[gothic-l] Translating the New Testament into Gothic

Thu Jan 8 19:44:44 UTC 2015

Dear Basti, 

 I have not read all of your translated verses, but I can offer a few comments on the first line.

 1) qiman can take either 'du' (+dat.) or 'at (+dat.):

 ni manna mag qiman at mis, nibai atta saei sandida mik atthinsith ina (J6,44)

 jabai hwana thaursjai, gaggai du mis jah drigkai (J7,33)

 What difference in nuance there was between these two prepositions I have not yet been able to establish.

 A third possibility is 'atgaggan du':

 ni atiddja nauhthan du im Jesus

 2) I would recommend using "izwis brothrum" rather than "izwis, brothrjus." When a noun stands in apposition to a pronoun of address, the vocative is not used, as far as I can tell; rather, the noun takes the same case as the pronoun:

 e.g. wai thus Bethsaidan! (Mt11,21) 'woe to you Bethsaida!' (the name is in the dative here as is the pronoun)

 thu ahma! (Mk9,25) 'O you spirit!' (the noun is in the nom. as is the pronoun)

 The example that you cite does not conform to this pattern, for only the possessive adjective used there, not a pronoun of address:

 mith ahmin izwaramma, brothrjus (Gal6,18)

 3) "in lofty words and wisdom": I have not looked at the Greek original, but the New Oxford translation renders the phrase as just given. The simple dative case is normally used to render the sense 'in' = 'by means of, through.'

 4) "wisdom": There is no independent Gothic word "weisei" extant (although that element is found in hindarweisei 'guile'). "Sophia" is usually rendered by 'handugei.'

 Edmund

---In Gothic-L at yahoogroups.com, <setiez at ...> wrote :

 I examined verse 1, which at first glanced seemed alright:
 1 Jah ik qimands du izwis, broþruns jah swistruns, ni qam bi maht waurdis aiþþau weisein, merjands du izwis weitwodein Gudis.

 > 1. Jah ik qimands

 qimands -> qumans (past participle in Greek)

 > du izwis,

 Nom's dictionary: 'with verbs meaning "GO", and with ga-qiman "come together to") du +dat.; (COME) qiman at +dat.'
 Here, it says ".. having come to you ..", so I think "at" is better.
 ἔρχομαι + πρὸς ὑμᾶς: 1 Cor 16:5.

 > broþruns jah swistruns,

 I do not know the grammatical rules for this but, as in Galatians 6:18 even though they are dative in the sentence, they are addressed in nominative.  "broþrjus"  (which was understood to include the sisters)

 > ni qam bi maht waurdis aiþþau weisein, merjands du

 merjan seems to be used mostly without "du". (1 Cor 15:1; 2 Cor 11:7)

 > izwis weitwodein Gudis.

 With my changes:
 1. Jah ik qumans at izwis, broþrjus, ni qam bi maht waurdis aiþþau weisein, merjands izwis weitwodein Gudis.

 /Basti

 On Thursday, January 8, 2015 12:12 AM, "Dicentis a roellingua at ... [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 I did an attempt at translating Corinthians 1, chapter 2, one of the 2 missing parts of Corinthians 1. Please, give your opinion on my translation: 

 1 Jah ik qimands du izwis, broþruns jah swistruns, ni qam bi maht waurdis aiþþau weisein, merjands du izwis weitwodein Gudis. 
 2 Ni auk ik gawalida kunnan waiht bi þuk inuh Iesu Xristu, jah sah ushramiþs. 
 3 Jah ik in unhailja jah ogjands jah reirands was miþ þus; 
 4 jah waurd mein jah ik haitands ni was in gakunda mannan weiseiwaurde, ak in taikneina ahmins jah mahteis; 
 5 ei galaubeins izwara ni sijai in weisein manne, ak in mahta Gudis. 
 6 Iþ weisei rodjam bi usfullidedans; iþ weisei ni fram þamma iona, nih reikinonde þis ionis manne inuh maht. 
 7 Iþ rodjam weisei Gudis in runa, ains affilhands, saei Guþ satida faura ionam faur wulþu unsarana; 
 8 saei ni manna reikinone unsaraize þis ionis kunþa. Eis auk kunþedun, ni waurþi Frauja wulþaus ushramidedun. 
 9 Akei swa gameliþ ist, Saei augon ni saƕ, jah auson ni hausida, jah in hairtin mans ni urraisida ƕa Guþ satida þaim frijonds Ina.
 10  Iþ du unsis Guþ andhulida þairh ahman seinana. Ahma auk sokida allos waihts, jah diupos waihts Gudis. 
 11 Saei kuneiþu waihts mans, inuh ahman mans, saei in imma? Swa jah waihts Gudis ni manna kuneiþ, inuh ahman Gudis.
 12 Iþ weis, ni ahman fairƕaus andnemum, ak ahma, ahma fram Guda, ei kunnaima waihts þairh Guþ gibanos du unsis.
 13 In þammei jah weis ni rodjam laisida þairh waurda weiseins manne, ak þairh waurda laisida weihos ahmins; in ahmeinaim haidum ahmeinos waihts fraþanos. 
 14 Iþ manna ni andnimiþ þata ahmins Gudis; Dwalos Imma sind, ja ni mag ins kunnan, ahmeinaba auk gasokidai sind.
 15 Iþ ahmeina gasokeiþ alls, aþþan is ni manna gasokeiþ. 
 16 ƕas muneis is gakunneiþ? ƕas laiseiþ ina? Weis ahman Xristaus habam.

 2015-01-07 22:21 GMT+01:00 Dicentis a <roellingua at ... mailto:roellingua at ...>:
 Hi Basti, 

 Well they aren't just 3 chapters, but 4 which need to be completed in fact.

 So far I have this:

 1 John part 2 = complete
 2 John = complete
 3 John = complete

 Still has to be done:

 1 John part 1
 1 John part 3
 1 John part 4
 1 John part 5

 I found out in this translation project at this Gothic-l list which you referred me to, of which I didn't know before, that more is even translated than I thought when I started this. This means that a lot of work of Romans doesn't need to be done anymore.

 Does anyone have contact information of the user Thiudans and ask him, if we have completed a new testament, how he wants to be mentioned for his work? If he can't be contacted, we'll just use thiudans. Maybe when we are finished Basti can ask his christian congregration if they would like to publish a full New Testament in Gothic, it would be a great contribution to the Gothic material. Most of us can't publish books, so we'll still need to look for someone willing to publish the end-result, and a good idea would be to improve certain parts after the first publication and have new editions of the book with corrections and improvements.

 I can try see if we can get a nice Gothic font for an edition in the future. For the free online edition we could use a font of Robert Pfeffer, which are free to use for non-profit works, if we'll get it published as a hardcover (which will have some extras which the free version doesn't have), we'll look later at which font we'll use and how. We could for example have left-page Latin transliteration and right-page Gothic alphabet text, or maybe we do the same as Streitberg and just use the Latin transliteration, however that isn't faithful to the original Gothic, or we only use the Gothic alphabet. We could include a page in the front which explains how to read the Gothic alphabet with some words to practice, in order to help people which don't know the Gothic alphabet to read it.

 2015-01-07 15:26 GMT+01:00 Weidemyr Basti setiez at ... mailto:setiez at ... [gothic-l] <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com mailto:gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>:

 Yes Roel,
 the goal of these translations was, originally, to expand the amount of Gothic text available so that it becomes easier to immerse oneself in Gothic. If we required that all translations must be from high-quality source texts and be of scholarly quality, I am afraid we wouldn't even get one chapter translated. I look forward to reading the last three chapters of 1 John!

 /Basti

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