Have you ever heard about Translation Relay game? It is described on Jan's page herehttp://steen.free.fr/relay10/intro.html. Shortly, a group of conlangers gather together as a circle (may be a virtual circle via e-mail). Then they take some text, and each one translates the text of the previous member to his own conlang, and passes to the next member with a little glossary and short explanation of grammatical constructions. The text goes round the circle and finally returns to the beginning, where it is compared to the original text.
I had an idea to launch Pan-Slavic conlang Translation Relay. Theoretically a Pan-Slavic conlang is supposed to be easy to understand for a person who speaks one or two Slavic languages, so most of us are able to understand each others text (of course, if we decide, we can set a rule to add word glossary and grammar comments to our texts). There are at least 4 known Pan-Slavic conlangs that "live" today: Slovio, Slovianski, Sloviensk and Slovioski. Although some people are said to be using the same Pan-Slavic conlang, actually all of them have own personal preferences, theirs language can be more or less polonized, russianized or whatever-else-ized, so I think, the game can be very interesting and exciting, and in the end we shall see, how the idea of Pan-Slavic conlang is justifying our expectations!
We have already had similar experience here on Blognik, when someone posts a text in English, and several Slavic conlang translations are made, or when someone translates Slovio text to his own conlang.
If many people will approciate the idea, we can make the list of participants, one person will be the master and will write the initial text, and so on... I hope this will be great project!
Especially I want to ask to participate:
Dusxan - as the representative of the official Slovio
Ioannes - as the creator of Sloviensk
Eugeniusx
Welcome! Write here or send me an e-mail if you like this idea and want to participate - everyone!
I could not access the LINK you posted (with "intro.html); no doubt due to President Obama's new restrictions on American internet computers from communicating with any European computer!
However, I could access:
Businessmen: you can make money with Slovio-language. More and more firms around the world are using Slovio to reach some 400-million potential customers. You can write letters, emails, commercials, news, announcements to reach new customers, viewers or readers. You don't need any translators, you can master Slovio in a couple of weeks. Just read on...
Could you introduce some of those "firms around the world" that are using Slovio ?
(names, web sites, contacts, etc.)
Gentlemen,
I would like to announce, that the Slavic Translation Relay game is going to be in late September October, 2009.
These are the rules (written by Jan van Steenbergen).
First, you receive the latest iteration of the relay text. Because we are dealing with Slavic auxlangs only, this will be nothing but the text itself, without any grammatical guidelines and without a glossary. That should be enough for you to start decyphering it. If you are really struggling, you may query the preceding participant by private email, but remember that he/she may not give you a sustained translation. Then, translate it into the language you're working with yourself. If there are things you don't understand in the source language, make an educated guess: it's better to have a consistent story based on a more-than-free translation than a word-for-word translation that makes no sense.
If your language uses multiple orthographies (i.e. Latin vs. Cyrillic), you may of course send both.
After you have made a version in your own language, send three emails:
* to the next participant: the new text in your language, but NO SMOOTH ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
* to the Relay Master: the same as above, but INCLUDING A SMOOTH ENGLISH TRANSLATION of the text in your conlang.
* to the group: an announcement that you have passed the torch to so and so.
Important: DO NOT POST YOUR TRANSLATION TO THE LIST!!
You have no more than 48 hours to complete your task. If nobody has heard anything from you after that period, you will mercilessly be passed over. If know in advance that you won't be able to stick to the schedule, please notify the Relay Master and the List as soon as possible, so that you can be either rescheduled or given some extra time. A typical "relay day" starts at 12:00 AM (GMT) and ends at 11:59 PM (GMT).
After the completion of the Relay, the Relay Master publishes the results of the Game on a website.
For the website, soundbytes of all versions of the text are encouraged, but of course not required.
I would kindly ask everybody, who is willing to participate, to write me an e-mail to jarvi1986@yahoo.co.uk with the following information:
1. The conlang which you are going to use;
2. Which Slavic languages do you speak;
3. The days on September and October when you will not be able to make translation and read the mails.
This information will help with making the schedule of the game.
Also I ask if someone is willing to write the initial text (and make the last translation as well to complete the circle). I think the best would be if the first language will be Slovio. The text, as we think, should be about 10 sentences, and it should not be too simple otherwise hardly it will mutate during the translations.
For the moment, if I understood right, the following people answered that they are interested in the game.
Andrej Moraczewski (Slovianski)
Jan van Steenbergen (Slovianski)
Igor Polyakov (Slovianski)
Steeven Radzikowski (Slovioski)
Michal Borovicka (Slovioski)
William (Slovio)
Rostislav Levczenko (Slovianski)
Jukka Hintsala (Slavski)
Eugeniusx (Slovio)
I want to ask if Mr. I. wants to participate Im interested to see Sloviensk in action.
Also I would ask if any Official Slovio user is willing to participate.
Please send me your mails no later than 14th September.
Tomorrow we start the Relay,
I'll send the initial Slovianski text to Steeven Radzikowski.
I remind, that when you receive the text from the preceeding participant, you translate it to your conlang and send it to the next participant no later than 23:59 GMT of your schedule day.
- send your text to the next participant according to the Schedule;
- send your text and smooth (more-less literal) English translation of your text to me: jarvi1986@yahoo.co.uk
- send a short message to The List: slavic_relay@yahoogroups.com
Don't forget to notify the List and the Master in case of unexpected problems or delays.
Please note that some e-mail clients don't support cyrillic and extended latin scripts, so please attach a .doc or .pdf file with your text when sending it.
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