]

I see that actually the translation I just gave might not work, because it seems to imply doing something to the addressee, and not doing anything to the throat of the magic doer. So here's another attempt at accurateness and brevity:

Solsol soldosol fado dore domiresi mifafare dore falafa, re solsol remila dore la solresol lasi la dola mire dore faredo.

[imperative] translate what I say so that I understand, and [imperative] give me the language of the one which I address.

Could that work? I think that "give me the language" implies that you will be enabled to speak, thus having potential "side effects" on The Hen's throat.

New vocab:

Remila - To give

[McFrenzy]

This is actually really helping me understand the mythology of my
world. If you have Wizards writing spells to command a "force" to do
their bidding, then you want to be very specific. I'd imagine the
first magicians had quite a bit of trouble with unforeseen side
effects of their spells.

I like the second translation, but it might be even better put like
this:

"Make my ears hear and my tongue speak the langue of the the one I
address"

I think that will work, and hopefully be short enough to fit the text.

Oh, and here is another thought I had.

You know how the stenographic script uses a strike to indicate a
repeated letter? Well could we use strikethrough script in the
phonetic spelling to indicate the same.

Combined with accents it could shorten what is otherwise a language
that can look quite chaotic on the page.

Okay, gotta get back to editing.

Thank you again for this, it is too cool for words. I actually feel
now like fighting to get these in the book.

I'll get back soon with a complete list of the spells.

Travis.

[Garrison Osteen]

I like that idea of the strikethrough! I think that could look cool. Gajewski liked to use all caps to indicate a repeated syllable "SOL" for "Solsol". I think the strikethrough would look more interesting.

Here's a new one:

Solsol solfala dore falafa re domilado la solresol lasi la dola mire dore faredo.

[imperative] let (allow) me (to) understand and speak the language of the one whom I address.

I like this the best, personally; it seems most clear and concise. You could also substitute "fasolla" for "solfala", making it "make" instead of "let/allow", though I think once you start telling a powerful conscience to "make" you speak another language, you could be asking for trouble :)

As far as what you suggested... It turns out I can't seem to find a word for "ear" :) Crazy, I know.

From there I thought, well, instead of "let my ears hear (or really understand, since we can technically already hear another language)" I'll just put "let me understand". Then, of course, it seemed silly to specify the tongue since I'm already talking about me, so I came up with what you see above.

If our main concern is being clear enough so that the magic doesn't turn against us and short enough that it doesn't look awful, I think the above is fine - but ultimately your opinion (and your publisher's) is the one that matters most. So - what do you think?

[McFrenzy]

Okay, so I am going to take a page out of your book and make a
spreadsheet for this to keep it all organised.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkzrNkUlT4tBdDBqQ2V1c1Q0VGpFdlFweDNfb3AzOFE&hl=en_GB

is a link to the spells that need translating.

Lets take our time, and this should be fun.

All the English is up for grabs. Hopefully the purpose of each spell
is clear, and it is that purpose that needs to be translated, not the
words. Put any confusion in the comments and I'll try to clarify.

As each spell is done, I'll post up the section of the book that it
appears in for a final critique.

Again, I have to say, this is turning out to be better than I hoped.
If you say the solresol, it really sounds like a magic spell.

Thank you to anyone who is up for helping with this, and especially
Garrison who started the ball rolling.

Travis.

[Travis Mckenzie]

Some stenographic script that I had a student of mine do. She has some cool calligraphy skills.

What do you think?

Will try and live trace them with Adobe Illustrator and see what a vector version looks like. This is just the first version of the spell BTW. 

I like the ide of treading each word as a letter... it may be possible to build a font this way, but i'm not sure.

[Garrison Osteen]

That looks really neat; I was thinking we would need some sort of calligraphy style thing if you were going to put it on a map.

One thing worth noting, that you should tell her - she needs to take care not to angle the curves. For instance, the seventh letter (last one on the first line) should be a circle (do), upper-half-of-a-circle (mi), vertical line (re), upward slanting line (si). With the calligraphy, although it looks cool, it's starting to look more like circle (do), upward line (si), vertical line (re), upward line (si). Same with "domilado" (the last one, though it appears earlier too). It's the upper half of the circle (mi) starts to look like to symbols - the upward line and vertical line. Again, with "mire" (the upper half of a circle and vertical line) (which I realized was bordering on being unclear in my writing too), it needs to be a pronounced upward curve, not a line (and not a downward curve either). 

That's just a kind of unique problem with the stenography of Solresol. Letters of written language really only rely on their differences to make them distinct. We can change things a lot until they start looking like another letter (a capital U can do a lot of things, but if it gets too pointed it begins to look like a V, and if the left side gets to short it starts to look like a J, etc.). So with Solresol one really can't give things stylistic angles as one can in most other languages, because it begins to look like other characters.

Just something to keep in mind. It looks really nice though :)

[M O]

Wow! So much has been going on in the group these past few days! Welcome to the new members! I haven't read through everything quite yet but some notes:

“Solsol soldosol fado dore domiresi” I’m not sure “fado” alone here is right…but in this instance, it seems okay and I have no strong objections against using it.

Also, alternatives to "mifafare" are "miresolsol" (afin que) or "mido" (pour).

 

“solsol remila dore la solresol” I’d rather “solsol remila fa dore la solresol” because this way you clearly mark the indirect object and don’t have to rely solely on word order.

 

“Solsol solfala dore falafa” = For these kinds of imperative constructions, I think you need to mirror the subjunctive construction used in French (but other Romance languages as well). So “Solsol solfala mire dore falafa” or simply “mire dore falafa” (that I may understand!/may I understand!)

 

Ear is “domiresi” :D

[Garrison Osteen]

I was wondering about using 'fado' there. In English and Esperanto the question word is used as a non-question word in situations like that. Would 'mire' work there? 'Mire' seems to be the most common word for that type of usage (I'm not sure what to call it), but it doesn't seem right here either. 

Anyway, for that spell we eventually settled on 

"Solsol solfala dore falafa re domilado la solresol lasi la dola mire dore faredo." 

(Let me understand and speak the language of the one whom I address), which is most clear and simple anyway (let us know if you see something wrong with it).

I'm wondering about "mifafare" and "miresolsol"... they seem redundant. Shouldn't they be one word? Or is there some subtlety that distinguishes them? If there's no major difference between them I think we should merge them and open up a space to be redefined.

You're definitely right on specifying the indirect object with 'Fa'. I'll remember that advice :)

That does look better with the subjunctive; I think it's like that (or similar) in Spanish as well. But are you saying that we could eliminate the "Solsol solfala" and just start the sentence as "Mire dore falafa re domilado la solresol..."?

I found 'ear' eventually :) I added it to the dictionary; I missed it somehow.

[M O]

A relative pronoun :)

Here's what I think. I think your translation is fine for the most part. I just don't like the part "Solsol solfala dore..." because while word order works in English, it doesn't work in other languages. In Spanish, for example, you'd have to use either "dejar" and an object pronoun ("Dejame hablar") or "dejar" + "que" + the subjunctive ("Deja que te ayude"). So, my point is that I feel like you should either add "mire" - so "solsol solfala mire dore..." - or treat "dore" like an object pronoun...which is a little more messy since "dore" would be translate both as "I" and "me." My guess then, would be to add "fa" before it and make it dative, like in Esperanto ("Permesu al mi...")

"But are you saying that we could eliminate the "Solsol solfala" and just start the sentence as "Mire dore falafa re domilado la solresol..."?"

Yeah, I'd think you could just leave out the beginning, because the "mire" at the beginning would signal that it's a subjunctive clause, and so it would mirror constructions like "long live the king!" (third person imperative - I think) or "may he live a long and prosperous life." (And similarly in other languages - Vive la France, ¡Que viva México!, etc.)

[Garrison]

I think you're definitely right about just starting it with "mire", Gajewski actually talks about doing that. 

I'm starting to get the hang of thinking about the subjunctive in the way that it should probably be. Also, somehow I wrote a reply before fully grasping/reading your reply, so somewhere after that I think I realized what you were saying about the subjunctive and I changed it in our spreadsheet. So I think I've understood you now :)

So we've got:

"Solsol solfala mire dore falafa re domilado la solresol lasi la dola mire dore faredo."

or

"Mire dore falafa re domilado la solresol lasi la dola mire dore faredo."

Although personally I like the look of the first one better, I'm thinking that maybe in this case we should go with the second, to give the appearance of the spells more variety to a non-Solresol speaker, because this format isn't going to work in most of them (I think). Also it's shorter :)

Thanks for all your input, Matt :) It's really very helpful for my learning. Solresol at first can give the impression that it's just a substitution cipher, so I have to keep reminding myself that it has it's own rules (or at least that it's a cipher of another language :P ). That's why it's wonderful to have a small community around :)

(incidentally - any ideas on the "mifafare" and "miresolsol" thing I mentioned?)

[Travis Mckenzie]

You guys are awesome.

No idea what you are talking about half the time, but I sure do appreciate it none the less. I explained all this to my publisher, and he said it all sounded pretty cool.

 

Travis.

--
Here is the copy of my soul I uploaded to google. Come and say hello. It is fully interactive.

[Garrison]

No problem :)

I'm glad your publisher likes it - I was worried he might crush all our dreams :)

[M O]

Yeah, Travis, you sound like you lucked out with your publisher. Usually it seems like they try to restrict other languages in books.

@Gar, yeah I like the first one better too, I think.

"(incidentally - any ideas on the "mifafare" and "miresolsol" thing I mentioned?)"

Nope :P

[Garrison Osteen]

What would you think of combining them into one word and redefining the other later? I think these are situations that we have the right to take into our own hands. After all, writings about Solresol (specifically I'm thinking of Gajewski) are all like "Suppress synonyms!" "Two words shouldn't have the same meaning!" etc.