Sid Meier's Civilization 5 - In Aramaic! ... Well part of it.

So, a while back I took a rather elaborate translation job by a voice acting company who wanted to translate a large amount of dialog from English into Imperial Aramaic so that Darius The Great of Persia could speak in his native tongue for a video game. After it was done, I tried emailing them back a few times to find out how the work was used and if I could get some samples from the voice actor they used to no avail...

(Darius being a bit cocky during his introduction. :-) )

You should have seen my shock when I came across Darius speaking those very lines I translated in a YouTube video for Civilization 5 released back in September. Talk about ultimate geek street-cred.

It was a project fraught with perils that only William Fulco could understand. :-)

Darius' native tongue was Old Persian, but Aramaic was sort of his "hobby language" of which he had enough enthusiasm for to make it the official language of the western half of his empire and the vehicle of international commerce. It was a language that he, himself, did a good deal of correspondence in.

I started working from actual documents that he sent, using the greetings and partings, and for some of the more modern lines I had to get a bit creative, even re-writing them to things that were more period-appropriate. When it was all said and done, I packaged everything together in sound files to give the voice actor something to go by as well as a little pep-talk about its historical significance.

He seems to have done it justice. :-)


...


And now the ironic bit?

I'm *horrible* and I mean *absolutely horrible* at Civ... :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Peter Rabbit Almost Done

So, recapping what anyone might have missed: I'm in the middle of translating The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter into early Galilean Aramaic, typeset in a printed form of Herodian script in an effort to provide reading material for my young daughter as she learns the language, herself. My students at DARIUS have also taken a liking to it and it seems to have some novelty appeal.

At this point, I nearly have all of the text of the original book completed with just a few of the most lengthy pages remaining. I have also made very minimal use of coining phrases to express modern ideas. Huzzah!

However, the most interesting question that I am facing now is, "Who would be interested in publishing this?" which I must admit is quickly followed by "Forget that, who could I possibly ask to edit or review this?" :-)

It does pose quite a problem. How many people would have the necessary experience, let alone be willing to take the time to edit or review such an odd endeavor in preparation to submit a manuscript to a publisher?

I'd also love to have someone to chew over some quandaries I've had together, such as, "Would rav or mar be more appropriate as Mr. MacGregor's title?" and "What do other people think about how I've rendered the occasional onomatopoeia?" or "In the greater context, do any of these issues actually matter?" :-)

In any case, once it's in a presentable form I'll post here again with an update. Then, onto some self-editing and making some further decisions about orthography before figuring out where to go from there.

Peace,
-Steve

The Tale of Peter Rabbit... In Galilean Aramaic

I never in my entire life expected I would undertake such an endeavor, but now I find myself in the midst of translating the Public Domain works of Beatrix Potter (one of my personal heroes) into Galilean Aramaic, printed in Herodian script so that my children will have material to read.

When I'm finished with the first one, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (or in this case dêlmâ d-kêfâ ârnvâ) it's probably going to be the first available title in the DARIUS Library (perhaps even as a learning aid).

I must admit that so far it is quite the challenge, but I'm doing fairly well to keep the translation true to the whimsical nature of the original text.

Not quite ready to tackle Harry Potter yet though.... but luckily I have some time to wait. :-)

Peace,
-Steve