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Originally Posted by Encataire
What are your opinions on combining words to make compound words? The poem I'm translating has a nautical sort of theme, and one word I had to scrounge around in order to translate was 'figurehead'. I settled for lango-nís = 'prow-woman'.
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I think it works, as long as it makes sense. I don't do it at the moment as I'm not exactly sure how to do so - whether endings change somehow or something weird like that, which is almost bound to happen with Quenya. "Prow" + "woman" makes middlish sense to me, you could get away with using it and people would probably realise what you mean. An extreme that wouldn't make sense would be "cup" + "board" for "cupboard". Yes, it was a stupid example, but you get what I mean (or I hope you do). Sometimes it won't work translating individual components.
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Originally Posted by enca
Is it okay to 'logically derive' a noun from a verb? Again, as a last resort. I need a word for 'sail' (the noun), but I can only find the verb: wili-. Could I somehow follow the pattern linda- (verb, sing) --> lindë (noun, song)? Willë would not be an option because it's the past tense form of the noun, but maybe there's some way, wilë, perhaps, though it doesn't look as nice... Or, I could try another compound word, rúmëa-cirya (moves-ship) or something similar.
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Again, as long as it makes sense. "Sing" into "Song" makes sense to me. "Sail (vb)" into "sail (n)" doesn't. The verb and noun are connected in English, but in other languages a sail could be called a "fluttercloth" or anything else - we don't know what. A song is almost always going to be derived from the verb "to sing" though. Also, "moves-ship" makes no sense to me.
Nor would "wind-cloth" or "shipsheet" - you can't really look at either and think "that's a sail" and it's also unlikely that they would be Quenya words for sail. This is just English-speaking people trying to get Quenya to do what they want.
The problem with trying to translate a poem from English into Quenya is that you have to change it - Quenya doesn't have a very extensive vocabulary. You'd probably end up with something reasonably different. That's why I think of what I want to say in English, then try it in Quenya. If it doesn't work, I think of something else or look for synonyms. It's easier that way - you can make sense and say what you want.
Tell me if I'm not making sense. The above looks extremely unelegant, and I wish I could express it with less unseemly words...
By the way, Enca, is your name in Quenya?