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Post by keef on Aug 23, 2015 21:35:21 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2015 22:37:32 GMT
Please do not die of old age before you finish. I suggest that you keep on inventing words such as "robot-wandel-apparaat" instead.
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Post by keef on Sept 11, 2015 23:11:37 GMT
Please do not die of old age before you finish. I'll try, I did three chapters in two weeks, but I don't think I can keep that up. The plan now is I'll translate every new page, and if I have time I'll do some work on the older chapters. I'll probably do some of the more important and/or beautiful chapters before the others. Sky watcher for instance. Well, robotic walking device is Tom's idea, and if you translate that literally, it would be: gerobotiseerd loop mechanisme, and that's ugly. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2015 13:48:42 GMT
I find "robot-wandel-apparaat" delightful, and I don't see how it's not a literal translation. Guessing from experience with a raspier Germanic language, "wandel-" can be translated as "walking about" and the most prevalent meaning of "device" is usually given as "Gerät" or "Apparat" in pocket dictionaries.
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Post by keef on Sept 12, 2015 21:09:38 GMT
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Post by keef on Sept 13, 2015 21:43:19 GMT
I'm not there yet, but the thing I'm already worrying about is Fire Head Girl. Vuur Hoofd Meisje is awful. Vuur Hoofd Meid sounds like a kind of parasitic spider. Vuur Kop Meid? My personal choice at the moment is Vuur Haar, or Vuur Haar Meid. Probably I'll go for the latter. edit: well it's a name of sorts, why don't I just leave it untranslated... So much easier.  |
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Post by agamjp on Sept 18, 2015 12:52:00 GMT
Nooo, don't do it! Shadow2 is a name, too. Be consistent.
Besides, thanks for this translation. Rereading GC seems a nice language exercise for me (My Dutch has been been on the "eternal beginner" level for 3 years or so due to lack of motivation)
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Post by keef on Sept 18, 2015 23:27:22 GMT
Nooo, don't do it! Shadow2 is a name, too. Be consistent. OK, fire head girl will remain untranslated.  If you notice mistakes or inconsistencies, or whatever, please say so. What is your native language? |
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Post by keef on Sept 19, 2015 12:16:13 GMT
@korba, did you consider: "Zerbrochenes Glas und andere Sachen. instead of Dinge?
It's not really important, just a feeling that "Andere Zaken" sounds better, without changing the meaning.
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Post by agamjp on Sept 21, 2015 9:51:55 GMT
Nooo, don't do it! Shadow2 is a name, too. Be consistent. OK, fire head girl will remain untranslated Erm, what I actually meant was that you shouldn't leave it untranslated. Just as you did translate Shadow2 into Schaduw2. Just as you will probably translate Broken Man (you will, right?). I'm Polish, by the way. |
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Post by keef on Sept 21, 2015 11:32:08 GMT
OK, fire head girl will remain untranslated Erm, what I actually meant was that you shouldn't leave it untranslated. Just as you did translate Shadow2 into Schaduw2. Just as you will probably translate Broken Man (you will, right?). I'm Polish, by the way. I am almost consistent I did not translate shadow 2, I did however translate Broken Man.  Maybe you hadn't noticed, but I now translate every new page on the same day it is published, since the beginning of this chapter. I didn't expect (and still don't expect) we will see the name Broken Man used very much in the comic. To me the target audience is about ten years old, and she already can read some English. |
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Post by agamjp on Sept 21, 2015 15:45:43 GMT
To me the target audience is about ten years old, and she already can read some English. This one made me smile I had a handful of arguments prepared for why what you do to these names is OH SO TERRIBLY WRONG but that´s probably just me having too much translation theory crammed up my head. I bet your target audience loves it  |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2015 18:02:20 GMT
@korba, did you consider: "Zerbrochenes Glas und andere Sachen. instead of Dinge? It's not really important, just a feeling that "Andere Zaken" sounds better, without changing the meaning. If I were a robotic translation device, I would categorically consider four prevalent German translations of "thing/things": "Sachen", "Dinge", "Zeug(s)" (on an informal level; for the record, this word originally referred to military equipment, like Latin arma), or quite frequently, a nominalized paraphrase (e.g. "that's a big thing" <-> "das ist [et]was Großes") because Germans like to pretend, although backed by a reasonable claim, that their language can match the style of Classical Greek authors. I suppose I had wanted to preserve the sound of the original as much as possible, and therefore picked the cognate. Perhaps "dingen" gives a clumsier impression in Dutch, seeing as some closely-related words, even when lexically equivalent across languages, can bear different connotations in style. For instance, where you will translate "while" as "terwijl" on most occasions without hesitation, today's German makes "derweil" sound obsolescent at best and eclectically misguided at worst. I can attest that, if "andere Ding en" were the correct German plural as it is in Dutch, I would probably have settled for "andere Sachen" instead, since the plural ending "-en" sounds quite obstructive in such a catalectic dactyl, and "Sachen" harmoniously carries over the sound of the stressed syllable "an" in a way that "Dingen" does not. |
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Post by keef on Sept 22, 2015 23:31:57 GMT
Perhaps "dingen" gives a clumsier impression in Dutch, seeing as some closely-related words, even when lexically equivalent across languages, can bear different connotations in style. For instance, where you will translate "while" as "terwijl" on most occasions without hesitation, today's German makes "derweil" sound obsolescent at best and eclectically misguided at worst. I can attest that, if "andere Ding en" were the correct German plural as it is in Dutch, I would probably have settled for "andere Sachen" instead, since the plural ending "-en" sounds quite obstructive in such a catalectic dactyl, and "Sachen" harmoniously carries over the sound of the stressed syllable "an" in a way that "Dingen" does not. I've just finished chapter 8, and I'm very tired. Seems I made the right choice, thanks for your comment. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Sept 23, 2015 1:37:07 GMT
I've just finished chapter 8, and I'm very tired. Forgive my intrusion but I wish to applaud your and @korba's efforts. I wish I could assist but I have no talent or training for languages outside of two years of ecclesiastic Latin that I barely passed... and all I remember from that is how to decline "farmer" and some particularly blasphemous and antiquated obscenities (by the four-and-twenty balls is one of my favorites). |
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Post by keef on Sept 27, 2015 15:29:40 GMT
I've just finished chapter 8, and I'm very tired. Forgive my intrusion but I wish to applaud your and @korba's efforts. I wish I could assist but I have no talent or training for languages outside of two years of ecclesiastic Latin that I barely passed... and all I remember from that is how to decline "farmer" and some particularly blasphemous and antiquated obscenities (by the four-and-twenty balls is one of my favorites). Seminary? How surprising... Maybe you can translate GKC in Latin, the Vatican will applaud it! |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Sept 27, 2015 16:53:09 GMT
Forgive my intrusion but I wish to applaud your and @korba's efforts. I wish I could assist but I have no talent or training for languages outside of two years of ecclesiastic Latin that I barely passed... and all I remember from that is how to decline "farmer" and some particularly blasphemous and antiquated obscenities (by the four-and-twenty balls is one of my favorites). Seminary? How surprising... Maybe you can translate GKC in Latin, the Vatican will applaud it! Not seminary, but I did go to a set of escalator schools pre-k-12 that were a farm for such things. That was on scholarship and for academic reasons. I could have gone on to a higher calling along with some of my classmates if I'd had such a thing but decided to go in a completely different direction instead... And even then I needed to take four years off before going on to a secular college (which I selected mostly because of its 2/3 female student body ratio and enjoyed very much). Sadly I have no talent whatsoever for languages so the Vatican must go unGK'd for now; I scraped through Latin by treating it like cryptography. I am still not sure how I managed to get the minimum passing grade of C on the oral finals in second year. If I ever master English completely (I'm a native speaker and I still learn something new occasionally without trying) maybe I'll try picking up something else as a retirement project someday. |
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Post by agamjp on Oct 2, 2015 19:45:50 GMT
Aren't all languages like cryptography? This from a PhD student of linguistics, mind you Sorry for going offtopic, I couldn't help. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Oct 2, 2015 21:40:01 GMT
Aren't all languages like cryptography? This from a PhD student of linguistics, mind you Sorry for going offtopic, I couldn't help. My personal suspicion is that not all brains are hardwired the same. Some people are natural polyglots, others monolinguists. Back in high school I can clearly remember other students talking about how they felt that they were starting to think in the other languages that they were studying; trying to do that just gave me a migraine but it did seem like it was possible, I just couldn't manage it. When I had to say something in Latin I first had to compose it in English and then mentally translate it, and then speak it using the "correct" pronunciation. Which, by the way, was some sort of odd ecclesiastical German-accented variation of classical Latin that was correct only in the minds of elderly German-American Latin teachers. Anyway, other students seemed to be able to do that without thinking about it after a period of time (beginning 6-8mo?) and I couldn't even begin to after two years even though I did the homework (which was often incredibly obscure passages from things you probably wouldn't believe got bound in books) and I was under a lot of pressure (my graduation depended on it). Neurology isn't my field but I think there is some support for this in the anecdotal stories of people who develop foreign accents after traumatic brain injuries. If you asked me for a thesis I'd guess the same area of the brain that is responsible for hearing can have structure that supports or conflicts with the formation of pathways for language. So, some people can use foreign languages as languages while people like me have to use them as codes at best. |
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Post by keef on Oct 6, 2015 11:21:28 GMT
agamjp don't worry about off-topic, it's my thread, and as long as it is about language it's ok. Not much activity on the forum anyway, and I'm on a boring train, coming home from a boring appointment. imaginaryfriend Obviously some people are born with a talent for learning languages, but it helps if you are born in a place where more than one language is spoken. My mother tongue is Frisian, I learned Dutch in kindergarten, on the streets we spoke a Saxon dialect, and the radio played English and German songs. Probably you barely heard anything but English the first part of your life. On the other hand, my spelling and grammar suck in any language. I'm very happy we have spellcheck nowadays.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Oct 7, 2015 7:20:23 GMT
Probably you barely heard anything but English the first part of your life. True. I think I remember reading that the brain learns languages easier before 8-12 and after that the pathways solidify. But I think there's more to it than that; some people just have a natural gift, some people have a harder time. On the other hand, my spelling and grammar suck in any language. I'm very happy we have spellcheck nowadays. Speller and grammar check are great but those things are not always your friends. I assume you've seen the websites devoted to epic autocorrect and speller fails? If not I can send you links. I'd hate to have to rely on that to communicate in a foreign language, I make enough mistakes in English. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2015 14:24:28 GMT
You've misspelled "Enigmarons"! Now the Earth is... doomed!
(I cannot proofread more than that, unfortunately; I don't know Dutch very much at all. If there were any other spelling mistakes, I've missed them.)
I'm also surprised that you didn't translate "spacemonauts", although I'm not sure if my solution back then ("Weltraumonauten", I think) was all that good -- should have been "Raumfahronauten", perhaps, to double down on the silliness with a redundant root.
Edit: Just a quick observation; apparently "fangs" translates to "slagtande" in Dutch ("tand" is obviously "Zahn") and "Reißzähne" in German; yet while I have never heard "Schlagzähne", both "reißen" and "schlagen" are valid jargon to describe an animal killing its prey in German, although their use is mostly reserved for birds and mammals. I wonder if Dutch can employ two different verbs here as well, and the asymmetry arose from shared foundations (as tends to happen in the comic)
Coyote tore down the Tower of Babel. You heard it here first.
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Post by keef on Oct 19, 2015 13:21:39 GMT
You've misspelled "Enigmarons"! Now the Earth is... doomed! Three times yeah, enigmatrons must have sounded scarier or something... Ill repair asap, thanks Korba. Too many. In my haste I've done a lot of the translating "on the fly", so straight into the balloons. It saves time but lacks spell-check. Good suggestion. I know almost everybody in the Dutch speaking world will understand the "Space" in spacemonauts, but not everyone may may understand its silliness. Ruimtenauten it's gonna be. "Slaan" is probably the same as the German "schlagen" here, but as I said earlier, my German is almost non-existing. Neither my Dutch etymology-book (Van Dale) nor etymology websites give an explanation, but I guess slagtanden meaning "tooth to slay a prey" sounds convincing enough to me. (edit) I just asked asked at an etymology database and they confirmed my idea  .(/edit)Why am I not surprised.... |
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Post by keef on Oct 31, 2015 21:50:48 GMT
Fifteen chapters done, thirty-eight to do. Not bad in two months. As I mentioned earlier, a general translation thread, here in the almost abandoned 'Fan Project part' of the Forum seems like a good plan. In the 'Discussion part' things move too fast, even @korba's quite recent thread has sunk to page 9. The older thread by Asuka died somewhere in 2013. Interesting in that older thread is among other things the mentioning of what I nowadays know as " overtooning" then suggested by TBeholder. It could be a way to make Gunnerkrigg.com readable in any language, without the need for external hosting of the comic. I use it sometimes to read manwha, and it works like a charm. |
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Post by keef on Nov 14, 2015 16:47:35 GMT
I skipped 16 and 17 so I could do Hoofdstuk 18 S1. It's finished; This was the most interesting page to translate:  This one was terrible though... I was planning to go back to 16 and 17 but changed plan. Hoofdstuk 30 next, because of the Jeanne storyline, and because I'm a hopeless romantic. |
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Post by keef on Dec 6, 2015 14:51:38 GMT
Chapters 1 to 18 are ready and so is chapter 30. I was almost happy with this one:  But there is always room for improvement.  @korba 's remarks got me thinking, and I ended up going trough the whole chapter again. Quite a lot of small improvements. And available as an album now. edit: And then page 1765: Jeanne's lover has something in his hand, speculation arises what it is... My money's on Jeanne's heart! - -I think it's been mentioned that her heart was trapped at the bottom of the river. Jeanne's words: "My heart was run through and left to die on the riverbed." and suddenly I realise I translated riverbed as "oever" and that's riverbank... So another attempt: Chapter 17: I'm not satisfied with the infamous "Coyote is no liar" quote, I'll probably change it when I have a better idea. As always I'm open to suggestions.  "daar zit het gevaar in" becomes "dat is juist het gevaar" daarin schuilt het gevaar. Quite literal translation, but I think Tom has a reason to be so mysterious here. "C. is not a liar. That makes him dangerous." Then, not really contradicting, but toning it down: "Just be careful with his advice." The more I read this, the less I understand... It's like Jones wants to push Annie in a certain direction in her thinking about Coyote, but deliberately keeps it vague. |
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Post by keef on Jan 3, 2016 21:59:51 GMT
Chapter 19 is ready! Here it is. The comments Tom wrote under each page this chapter are in my opinion too important to ignore. I added them to the album as captions. |
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Post by keef on Feb 2, 2016 18:50:45 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2016 6:23:06 GMT
I like that your translation is still going (although I cannot speak Dutch, and therefore not truly appreciate it). Concerning the Jeanne page, there might exist a more precise translation of "shell" than "overschot" (probably "Überrest" in German) -- "shell" suggests that something surrounding and containing her wholly was removed; "remainder" could mean any extensional debris down to dandruff. The "Coyote is no liar" line seems perfectly translated to me, as far as German can measure up to imitate Dutch ("Coyote ist kein Lügner. Darin liegt die Gefahr.") One might insert "eben" at the beginning of the second sentence so as to induce Weimar Classicism, but on the other hand, the inherent pedantry of particularisation (har, har) could overshoot the target here; Jones is an oracle, after all. Edit: I've just noticed a trifle on the recent page: "gave [...] up" (Annie's words) is not quite the same as "gave [...] away" (which is what I assume "weggegeven" means, but there can arise deceptions in assuming that the same prefix stays fixed across languages). In German I would use "aufgegeben". I've written words about your comment on Jones, but find their extent distracting from the thread at hand and have therefore encased them in computer magic: (Crossed-out eye symbol)
Incidentally, I believe that you're right in suspecting Jones of an agenda and Coyote, not the Court or Forest, as the only actual opponent to her; Jones' line here reads like a prelude to the hints dropped during their actual head-to-head confrontation ("Are we going through this again, Wandering Eye?"). For all that has happened in the comic, we still cannot know whether this world allows either the Supreme Immovable Object or the Supreme Irresistible Force to exist (let us leave aside the problem of infinite mass leading to an infinite Schwarzschild radius of said object, i.e. immediate and inevitable universal collapse to black hole: MAYBE WE'VE BEEN LIVING INSIDE THE BLACK HOLE ALL ALONG), nor whether Coyote (or the Tooth) or Jones are truly instances thereof. One might wonder if these states of existence are actually determined at all before they clash. In any case, it is not solely the inconsistency of their assumed characteristics that renders them wary of clashing openly, and not even their awareness of this dichotomy, be it by learning or by intuition, but most of all their awareness that their opponent knows this as well. Thus the equilibrium and the subsequent maneuvering in their home fields. And perhaps it is the imagination of certain key players, or the affinities they develop for the ostensible "sides" to the larger conflict (sides that Coyote drew, with Jones despite her alleged neutrality clearly preferring to ensure that the Court proceeds with its intrigues) that will somehow decide their eventual fight, which is why they strive to influence it.
Strangely, where Coyote's manipulative nature becomes undeniably apparent throughout the comic, I find it much more difficult to suspend my trust in Jones, even though there has occurred nothing at all to guarantee that she does not strategize her environment as he does. If anything, I suspect that hints to this extent have been dropped constantly, such as in her setting up Parley and Smitty -- Annie even comments on that, and there's a motive at least: Jones probably intended to select Parley as Protector of the Court and Andrew as the Court Medium; their relationship would give them a long-running mutual desire for improvement and accomplishment. Her inability to smile, although invoked for a laugh in the short term, may well have carried the secondary intent to remind the reader that her all-too-plausible neat office and human appearance serve as constant distractions from her nature, just as Coyote's Etheric appearance suggests a nature decidedly not corresponding to any animal. Note as well how just about every Ether-born creature seems to incline towards deceit (even Ysengrin, because of his armour, and Mort, although not when it concerned his own person) or possesses some hidden agenda (RotD, psychopomps).
This becomes all the more bitterly amusing when you draw the Tony parallel, because I believe that Tony has made efforts to emulate Jones in order to control something that he fears (and note that he has recently wandered the Earth as a lonely observer for a while; this is far from a passing idolization). All of these efforts, however, seem to have had harmful outcomes especially on the people he loves, and appear to alienate him from others such that they pity or resent him; I think he does not truly intend to deceive so much as to change (the deception arises because he doesn't think it through). By contrast, Jones herself induces respect on almost every occasion, although it may also mingle with a strange and turbulent admiration (Annie) or downright fear (Jack); I believe that even Surma, who allegedly hated her, felt uneasy in her presence (no way to know this, though).
To come to a conclusion: I believe that Jones is as magnificent and terrifying as Coyote, the fact of which is obscured constantly by construing a human nature around her (which might, Etherically, actually have left an imprint on her over the course and perceptions of so many years) that sometimes goes as far as to give her an air of "awkwardness" or "stoicism", and that she is much more alike him than their apparent dichotomy suggests. The more I concentrate on that thought, the more strangely her dialogue seems to fit, and the less it matters that she never gains spirals for eyes. At the very least, this suggestion renders the pages in which she appears with Eglamore in a marvellous new light, and the party hat bonus page, especially with that final comment, begins to resemble Coyote standing on a ring-bearing planet.
One last note: In Chapter 19 of your translation, I smiled at Zimmy's "Die krachtcentrale heeft alles goed verknald"; the sense, the sound and the speaker all blend exceptionally in that last word. The affinity between "Krach" and "Knall" makes it even better, although I'm not sure if the wordplay persists in Dutch (that would be grand). |
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Post by keef on Feb 4, 2016 23:40:43 GMT
I like that your translation is still going (although I cannot speak Dutch, and therefore not truly appreciate it). If you did speak Dutch, you might feel differently... "Stoffelijk overschot" = human remains. Damn. Now you got me thinking again. I might change it to "de nutteloze huls van mijn lichaam". (huls is a literal translation I just hadn't thought of). Looking back "wit heet" should be "witheet". So the page needs editing anyway. If it looks like a riddle or a prophecy, the only thing you can do is try to stay as close as possible to the words of the text. In other cases stay as close as possible to the meaning. Well, something like that. If at a later date we find out she had a specific reason to formulate it this way, we can always change it. You are right here that "weggegeven" is not a very good translation of gave up. Problem is "opgeven" in Dutch usually means admit defeat, but: "Het spijt me dat ik je opgegeven had." could mean (among other things): "Sorry I put your name on a list", or "Sorry I assumed there was no more treatment available for you", or even somewhat archaic "Sorry I threw you up" . "Weggeven" is probably closest to what Tom means. As always, I'm happy with advice or suggestions for a better translation. Interesting, but maybe move that to wild spec. There is some development in the thinking about Jones you might like. But: The ether-born, or the people of the Court, they all seem to have some kind of hidden agenda in the Gunnerverse. What you see is never what you get, on earth as it is in Gunnerkrigg Court. On the other hand, Tom was clear about Coyote's appearance. He is a god, and can look whatever he wants (and he likes to look cool). I guess it sounds better in German. Krach has only a very limited use in Dutch. |
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