My translation of the French novel, La Chartreuse de Parme, into Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) has now reached over 1000 words in length.
You can find the translation over at The Joy of Literature. It consists of the opening scenes of the fourth chapter of the novel (mainly because I had grown tired of repeatedly translating the opening of the first chapter into several other languages).
This makes LdP one of only two constructed languages in which I have made a literary translation longer than 1000 words. The other language is Occidental, into which I translated over 5000 words of the same novel. Recently I gave up on the corresponding Interlingua translation after about 900 words. With other constructed languages I never made it past a few hundred words. Which means that LdP has survived my practical, hands-on test. It is in fact the only constructed language in which I am currently still interested in producing literary translations; I was not happy with Occidental, despite creating a long translation, and therefore abandoned it.
I am happy with LdP. It hits the sweet spot between being easy enough to learn and use despite my relatively limited free time, and being sophisticated and expressive and precise enough for serious literary use. It really does fit the description of being a practical International Auxiliary Language in that it is significantly easier than most alternative constructed languages, for literary use in which a relatively high degree of precision is required. And it has the huge advantage of being a highly educational worldlang.
Did you know snova is Russian for "again" / "anew"? Did you know swasti is Sanskrit for "may fortune favour you"? Do you know that hampi is Indonesian for "almost"? You might know that danke is German for "thank you" but do you also know that a synonym from Arabic and Hindi is shukran? How about the word hao, which is Chinese for "good", or jamile, Arabic for "beautiful"? This is seriously educational stuff and a real joy to use for a writer. It is a joy.
Lingwa de Planeta is a language which — although it is new and will take a few years yet to fully develop and stabilise — I highly recommend to any writer interested in producing literature for a truly global audience.
Lingwa de Planeta es jamile lingwa!
Lingwa de Planeta is a beautiful language!
Incidentally, this means that LdP has unexpectedly but indubitably turned out to be my favourite constructed language for literary use, two years in a row: first in 2010 and now again in 2011. Accordingly...
Lingwa de Planeta
is the winner of the Gold Medal
Best Literary Language of 2011
Category: International Auxiliary Languages
Of course this is not any kind of public competition, it is just my personal opinion based on two years of long and dedicated study of many different constructed languages. It will be interesting to see whether or not my opinion changes in 2012 or 2013 but for now LdP is the winner of my personal quest to find an IAL which I feel is best suited for truly global literature.
I've given up Interlingua, another fine language, in favour of spending time improving my French. Strangely, I now find French easier to read.
Incidentally, for any concerned Esperanto readers who may be reading this, although my favourite constructed language for writing literature is definitely LdP, I have recently returned to learning to read literature in Esperanto and there is some chance that I might, after all, warm to the idea of regularly reading in Esperanto, mainly because studying all these other languages has gradually resulted in Esperanto becoming not quite so impossible to read. I'm not sure if my temporary resurgence of interest in reading in Esperanto will amount to anything however; I'm quite likely to lose interest and give up. Whereas I do not expect to lose interest in LdP any time soon.
I expect to reach 5000 words of LdP translation during 2012.
It would not even surprise me if I reach 10000 words.
Onward...
Obwol Lingwa de Planeta permiti lerni lexika fon mucho lingwa, Interlingua permiti lerni lexika kel es komune in vigyan (shefem de elin e latina origin). Makala http://interlingua.filo.pl/experientias.htm (osobem fragmenta "Le experientias con Interlingua in Varberg") deskribi experimenta: exposi ke lerna de Interlingua mog helpi in tradukta fon romanike lingwa sin bifoo-ney lerna de toy romanike lingwa. Svenska gin-studenta he suksesi tradukti espaniol texta sin galta afte studa de Interlingua, bat klas, kel he lerni espaniol, he hindi sey texta mushkile. Probablem por lexika de nise frekwensa kel prisenti nul problema a hao studenta de "helpike" lingwa.
ReplyDeleteKrzysztof
Ps. Pardono. Illo es mi prime essayo in scriber in LdP e il pote haber plure errores.
"he findi", bu "he hindi" :)
ReplyDelete@Krzysztof: Danke fo yur komenta. Interlingua es verem utile lingwa, me konkordi. Shayad it helpi-te me tu lerni franse. Bat fo skribi literatura me preferi LdP.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Interlingua is indeed a useful language, I agree. Perhaps it helped me to learn French. But for writing literature I prefer LdP.
Gratias por tu commento. Interlingua es vermente un utile lingua, io concorda. Forsan illo me assistava a apprender le francese. Ma por scriber le litteratura io prefere le LdP.
==========
Incidentally, it took me much longer to write the above paragraph of Interlingua than it did to write the LdP paragraph, even though overall I have done far, far more hours of Interlingua study than LdP study. LdP is easier to spell and it dispenses with unnecessary complications such as multiple forms of verbs and pronouns which just slow down the process of writing without adding much value in most situations. LdP is I think easier both to read and write, unless one already knows a Romance language. However, they are not really competitors as Interlingua is a registration of an existing latent language shared between Romance languages and English (despite the inevitable difficulty such an approach must cause due to its extreme naturalism) whereas LdP is a worldlang and one which is primarily designed to be easy and accessible. I prefer the latter approach for global use for the purposes of writing literature.
"Lingwa de Planeta is a language which ... I highly recommend to any writer interested in producing literature for a truly global audience."
ReplyDeleteA strange statement. If you simply started writing your native English, you would immediately reach, say, one thousand million potential readers whereas LdP will hardly be looked at by more than a few dozen individuals at the most.
Will the Chinese appreciate the 100 or so Chinese words in LdP? No ... they wouldn't even recognize them. A word like 'hao' can have dozens of different meanings, and the other several thousands of non-Chinese root words would still be foreign to them.
Interesting as language constructs may be for a very small number of people, they must inevitably fail if world-wide acceptance and usability is the criterium.
Just consider what it really takes to make a language 'full-fledged': at the very least a few centuries plus several hundreds of thousands of people from various fields of activity and thinking (legal, science, technology, philosophy, religion, crafts, to name just a few, busily working together to gradually develop agreed-upon terminologies.
A ghastly task. Just look at Indonesian: When it comes to science and technology they start talking English.
Dream on, lads.
@Hermann: You may be right, however there is something about LdP which still magnetically attracts me and which still seems well worthwhile even if few people read the language. To me there is literary value in the language, in a (potentially) globally accessible way. And who knows what might become popular in a few decades? Remember, I'm only talking about literary use, not scientific use, not use in everyday life.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I cannot read Russian, so the following means nothing to me. It is the start of a short story by Gogol. I would love to read it but cannot:
Знаете ли вы украинскую ночь? О, вы не знаете украинской ночи! Всмотритесь в нее. С середины неба глядит месяц. Необъятный небесный свод раздался, раздвинулся еще необъятнее. Горит и дышит он. Земля вся в серебряном свете; и чудный воздух и прохладно-душен, и полон неги, и движет океан благоуханий. Божественная ночь! Очаровательная ночь!
Fortunately the inventors of LdP are Russian and they are thus able to translate the passage for me:
Ob yu jan ukrainska nocha? Oo, yu bu jan ukrainska nocha! Kan ba inu it. Fon mida de skay luna-dilim zai lumi-kan. Gro-vaste kupula de skay fa-chaure, fa-vaste yoshi pyu gro. It glimi e spiri. Ol arda es in argenta-ney luma. Mirakla-ney aira es i lenge i warme, it es fule de juisa e dulitaa, it mah-muvi osean de aroma. Bohlik nocha! Charmaful nocha!
That's beautiful, really beautiful, and it makes me feel that I am somehow experiencing more of the original Russian flavour of the text than an English translation would allow me to feel. That feeling may be erroneous but it is how it feels to me. In any case, it is wonderful to be able to experience a beautiful Russian text without myself speaking Russian and without the translator resorting to English, meeting halfway by using LdP. It's a nice language.
Dictionary here:
http://lingwadeplaneta.info/glossword/index.php
Grammatical words here:
http://lingwadeplaneta.info/files/gramalex_en.pdf
Grammar here:
http://lingwadeplaneta.info/en/anglegram.shtml
Text here:
http://lingwadeplaneta.info/utf-8/nocha.html
Actually, LdP isn't the easiest of the auxiliary languages but it's not the most difficult either, and the abundance of words from many different languages gives it a richness and educational value.
Oh well, a man can dream...
All the best,
Robert
Well, I can see your point. But what does 'literary use' really mean?
ReplyDeleteSure, everyday-language does not need a lot of special-language expressions. And you can limit yourself to writing small, harmless stories using no more than 500 words. But just try to translate into any constructed language a thriller by Ruth Rendell, or 'War and Piece' by Tolstoy, and you will find that there is no adequate vocabulary by far.
I can agree with all of your arguments for LdP, etc. But I wonder why you don't start being an author instead of waiting for the full development of your most favourite constructed language as a prerequisite to having a global readership for your future literary works.
True, anything can happen. We shape our own reality. And dreams will come true if consistently pursued. Now, world-wide acceptance of a well constructed language is an objective that would have to be shared by the millions while your world-wide success as an author would largely depend on you alone.
By the way, that 'Russian flavour' may simply be the result of LdP still being somewhat foreign to you, and this flavour of foreignness then can easily be confused with being 'Russian', particularly when the authors of LdP and the translation are Russians. I suspect that an English translation of the Gogol piece produced by a Russian might still look sufficiently foreign to pass as having a Russian flavour. But you, as a native speaker of English, might find such English quite inacceptable even if the grammar were by and large correct -- because you have 'absorbed with the mother milk' what really correct English must be like.
And you would probably detect a German flavour in an LdP translation of a German literary work if the translation were produced by a German. The reason for this is that nobody easily escapes from his or her own mother tongue. The 'flavour', then, is not a virtue of LdP but the result of linguistic shortcomings in the translator. There are excellent translations of literary works which do convey -- to some extent -- such a flavour. This, however, only works if the translator knows the target language very well indeed. But constructed languages can hardly convey any flavours. They are sterile. There is no age-old culture behind them, no literary tradition, no idiosyncrasies.
Anyway, I share your enjoyment of languages, constructed or otherwise. I just think we should not burden the constructed ones with demands too heavy.
Kind regards,
Hermann
Hm, I've never heard the claim that Esperanto is hard to read before. It's the only language aside from my native English that I feel comfortable and confident using.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how far LDP will progress. It needs to be useful as a language, standardized, possible to indicate in web pages and computer programs, and well disseminated. I'm not sure most of those things are even possibilities.