Good Enochian Translator?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I have a prophecy I want to translate into an "exotic" language for a character, one that nobody actually speaks, but none of the translators I've found is even roughly as competent as Google Translate, and Enochian (the supposed "language of the angels") isn't an option.

For instance, using http://tikaboo.com/enochian.jsp to translate from English and back again turned:


He is come. The eye and hand is come. Your search shall bear fruit, and the beast in the night shall make its move. It lurks in the heart of darkness even now, but the night is blind. Blindness leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. And should the beast remain unrestrained, the eye and hand shall fall beyond your grasp, the beast free to do as it may, and innocents shall suffer as the world dies.

to


god,the just eye,eyes and palm,plams (of hand) this,that is noasmi. conquest known capimali, and oiadlnnia sing god,the just night, dark one known man flames of first glory zacam. it has fly,flew,flier sing lower heavens sing god,the just mononsol flowers even as son,sons but god,the just night, dark one this,that is noise,noises,sounds (mighty) vran. god,the just man terror,fear,terrible hoxmarch. fear god,the just man vnph. anger,wrath god,the just man gosaa. stranger god,the just man mir. and elevated,lifted up god,the just animal,beast remain (in) without supreme being (aethyer) ipamis, god,the just eye,eyes and palm,plams (of hand) known fly,flew,flier micma, god,the just animal,beast without supreme being (aethyer) cannot be,end man it has noaln, and divine power creating angel of same known god,the just man upon it has god,the just earth darbs.

As you can see, this is an absolute mess.

[Gildedragon]

IIRC Enochian isn't so much a language as an esoteric alphabet.
You can download the font
Edit: I seem to be wrong and there is a language though regardless it is a mystical language invented for grimoires so its lexicon is pretty limited and I don't believe it has a formal grammar.
My suggestion: just use the alphabet

As for representing some language that no one else speaks: to what end?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

As for representing some language that no one else speaks: to what end?The character (and the prophecy) happens to be for a story, but it's based on 3rd edition mechanics.

Thanks for the info. I probably should've done a bit more research, huh?

[Gildedragon]

I see.
You could do a conlang. Advice on that would probably be out of the World building subforum.
But 3.X mechanics don't allow much for that (comprehend languages, and read magic being things)

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I see.
You could do a conlang. Advice on that would probably be out of the World building subforum.
But 3.X mechanics don't allow much for that (comprehend languages, and read magic being things)I could do Latin, as well, but it wouldn't be quite as exotic.

[Gildedragon]

I could do Latin, as well, but it wouldn't be quite as exotic.

You could also mash together sanscrit and magyar, making portmantous and the like, and toss in some other grammar

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You could also mash together sanscrit and magyar, making portmantous and the like, and toss in some other grammarThat's even more work than faffing about with a bad Enochian translator. I'd rather be furthering the plot than playing grammarian, really.

[dspeyer]

Doesn't Enochian use the exact same grammar as English, making translation really easy (and modern conlangers sneer)?

[A_S]

Doesn't Enochian use the exact same grammar as English, making translation really easy (and modern conlangers sneer)?
Also I think a bunch of its words are English proper nouns.

[Crake]

Uhh, since the players don't actually understand enochian, why don't you just read it out in enochian, and then when the players translate it, give them your version of what it's supposed to be? After all, nobody at the table is going to speak enochian to know if you completely butchered the language or not, right?

Edit: I do this all the time with skyrim thuum for draconic :P

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Uhh, since the players don't actually understand enochian, why don't you just read it out in enochian, and then when the players translate it, give them your version of what it's supposed to be? After all, nobody at the table is going to speak enochian to know if you completely butchered the language or not, right?

Edit: I do this all the time with skyrim thuum for draconic :PPlayers? What players?


The character (and the prophecy) happens to be for a story, but it's based on 3rd edition mechanics.

[Florian]

I fear that you won´t find a good translator. Similar to using Steno/shorthand methods, you can simply string together some (occult) concepts in pretty much compressed form to convey direct meaning because the recipient of the text should already be fully in the known what information was conveyed by it.

So the text should read: Prophecy Vecna Usual Sith Code Bring Own Beer Next Friday

An "Experienced Occultist" would get the meaning and conduct a "Full Prophecy" then. You know, the much-vaunted presentation quality inherent to most consultants when using Powerpoint presentations and spinning the regular 3 bulletpoints into full yarn.

[Crazysaneman]

I like to use Esperanto for prophecy, it looks and sounds exotic when spoken.

English
He is come. The eye and hand is come. Your search shall bear fruit, and the beast in the night shall make its move. It lurks in the heart of darkness even now, but the night is blind. Blindness leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. And should the beast remain unrestrained, the eye and hand shall fall beyond your grasp, the beast free to do as it may, and innocents shall suffer as the world dies.


Esperanto
Li venis. La okulo kaj mano venis. Via serĉo portu fruktojn kaj brutojn en la nokto fari lian movon . Ĝi latenta en la koro de mallumo eĉ nun , sed la nokto estas blinda . Blindeco kondukas timi . Timo gvidas al kolero . Kolero gvidas al malamo . Malamas kondukas al sufero. Kaj se la besto restas senbrida , la okulo kaj mano falos preter via teno , la besto libera fari kiel ajn, kaj senkulpuloj suferos kiel la mondo mortas .


Back to English
He came . The eye and hand came . Your search bears fruit and cattle in the night to make his move. It is latent in the heart of darkness even now , but the night is blind . Blindness leads to fear . Fear leads to anger . Anger leads to hate . Hate leads to suffering. And if the animal remains rampant , the eye and hand fall beyond your grasp , the creature is free to do whatever , and the innocent will suffer as the world dies.

It's a pretty cool language to learn, though I haven't mastered it yet. It's created as a constructed universal-ish language using a lot of syntax from various existing languages... pretty neat.

[ExLibrisMortis]

There are currently no good (=accurate and robust) automatic translators in the world, anywhere, especially when it comes to imagery and symbolism, as in a prophecy. You just won't find anything that can do better than you can do yourself, provided you spend an hour or two looking up words and conjugations. Getting someone else to translate for you is even faster. I'd translate it for you, but I'm afraid I can only do Dutch, maybe Latin.

On the topic of Esperanto: it's pretty great (and Zamenhoff really understood how to make a conlang used, rather than defined), but keep in mind it's based on Indo-European languages only. That's not a bad thing or drawback, I just want to note that IE languages share some peculiarities, so you might be surprised what kind of crazy (from IE perspective) grammatical constructs you can find in other language families :smallbiggrin:.

[Âmesang]

You could dial it to eleven and translate it to Ithkuil (http://ithkuil.net). :smallamused:

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I considered doing rot13, but that's rather cliche.

[Gildedragon]

For a talked campaign substituting voiced consonants for unvoiced (and viceversa) and cycling vowels for others, moving stresses around would work. It doesn't have to be exactly phonetic but close enough and it will sound odd and be pronounceable.

Like, the fist bit of the preceding paragraph would be

Vul e dergit genbeom zapzdodadomk fuozit gumzumemdz vul amfuozit...

[JBPuffin]

You could dial it to eleven and translate it to Ithkuil (http://ithkuil.net). :smallamused:

You'll probably be thought of as hard to believe, after allegedly trying to go back to repeatedly inspiring fear using rag-tag groups of suspicious-looking clowns, despite resistance...thanks, Quisada.

[GreyBlack]

Rule 1: Don't.

Never translate directly. You will always miss out on shades of meaning, even in a ConLang.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If you want something that's machine translatable, might I suggest any language available on Google Translate?

+ It's some of the best translation software there is, or at least the best we all have access to.
+ The languages are complete. You can say pretty much anything in them (with some exceptions, try not to talk in computer terminology too much, especially in Latin.
+ The language used will be consistent, players will be able to learn and recognize key words.

You've already seen the Esperanto translation, which worked pretty well. Here are some short examples of other languages:

Original line:

He is come. The eye and hand is come. Your search shall bear fruit, and the beast in the night shall make its move.

Original to Turkish:

O gelmek olduğunu. göz ve el çıkmıştır. Arama meyve eder ve gece hayvan hamlesini yapar.

Back to English:

He was to come. eye and hand out. Search fruit and makes the animals would move at night.

Original to Malay:

Ia datang. Mata dan tangan sudah tiba. Carian anda hendaklah menanggung buah-buahan, dan binatang pada waktu malam hendaklah membuat langkah itu.

Back to English:

It came. It's eyes and hands. Your search should bear fruit, and animals at night to make the move.

Original to Afrikaans:

Hy kom. Die oog en die hand gekom. Jou soektog sal vrugte dra, en die dier in die nag sal sy skuif te maak.

Back to English:

He comes. The eye and came down. Your search will bear fruit, and the animal at night to make his move.

Original to Bulgarian:

Той е дошъл. дойде на окото и ръката. Вашето търсене трябва да даде плод, и звярът през нощта ще направи своя ход.

Back to English:

He came. came the eye and the hand. Your search should bear fruit, and the beast at night will make his move.

As you will no doubt have noticed by now each translation comes out different, because different languages have or lack certain ways of saying things. Afrikaans for instance strictly speaking has no simple past tense, only a past perfect (which google translate hasn't quite picked up on yet, "die oog en die hand gekom" would be better translated as "die oog en die hand het gekom". That's why "he came" turned into "he comes" by cycling through Afrikaans, but it might just as well have become "he has come". Every language you try will give quirks in the translation like that, and the further removed from English and the more sparsely used online a language is the bigger the quirks will be. Just try a bunch and pick the one where the quirks enhance the feel you want these messages to have. Out of these examples I must say I kind of like the Bulgarian option. Unreadable alphabet, relatively good translation, yet there's a weird prophesy-style verb at the start of a sentence. The Esperanto isn't bad either, even if something like "free to do whatever" is a little bit modern for a prophesy.