Wahawafe - a multilingual translation project

[Nikhil Sinha]

Hi!
Thank you very much for your translation! :-) but, could you please
rewrite this using the inclusive form of we? Quite a few people have
thought of aliens because of the line "from Earth". So, i have
mentioned on my site that this project is only for humans and you
should use the inclusive form. Sorry for the trouble!
Thanks again! :)
Nikhil.

On 09/08/2011, Ingvild Roald <iroald at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> As I suppose the sentence is something you could use if you were to meet
> extraterrestrials, I have chosen to use the exclusive but extensive 'we',
> and the Norwegian SL-sentence would translitterate something like 'humans we
> yes, live Earth we yes', where the 'we' is 'all of us here, but not you'. I
> am not a 'native' signer, and cannot guarantee that this would be the best
> way of putting it in Norwegian SL, but I think it would do. The sign-text is
> a screen dump. as I always have problems with the SignText in combination
> with e-mail
>
> Ingvild
> Roald, Norway
>
>> Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:28:57 +0530
>> From: nik.azn at GMAIL.COM
>> Subject: Re: Wahawafe - a multilingual translation project
>> To: SW-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACOLLEGE.EDU
>>
>> Hi! I don't claim that my sentence will not cause any problem in
>> translation. I accept that languages are really different from one
>> another to come up with an easily translatable and meaningful
>> sentence. However, this sentence can be satisfactorily rendered in
>> most languages, at least spoken ones. I don't have much idea of sign
>> language grammars.
>> You should use the version of "we", which includes the maximum number
>> of people. If there is a difference between inclusive and exclusive
>> "we", then use the inclusive one. Both the we's refer to the same
>> group of people. If it's not possible to say the whole thing in one
>> sentence, you can break this into two, by dropping the "and".
>> Nikhil.
>>
>> On 31/07/2011, Trevor Jenkins <bslwannabe at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Valerie Sutton
>> > <sutton at signwriting.org>wrote:
>> >
>> > Nikhil needs the translations in written SIGN LANGUAGES, not spoken
>> >> languages!
>> >
>> >
>> >> I am not an ASL expert, or I would do the translation myself in ASL. I
>> >> actually do not how to sign that phrase in ASL, so that is why I was
>> >> waiting
>> >> for someone who knows ASL to do the translation for NIkhil in
>> >> ASL...written
>> >> in SignWriting.
>> >>
>> >
>> > I'm in a similar situation with BSL. I'm increasing fluent in its use
>> > but
>> > not a native speaker. However, I am fluent in English yet I don't know
>> > how
>> > to understand the phrase:
>> >
>> >
>> >> "We are humans and we are from Earth."
>> >>
>> >
>> > How many are the "we"s? English, plus I guess many (all?) of the spoken
>> > languages given here as exemplars, the first person plural is
>> > uncountable.
>> > It would be possible to translate it into Swedish with "vi" and still
>> > obscure the number of participants. In BSL, at least, the first person
>> > plural is countable; up to four maybe five even 10. It is signed
>> > differently
>> > depending on the number of participants. For example, if "we" consists
>> > of me
>> > and my wife then I sign that slightly different from me, my wife, and
>> > you
>> > (Valerie), plus the physical proximity of the "we" one to another would
>> > change the sign(s) needed. However these small groups are signed
>> > entirely
>> > differently from "we" as the subscribers to this list (if all of us
>> > happened
>> > to be assembled in one locale).
>> >
>> > The presence of the "and" indicates that the second "we" is a distinct
>> > different group from the first but with the speaker (signer) a member
>> > of
>> > both groups. There is a famous phrase that exemplifies the same problem
>> > "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." In this case
>> > the
>> > AND is a transliteration from the source language but its inclusion
>> > creates
>> > an ambiguity that is not in the original. If that second "we" of the
>> > sample
>> > sentence were to refer to me, my wife and my dog then the "and" is
>> > vital.
>> >
>> > There's also a BSL issue here. We have no sign for AND. There are ways
>> > to
>> > indicate that two things are connected but not immediately.
>> >
>> > The "from" affects the translational choices too. Where is this
>> > discourse
>> > dislocated sentence being transacted and how did the various "we"s
>> > arrive
>> > there, or were "we" there from the beginning. Similarly the actors to
>> > whom
>> > this phrase is being relayed are they from somewhere else coming to the
>> > "here" or were they there from the beginning. This information will
>> > change
>> > how the sentence can be translated.
>> >
>> > It's not that the sentence is un-translatable *per se* but that rather
>> > it is
>> > not context free as Nikhil claimed somewhere (possibly on his web site).
>> > At
>> > least for BSL, context is required otherwise the processing costs in
>> > the
>> > sense of Relevance Theory is astronomically high. Without the enclosing
>> > context it isn't really possible to provide a BSL translation.
>> >
>> > Regards, Trevor.
>> >
>> > <>< Re: deemed!
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> निखिल सिन्हा | Nikhil Sinha
>> nik.azn at gmail.com
>> www.wahawafe.zxq.net - Wahawafe - a multilingual translation project.
>> "We are humans and we are from Earth." in several languages.
>>
>  		 	   		


-- 
निखिल सिन्हा | Nikhil Sinha
nik.azn at gmail.com
www.wahawafe.zxq.net - Wahawafe - a multilingual translation project.
"We are humans and we are from Earth." in several languages.