Short, snappy posts mean that I am busy but also posting quickly when possible. I hope that this is OK.
I want to show what Alan Moore did with a fictional language because it could be applied to dialogue in sf films. Someone who learned enough of a fictional language might be able to dispense with subtitles. On the other hand, since Poul Anderson told us only a few words or phrases of Planha and Eriau and none of Temporal, these would have to be written by someone else and therefore would not be the work of Anderson himself. I suppose that fully authentic screen adaptations of Technic History stories should not add anything and therefore should just present the dialogue of Ythrians and Merseians in English.
These are extracts only, from Moore's Swamp Thing, with my attempted translations.
p. 10, full page panel
Alanna: ADAM! Duss Maol Qu? (Adam! How are you?)
p. 11, panel 1
Alanna: ADAM? Adam ililoc ba! (Adam? Adam speak to me!)
(Sarnath tells Masmat to go and bring a vehicle called a "glispin" here, then to use it to take him, Adam, to the city of Ranagar. Masmat assents.)
p. 11, panel 2
Sarnath: Duss moal olt? (How is he?)
Alanna: Faor apic-zeta faor hoord ol? (Has the zeta-beam harmed him?)
(I am having to skip past some sentences.)
p. 11, panel 3
Sarnath: Ba thom ESESSU. Apic-zeta tho faor BREMEL ol hoord, claab... (You are not correct. The zeta-beam has not done any harm to him...)
Adam Strange: Green... splashed through it... deep green...
Alanna: SARDATH-CHO! OL ILIOC! Ol ililoc Inglish! Fao ol...? (Sardath! He speaks! He speaks English! What is he...?)
p. 11, panel 4
Sarnath: VIER! GLISPIN doh rette! (See! The "glispin" comes here.)
Alanna: Iu, Adam... (Oh, Adam...)
p. 11, panel 5
Masmat: Bas glispin hege, Sardath-chat. (The "glispin" is here, Sarnath.)
Sarnath: Ael! (Good.) (I cannot interpret his next sentence.)
Alanna: Fao thom hoord ol... (That he is not hurt...)
p. 11, panel 6
Alanna: Iu, Sardath-cho...Faori ol ael-fao? (Oh, Sardath... Will he be alright?)
Sardath: SASSU, Alanna. Sassu... (Wait, Alanna. Wait...) (Or something like that.)
I hope that this conveys something. It is a bit tedious, especially trying to reproduce the melodramatic comic strip punctuation. I would like to quote some more of Moore's dialogue because it suggests what might be done. On the other hand, the pictures, which I cannot reproduce here, supplement the words whereas a prose writer works only with words.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
What I regret is how Poul Anderson never gave us a paragraph or two of the Anglic spoken and read in Dominic Flandry's time. I tried my hand at writing a paragraph like that.
Ad astra! Sean
It's often more effective to hint at things; besides which, really inventing a language involves real scholarship -- Tolkien did it, and very well, but he was a professional linguist and extremely multilingual.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. So we have to settle for hints like Flandry telling Aycharaych in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS how he, the Terran, had read a TRANSLATION of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrumemt."
Ad astra! Sean
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