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Mando'a translation woes
Jan. 10th, 2024 08:59 pmI was in the middle of leaving a LONG comment on Ysabetwordsmith's post Shoulder Face Fist, musing on the concept of 'a face badly in need of a fist', which felt like the sort of phrase a Mando'ad might want to use ...
... which, of course, led to translation funsies, which I'm just gonna put here:
There's a Mando'a phrase -- Copaani mirshmure'cye, vod? -- which can usefully be translated as "Are you looking for a smack in the face, mate?" & I can totally see something like that being used as a descriptor, too. "He has a face that just needs smacking!"
Hm, which I'd put something like "Kaysh liniba mirshmure'cye" if we're translating "mirshmure'cya" as "smack in the face" BUT literally it translates as "brain kiss", which means both "headbutt" & a gentle, affectionate forehead touch. So it's pretty possible that a headbutt fills much the same place in Mandalorian culture as a backhand does in a lot of Earth cultures. Which is interesting to me, since it's also a really common greeting! Just not quite so hard. Usually. There's a lot of warrior culture stuff going on, I guess sometimes the headbutts get vigorous.
(what's this 'I guess', I've fought heavy in the SCA, I've watched hockey players lay on the congratulatory headbutts, this is how it goes)
For an actual "smack in the face" I'd probably go with "troan'nyn", or something like that, troan being face, but here's another fascinating thing about Mando'a culture: troan is both your literal face, & also the mask you wear, or the visor of your helmet. So one might say in English that you never get to see Boba Fett's face in the original trilogy, but it's harder to say in Mando'a; you might say that you never see his "agol troan", "flesh face", but I don't know NEAR enough to know if that'd be appropriate. "Meat suit" is certainly a phrase people use in English, but it's neither complementary nor formal correct usage. Then again, Mandalorians tend to have a ... raucous ... sense of humor. So it might be fine! Who knows!
THAT SAID with the equivalency drawn between one's "flesh face" & one's mask or visor, I don't think needing to differentiate like we do in English would be at all necessary, so let us carry on with what we've got. (I will also note here, because I can't find a really good place to put it, that Mando'a tends to be very terse, & in fact skips articles such as 'a' & 'an' altogether.)
So "Kaysh liniba troan'nyn" seems like a reasonable way to say "he/she/they need(s) a smack in the face" (Mando'a pronouns are ungendered, which I find delightful). But "a face badly in need of a fist" ... "troan liniba marev", literally "face needs fist", isn't far off, but how to translate "BADLY needs"?
Mando'a often uses double negatives for emphasis, or so it's claimed in the available written material, though the only place I can find that usage is in the phrase "Nu draar", "not never". Which more-or-less could be translated as "that thing is extremely the fuck not going to happen"' or, well, "really never", I guess we could say. But I'm really not sure how to apply that to the phrase at hand. I wish we had more examples of the double negative in use, but, well, Mando'a is nothing like a complete language.
I will probably poke at this later, but I'm already half an hour late getting dinner ready for the cats, & I don't wanna get et.
(the which I did, & then came back to reread this prior to posting it, & then I got hung up trying to figure the thing out again, which should surprise nobody, & as such:)
As such, I have been reminded of a thing! Which is that the prefix "ori-" or "or-" is pretty much "very". So! "Troan or'liniba marev" is, I think, about as close as we're usefully gonna get to "a face badly in need of a fist".
Sources:
Mando'a Dictionary
Mando'a article on Wookiepedia
... which, of course, led to translation funsies, which I'm just gonna put here:
There's a Mando'a phrase -- Copaani mirshmure'cye, vod? -- which can usefully be translated as "Are you looking for a smack in the face, mate?" & I can totally see something like that being used as a descriptor, too. "He has a face that just needs smacking!"
Hm, which I'd put something like "Kaysh liniba mirshmure'cye" if we're translating "mirshmure'cya" as "smack in the face" BUT literally it translates as "brain kiss", which means both "headbutt" & a gentle, affectionate forehead touch. So it's pretty possible that a headbutt fills much the same place in Mandalorian culture as a backhand does in a lot of Earth cultures. Which is interesting to me, since it's also a really common greeting! Just not quite so hard. Usually. There's a lot of warrior culture stuff going on, I guess sometimes the headbutts get vigorous.
(what's this 'I guess', I've fought heavy in the SCA, I've watched hockey players lay on the congratulatory headbutts, this is how it goes)
For an actual "smack in the face" I'd probably go with "troan'nyn", or something like that, troan being face, but here's another fascinating thing about Mando'a culture: troan is both your literal face, & also the mask you wear, or the visor of your helmet. So one might say in English that you never get to see Boba Fett's face in the original trilogy, but it's harder to say in Mando'a; you might say that you never see his "agol troan", "flesh face", but I don't know NEAR enough to know if that'd be appropriate. "Meat suit" is certainly a phrase people use in English, but it's neither complementary nor formal correct usage. Then again, Mandalorians tend to have a ... raucous ... sense of humor. So it might be fine! Who knows!
THAT SAID with the equivalency drawn between one's "flesh face" & one's mask or visor, I don't think needing to differentiate like we do in English would be at all necessary, so let us carry on with what we've got. (I will also note here, because I can't find a really good place to put it, that Mando'a tends to be very terse, & in fact skips articles such as 'a' & 'an' altogether.)
So "Kaysh liniba troan'nyn" seems like a reasonable way to say "he/she/they need(s) a smack in the face" (Mando'a pronouns are ungendered, which I find delightful). But "a face badly in need of a fist" ... "troan liniba marev", literally "face needs fist", isn't far off, but how to translate "BADLY needs"?
Mando'a often uses double negatives for emphasis, or so it's claimed in the available written material, though the only place I can find that usage is in the phrase "Nu draar", "not never". Which more-or-less could be translated as "that thing is extremely the fuck not going to happen"' or, well, "really never", I guess we could say. But I'm really not sure how to apply that to the phrase at hand. I wish we had more examples of the double negative in use, but, well, Mando'a is nothing like a complete language.
I will probably poke at this later, but I'm already half an hour late getting dinner ready for the cats, & I don't wanna get et.
(the which I did, & then came back to reread this prior to posting it, & then I got hung up trying to figure the thing out again, which should surprise nobody, & as such:)
As such, I have been reminded of a thing! Which is that the prefix "ori-" or "or-" is pretty much "very". So! "Troan or'liniba marev" is, I think, about as close as we're usefully gonna get to "a face badly in need of a fist".
Sources:
Mando'a Dictionary
Mando'a article on Wookiepedia
