Friday, September 19

Why not Dal'thori

Thori'dal, not Dal'thori... I was wondering why... Dal'thori - Fury of the Star... But wait, it's Stars' Fury, where dal should be in plural.
Could it be that the plural makes the order different? I guess it's the case in Thalassian.

thori - fury
dal (kal in Darnassian) - star, also mage

noun1'noun2 translated as:
- 'noun2 to noun1' (noun1: thori, noun2: dal) if noun1 is singular
- 'noun1:s' noun2' (noun1: dal, noun2: thori) if noun1 is plural

11 comments:

John said...

Except sin'dorei, "children (or people) of the blood," where children/people is definitely a plural (noted by the ending). However, it's being used as a collective noun, which might make it singular for these purposes.

doqunbop said...

exactly ;)

Anonymous said...

could also be adjective placement/structure in the thalassian language (adj->noun, similar to spanish)

thori'dal= "fury of the stars" would be proper literal translation, while practical translation would be "stars' fury"

Anonymous said...

to add to my previous comment, John's comment actually substantiates my own.. "sin'dorei" translates to "children of the blood", not "blood children". Using this model, it's logical that thori'dal would translate into "fury of the stars."

Kaka said...

Interesting text. You have a nice blog. Keep it up!

Anonymous said...

When it comes to possessives in languages that are not English, being translated into English... HOW it translates is largely an aesthetic choice. (--- of the --- or ---'s ---- are the SAME thing)

First and foremost, I believe "Children of the Blood" to be a purely poetical translation of the literal "Blood Elves". (I use 'literal' loosely there. I should say, the common translation.)

With other elven languages, the standard is "....'people"

Cala'quessir = High Elves.
Mord'quessir = Dark Elves.
N'tel'quess = "Not of the People"

You see this standard repeated in Azeroth:

"...'dorei" is basically "People" ("Elves"). Sin - Blood. Quel - High. Kal - Night.

So, we have to assume that the 'literal translation is "Children/People of the Blood/Good*/Night" OR (and also correct) Blood's, Good's, Night's People/Children. (Elves across worlds in the fantasy genre generally refer to themselves as The People. In most mythologies of fantasy settings, they were the first people.)

* in non-Azerothian elven languages, "quel" means good.

There is a certain mentality needed when translating a 'foreign' language into English. Straight translations lose much of the nuance of the cultural implications.

Anonymous said...

To address "Thori'dal" versus "Dal'thori":

I believe it SHOULD be "Dal'thori" - Stars'fury of.

There are two explanations I could think of as to why Blizzard would phrase it "Thori'dal" -

1) They are practicing bad grammar by having no real linguistic structure in mind when they name items. This is most likely.

2)Structure for Naming is different. Again, we encounter a 'unique' example, making it harder to pin down Thalassian's possessive ruleset. "Sin'dorei" MUST follow the naming pattern of the other elven people. In this case, perhaps Thori'dal is phrased in such a way as to be a Proper Noun. If, however, you were writing a song and NOT talking about THE Thori'dal, you would use dal'thori to represent "stars' fury/fury of the stars".

doqunbop said...

Hello, Role Craft! Thank you for your input, your comments are interesting and making me re-think some of the translations.

Of course, I've thought too that Blizzard don't really have any real linguist for the mythical languages, which makes the whole translating a lot harder, and maybe even quite pointless. Anyway, it's fun, and it's still possible to logicaly translate single words in some phrases otherwise not translated.

In case of Thori'dal, as I said in the topic, I do believe that the words are switched to indicate that the noun is plural, and not singular, like in many other phrases.

Yanile Valantier said...

This is All intriguing work and if you would not mind i would love to collate this data with other sources to further my research (later to be returned in kind i am sure) :D

What we need is to send lots of letters to blizzard demanding an 'expert' if one could apply that term to a blizzard lore designer ( though im sure they deserve a better title like,, God if they can assist us in crafting a full and working language)

To do exactly that and club together with blizzard to finally craft a working model of the thalassian Language.

justin said...

with all due respect, it seems as if you do not study language? :) the word order could simply be a matter of syntax

doqunbop said...

I don't study language, but I can speak 4 very different languages and have examined another language more closely (real life languages).

While the word order *might* not matter, it does matter in many languages, especially it's more common among the more complex ones, which I assume Thalassian belongs to.

The research is based on quite a few logical assumptions, which I stick to while not proven wrong, and test to see if these assumptions aren't wrong in any case. You're free to prove me wrong - but only with help of facts and research, not plain words.

Best regards,
doqunbop