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Ireth_Telrunya
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Post Translation of a placename?
on: December 12, 2016 06:42
I'm continuing my project of translating Christmas songs into Sindarin, and I'm a bit stalled on translating the name Bethlehem. I've chosen "gobel" and "bass" to mean "house" and "bread" respectively, but I'm not sure how to put them together to mean "house of bread". Any thoughts?
Far over the Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old. We must away ere break of day, to claim our long forgotten gold.
Lokyt
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on: December 14, 2016 03:38
I believe it would be Bassobel.
But what makes you thing the speakers of Sindarin would translate the name instead of simply adopting its original form (as does, in fact, every language all over the world)?
Ireth_Telrunya
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on: December 14, 2016 09:02
Thanks, Lokyt!

I'm not concerned with realism with regards to Tolkien's world or other Sindarin speakers. I just wanted to translate the name. I did the same thing with the names Emmanuel and Israel in my translation of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" (which is here if you're interested). I think it worked out nicely.

[Edited on 12/15/2016 by Ireth_Telrunya]
Far over the Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old. We must away ere break of day, to claim our long forgotten gold.
Ameron
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on: January 01, 2017 11:36
Lokyt said: as does, in fact, every language all over the world


Well, this is untrue. We say Munich, Germans say München, for example.

[Edited on 01/02/2017 by Ameron]
Lokyt
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on: January 02, 2017 09:30
Well, this is untrue. We say Munich, Germans say München, for example.

I was refering specifically to the case of Betlehem, not to all toponyms in general.
(But to cope with the example you gave, the English exonym "Munich" in fact IS a loanword from German - same as "Betlehem" is from Semitic.)
DaveBeat64
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on: April 05, 2017 10:44
I think just Bethlehem is better. Although the name means house of bread, you don't really use it with that meaning. Think of the Czech capital Prague: The true name, Praha, is derived from the word práh, meaning threshold. However, you don't translate it to Threshold City, you just change the sound a bit to accomplish English phonetics.
Bethlehem is perfectly writable and pronounceable in Sindarin, so I would just keep it as it is.

If you really want to translate, then I may suggest the following:
From the Parf Edhellen online dictionary (my personally favourite reference, I'll give the link down here) I've found the translation of house and bread to be "bar" and "bass" (bast is a later form, I just think it sounds better here). So, since the second noun is indefinite (you don't want "the bread", right?), the genitive is "bar bass", but when compounding you must lenite the second word, for a final result of "Barvass".

I hope I've been helpful.

Link to the dictionary: https://www.elfdict.com/

[Edited on 04/20/2017 by DaveBeat64]
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