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Re: Translations of inscriptions

ventris — Sun May 19, 2013 2:28 am

Author: ventris

Posted: Sun May 19, 2013 2:28 am

I can remove this post if it is too OOC but is the reason they won't tell us the translation is because it says "Coke Adds Life"? Or maybe "The Pause that Refreshes"?

Re: Translations of inscriptions

Khreestrefah — Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:27 pm

Author: Khreestrefah

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:27 pm

It's theoretically possible that the D'ni noun bahntahno and verb tenee have no connections with anything else known from the language, in which case any attempt to interpret the inscription seen all over the city and in the neighborhoods would indeed be pure speculation. But the very fact that the sentence is so ubiquitous, combined with the absence of any direct hint from either Cyan or the DRC about what it signifies (assuming they know), suggests that it was intentionally left for us to puzzle out the meaning ourselves from resemblances of these words to other known D'ni.

If bahntahno is a compound, then the most likely word with a known meaning that it could contain is ahno 'water'. This is somewhat promising, because we actually have another compound word with ahno 'water' as the second element, namely gahrahno which is literally 'great-water' and probably corresponds in meaning to English ocean or sea. So perhaps rebahntahno may refer to some water feature in the cavern, such as the lake, the waterfall above the Great Zero, or the fountain found in each neighborhood. Or it might be something less concrete like "water sound" or "water-wave" or "watershed."

The verb tenee might be derived either from ten which means 'simple' or from nee which means 'new, fresh, clean'. The second is an attractive possibility because this word also occurs in the name D'nee (or D'ni) which means literally 'again-new', understood in the sense of "New Start" or "New Beginning." It would make sense if this idea of newness which was central enough to provide the name of the D'ni should also be incorporated into a widely displayed proverb or motto in their city.

And we should note how these two potential connections of components of the words re-bahntahno and tenee-en go very well together. Because water is a typical agent for returning freshness to a living being, or restoring cleanness to a place or object. The overall sense of the motto might be: "The fountain refreshes you"; or "The waterfall washes you clean"; or "The water all around you brings you together in a new way."

Shorah,
Khreestrefah

Re: Translations of inscriptions

DLordofTime — Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:27 pm

Author: DLordofTime

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:27 pm

Presumably so that it can be seen coming to and going from Ae'gura.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

larryf58 — Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:26 pm

Author: larryf58

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:26 pm

DLordofTime wrote:

Twice? Really?

Yes. It's on both sides of the capital of the Arch. You just can't see the other inscription because it's normally inaccessible to explorers.

Here's the writing that can be seen:

Here's the writing on the opposite side:

Re: Translations of inscriptions

Deius — Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:02 pm

Author: Deius

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:02 pm

The translation has never been fully confirmed. What we have so far is: The [unknown] [unknown]'s you (plural). Anything more than that is pure speculation, which accounts for the fact that nobody can agree on what it means. There have been numerous attempts since the early days to get RAWA to give us the proper translation, but to my knowledge he has not provided one yet.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

Main_Avvie — Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:52 pm

Author: Main_Avvie

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:52 pm

Is there enough understanding of D'ni to develop an automatic D'ni translator to translate all sorts of world languages into D'ni and vice versa....

Like Google Translate (only better ) or has that been done already?

Re: Translations of inscriptions

DLordofTime — Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:49 pm

Author: DLordofTime

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:49 pm

Twice? Really?

Re: Translations of inscriptions

larryf58 — Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:09 am

Author: larryf58

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:09 am

It's not just for me to know the answer. I'm putting together an article about the Ae'gura waterfront for my Uru Photography topic, and that inscription shows up three times in the area. Once on the Ferry Terminal, and twice on the Arch.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

DLordofTime — Sun Feb 05, 2012 8:35 am

Author: DLordofTime

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 8:35 am

The main thing that no-one can agree on is 'bahntahno'. Some says it's the lake water, others that it's something else. So unless RAWA comes along and tells us what it means, we can only speculate. And then there's the verb 'tehnee', if that is indeed the correct spelling. After all, it could be 'taynee'. But that doesn't matter really. We can only speculate on that one too.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

Charura — Sun Feb 05, 2012 4:00 am

Author: Charura

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 4:00 am

And, of course, when you are trying to Greet new people you would like to have all the answers.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

larryf58 — Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:21 am

Author: larryf58

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:21 am

According to that thread, the phrase appears in many different places. I'll have to pay attention to that in my explorations.

The other thing that thread points up is that no two people seem to agree on what it might mean.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

Zardoz — Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:00 am

Author: Zardoz

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:00 am

There were a couple of lengthy discussions about this phrase in the D'ni Linguistic Fellowship forums, but those forums crashed in 2009 and the threads (up until that moment) disappeared. One 2010 thread did discuss the phrase and in that thread, there is a link to a 2006 DLF thread that was captured by Archive.org.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

Tai'lahr — Sat Feb 04, 2012 3:16 am

Author: Tai'lahr

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 3:16 am

Yes, they're the same. Everything you need to translate them can be found at the D'ni Dictionary.

Re: Translations of inscriptions

larryf58 — Sat Feb 04, 2012 3:07 am

Author: larryf58

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 3:07 am

I started transliterating the letters myself, and when I had enough of them done, I was able to search for and find the phrase by Google.

It's "rehbahntahno tehneeehn shehmtee".

Example photos

larryf58 — Sat Feb 04, 2012 2:43 am

Author: larryf58

Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 2:43 am

Here are pictures of the texts in question:

Kerath's Arch

Ferry Terminal

...Wow. Now that I have them together, it looks like they both say the same thing.

More than that. Cyan used the same graphic for them. They are broken and worn away in exactly the same spots.