I need a little help please

[sylvernyght]

Hi everyone! My name is Benjamin. I could use a little help in creating the correct word usage for when a male surface elf has earned the respect of a female drow and basically wants to say simply, "good luck" to her before she goes off to what may very well turn out to be a horrible end, but needs to say it in her language, not that of surface elves or in Common Speech. I'm in the middle of writing a six book series based on the core rulebooks of Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 and 3.5 and in the first book (which is where I'm stuck right now) my drow is a druid, lost her powers, the god Obadhai is testing her so she can earn them back and her surface elf friend basically just wants to wish her luck before the test starts, but does so in her own tongue. So....how the heck do I would I write it??? I've already tried several Drow-to-Common speech translators, but they didn't have anything for the word, "luck" in them. Is there one that is considered the most "complete" of the ones available on the web? Well, thanks for the help and sorry if I posted this to the wrong board. Feel free to move it to the correct one if needed.

[Shir'le E. Illios]

Greetings Benjamin and welcome to our little corner of the net.

When I look at [url=http://www.eilistraee.com/chosen/language.php:1t9swth8]our own translator[/url:1t9swth8] it lists the drow word "ap'zen" as a translation for the common word "luck". That might be of some use. (In our translator "good luck" translates to "bwael ap'zen".)

However, when using the drow language one should understand how it came to be. Originally there was a bit of drow language, including grammar rules, included in the "Drow of the Underdark" AD&D 2[sup:1t9swth8]nd[/sup:1t9swth8] ed. sourcebook (I think that it might have been posted in Dragon magazine before that, but I'm not certain). One community of drow players (for AOL's Neverwinter Nights if I understand correctly) took that little bit and expanded upon it. From there it moved on to the Drow Fortress website (now defunct) which added a feature where people could send in new translations.

When that website suddenly disappeared there were a number of people (including myself) who had a copy of the latest translation file and set up their own translators to fill the void, often including the ability for people to send in new translations for missing words again. This means that from that point on the language diverges into several 'dialects' and sometimes a translation on one site might not match (or be translated at all) on another site. Personally I think this gives it an interesting flavor, but it's something to keep in mind. And of course it's important to keep in mind that in the end pretty much all words were added by random people on the Internet. I think that someone who studies linguistics might look at the language and groan, but it serves our purposes (i.e. giving some flavor to our roleplaying).

For writing a book then you might take all that as a nod to the community (realizing that fairly little is 'official'). Or you could just make up your own words as other WotC writers have done (I think Salvatore sometimes includes bits of drow which don't fit the community's drow grammar or words at all). Can always argue that it's a different dialect; in the Forgotten Realms at least with the drow communities being so spread out and isolated it's to be expected that languages would diverge.

Hopefully that was of some help.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

[sylvernyght]

Howdy Shirley! Thank you so much for the very detailed reply! And, yes, it did help quite a bit. Where would I find the drow language translator you used? Also are there certain phrases or words that only drow use to show respect to those of non-drowish bloodlines? I've been poking through my various manuals and notes on D&D 3.0, but haven't really found anything and the guys at WotC take forever to respond to e-mails. (Sent mine about all of this out six weeks ago!) Oh, um, would it be okay if I post somewhere on the site a link to the book I've been writing? I think some of the users of this board might get a kick out of it or at least would be interested in reading it. Just in case you, yourself, want to read it. It's located here: http://www.fanstory.com/sylvernyght (just click on PROFILE, then SWAN) and as far as I know, you don't need to create an account to read the work, but if you do, it's free. Anyway, have a great day and again, thank you very much for the help!

Benjamin

[sylvernyght]

~sheepish grin~ Sorry about misspelling your name! Apparently I need to learn to put my glasses on before I try to type things out on my computer...

[Bhaern Quel]

[quote="sylvernyght":2915x5n0]Howdy Shirley! Thank you so much for the very detailed reply! And, yes, it did help quite a bit. Where would I find the drow language translator you used?[/quote:2915x5n0]

http://eilistraee.com/chosen/language_intro.php or at least I believe Shir'le used ours. *G*

[sylvernyght]

Thanks for all of the help folks! The link provided has actually helped me to create the various languages I needed for the book I am working on. I was just wondering, though, would you guys happen to have a Dwarven language translator by chance or at least know where I might be able to find one? I managed to find a Draconic translator and one for use with regards to Demons\Devils, but I'm still stuck trying to find one for Dwarves. Anyway, again, thanks for the help. (I'd be a little better at this if my nose wasn't stuck in actual books all the time and I knew more about the world of technology and computers! Hehe)

[Bhaern Quel]

Well some search and I can offer this http://www.scribd.com/doc/17817661/dd-3 ... Dictionary might not be the best, however at least something to work from.

[Shir'le E. Illios]

[quote="sylvernyght":14ggcj4j]~sheepish grin~ Sorry about misspelling your name! Apparently I need to learn to put my glasses on before I try to type things out on my computer...[/quote:14ggcj4j]
That's alright, I'm used to being called "Shirley". Though the way I pronounce it is closer to "Shir(uh)leh" (with the "i" sounding similar to the "i" in "fish"; the "uh" is mostly swallowed).

Also, I actually posted a link to our translator in my post.

And you're quite welcome to post a link to the book you're writing. For example, you might notice that we have a Stories[/url:14ggcj4j] section on the forums where people can post their own stories if they desire.

As far as a Dwarven language translator goes, I'm not aware of any I'm afraid. One thing to understand with drow is that it's uniquely structured to make translations (to/from English) possible. You see, drow 'happens' to have the same sentence structure and general grammar as English, so a translator can do its job for the most part by doing word replacement (it's slightly more involved than that, but not much).

But most other fantasy languages are generally designed to (attempt to) be a 'proper' language with their own structure and grammar. For example, Tolkien designed a number of languages like this (and usually when you come across "elven" languages in any fan-written fantasy it's usually using one of Tolkien's languages). I'm not sure if he or anyone else designed a dwarven language (edit; after a quick search I found [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuzdul:14ggcj4j]Khuzdul[/url:14ggcj4j]; might do a search for that to find dictionaries/lexicons/etc). But either way it'll probably take understanding of the language to translate it much like translating to any real language.

Doing a quick search I also came across [url=http://www.bugmansbrewery.com/tutorials ... /:14ggcj4j]Khazalid[/url:14ggcj4j], which is apparently the language of the dwarfs in the Warhammer universe. One (almost useless) source for Forgotten Realms Dwarvish I found was on the [url]http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/D ... ealms Wiki; might be a starting point as well. (edit; and Bhaern's link is more comprehensive, though not sure if that's actually just Khuzdul; might want to make sure of that.)

Of course the question is as well whether you'd want to use a language designed for another setting. And I have no idea of the legal side of things either. As such be careful with any sources because it's quite possible that one website might take Tolkien's language and present it as the language for the Forgotten Realms as well.

Hope that was of some help.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

[sylvernyght]

Hello everyone! Again, as always, thank you so much for all the help in finding and explaining about the various translators for me. I really appreciate it very much! But I do have a question for you, Shir'le, if you don't mind? I'm wondering about the "Stories" forum, am I as the original poster of a story only supposed to present a link to said story or should I post the text of that story in the post and how long can a post be before I need to start a reply-post? I think what I am trying to ask, is there a character or word count limit to each post made or can they basically be just one giant post? The book I've been working on is about forty chapters so far and is supposed to be a total of sixty plus or minus when finished. Each chapter is roughly ten to twelve pages or more and has been written is an MS Word file and I'm not certain how to go about posting it here on the forums. Any suggestions, friends? Well, take care and hope to hear from you all soon! Bye for now!

PS: What's the Experience Points awards for? I just noticed that I have six xp, but I'm not sure what to do with it!

[Shir'le E. Illios]

First the XP counter. That's really just an alternate sort of post counter. At the moment you get 1XP per post and 3XP per new thread. And you can give some of your XP to someone else as well if you want. You don't have to do anything with it though.

As for the stories forum; there is a character limit, but it's pretty high (as far as forum posts go at least). I think the maximum length is something like 16,777,215 characters (in fact I've pretty much set it that high explicitly for the stories forum). Probably best to make each chapter a separate reply if you go that route.

But I can also understand that you've already got the text somewhere and formatted the way you want. As such it's fine if you want to post it as a link to your existing document if that's easier for you. Kind of whatever you prefer.

Hope that answers your question.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le

[sylvernyght]

Hello Shir'le! Thanks for responding. And yes, it did actually answer the question quite nicely. But I am now wondering, if I made a post anywhere on the site and later on noticed or was informed that it's full of SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation, And Grammar) mistakes...is it possible to go back into that post and edit it? If so, how do I do that? I don't see an edit button anywhere, unless even with glasses, I'm blind as a rock!

[Bhaern Quel]

[quote="sylvernyght":3zdeqazj]Hello Shir'le! Thanks for responding. And yes, it did actually answer the question quite nicely. But I am now wondering, if I made a post anywhere on the site and later on noticed or was informed that it's full of SPAG (Spelling, Punctuation, And Grammar) mistakes...is it possible to go back into that post and edit it? If so, how do I do that? I don't see an edit button anywhere, unless even with glasses, I'm blind as a rock![/quote:3zdeqazj]

You can edit your posts. The edit button should show on the right side of the top line of your post. The same line as the subject line. It should be the first of 4 buttons in a row. Edit , delete, report, quote.

[sylvernyght]

Hi everyone! The first few chapters are up on the boards now. Hope you enjoy!