Quotes in other languages

[Guinevere]

Thanks for these most useful hints, Heren Istarion!

This is mostly guesswork, apart from your hints I only managed to find out the last two words = my feet. ( zemlia = land ?)
So I assume it is Aldarion talking to Meneldil:

"It has come upon me again, Atarinya. Eighteen years is a long fast. I can scarce lie still in a bed, or hold myself upon a horse, and the hard ground of stone wounds my feet."

Another question: what does Bolshoi mean ?? ( I have heard of the Bolshoi theatre...)

[HerenIstarion]

bolshoi = big, great
srok = period, time

so 'bolshoi srok dlia posta'='long time for a fast'='is a long fast'

zemlia = land, but may mean ground too,
kamennaia = of stone
s trudom= with labor (hence 'scarce')

you've got it. Pray proceed

[Guinevere]

Thank you, HerenIstarion.

Und lass Dein Herz nicht traurig sein, obwohl die Nacht dem Tag folgen muss, und bereits zieht unser Abend näher.

[LePetitChoux]

I am very pleasantly surprised that I can actually understand that (I guess two and a half years of Deutsch haven't gone to waste!)... but now I just have to get stuck on Who Said It. May I please have a clue?

And yes, I am very much back.

[Guinevere]

A wife said it to her husband. It's in LotR.

[Estanesse]

And let not your heart be sad though night must follow noon, and already our evening draweth nigh.

Galadriel to Celeborn

[Guinevere]

And you wouldn't have needed a clue, would you, Estanesse!

[Estanesse]

Your hint was helpful but I would have found the quote without the hint, I think.
The next quote will be in Dutch.

Zou je mij niet naar hem toe willen brengen? Want dan zul je het weten.

Good luck

[Mariska Greenleaf]

Will you not bring me to him? Then you will know

Eowyn to the warden of the House of Healing.

[Estanesse]

It is your turn Mariska Greenleaf to translate so that we can retranslate it!

[Mariska Greenleaf]

Dankuwel!

En français:

A cette escalier personne ne peut monter, sauve le Roi, et celui q'il ammène avec lui, s'il les demande de lui suivre

Good luck.

[HerenIstarion]

that'd be Isildur:

Up this stair let no man climb, save the King, and those that he brings with him, if he bids them follow him

About the Hill of Awe

[Mariska Greenleaf]

Absolutely right of course!
I was a bit worried about my french translation, but it apparently wasn't that bad...

[HerenIstarion]

I was a bit worried about my french translation, but it apparently wasn't that bad

It may prove a dubious compliment , but my French is not good enough to tell the difference

To let you have an example, the next one in French too (so let me be a bit worried this time):

Quand même, il est plus sûr d'aller au nord, même s'il semble que vous allez à l'inverse plus proche vers leurs forteresses

[Guinevere]

I have no problems with translating that, but I have no idea where to find it. (THEIR fortresses (or strongholds) ? )
Any clues?

[HerenIstarion]

strongholds

Just think a bit about who may have had strongholds in the North (by the end of Third Age, mind you)

[Althern]

I think I am in the same place as Guinevere; the translation was no problem, but trying to think of dialogue that relates to strongholds (plural?) in the north is proving somewhat troublesome. Another clue perhaps?

[HerenIstarion]

As many as you like

The conversation took place on the western edge of Mirkwood, a bit less than thirty years before Frodo's birth

Hope this helps

[Althern]

Beorn to Thorin's company:

Still you are safer going north, even though you seem to be going back nearer to their strongholds

(I needed the clues though... I am far too LoTR-centric)

[HerenIstarion]

That nails it. Have a go

[Althern]

Since I am new, I have chosen something ridiculously easy, but in a somewhat less well known language.

Nos, drága barátaim, most, itt a tengerparton ér véget a szövetségünk. Menjetek békével. Nem mondom, hogy ne sírjatok; mert nem minden könny keserû.

[HerenIstarion]

It seems a quote worth revealing a clue or two. For it may be easy, but the language is mystic (Hungarian, I suppose, but I do not own a dictionary and could not locate online dictionaries as well, alas)

[Althern]

Yes, it is Hungarian. The quote is from RoTK (and you can find an online dictionary here).

[HerenIstarion]

thanks a bunch

unfortunately, the link you rovided us with is to English-Hungarian dictionary...

[Althern]

That's the default setting of the dictionary. At the top of the page is a little arrow that shows the direction of the translation. If you click on this, it will change direction, and you can translate from Hungarian to English.

The trick with Hungarian is that grammatical operators (verb conjugations, prepositions, posession, etc) appear as suffixes to the base stem, which makes it murder for translation programs. So if you can't find a word, try deleting the last few letters and searching again until you get the stem. e.g. barát = friend, barátaim = my friends.

[HerenIstarion]

I was clicking desperately on the right side boxes. silly me...

It is hard to operate with dictionary, you know? I ended up as translating my guesses backwards (i.e. English to Hungarian). That has to do with the following quote by you:

appear as suffixes to the base stem

Same for us. That is, I reckon, why there is no Georgian online dictionary whatsoever

barát = friend, barátaim = my friends

You should have started with it nice, nice. What with alleged triviality of the quote, and my suspicions as of meaning of nos=well and most=at last and bekevel as something to do with peace, whilst still more something feeling like the shore, the sea and lamentation, I am darinig enough to utter a guess:

Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil

That'd be Gandalf

*wipes his brow

uh

[Althern]

You are, of course, spot on. Excellent work. The floor is yours.

The dictionary is a problem. As you saw, it is of limited use unless you know the grammar enough to recognise the stems or get lucky with something with the same ending appearing in the expression database. For your information, most = now, béke = peace, békével = with peace/in peace, tenger = sea, part = bank/shore, thus, tengerparton = on the sea shore. I guess the hardest things, like always, are verbs. There were four here, including irregular megy = go, menjetek = you go (2nd person plural imperative), which is impossible to get from any dictionary.

[HerenIstarion]

That's why after grasping the suspicions as to possible quote, I've started tranlsating backwards - English to Hungarion. If the result was in any way reminiscent of the words in your translation, I counted it as the ten mark and went on.

Now is my turn to torment you, than So it is Georgian:

mSvenieria! – Tqva ________. – magram am dilas rgolebis gamosaSvebad ar mcxela – Tavgadasavals vawyob da kidev erTi monawile mWirdeba, misi monaxva ki arc Tu ise advilia.

mSvenieria=verry pretty
rgolebi=rings
Tavgadasavali=adventure

I think you've got enough clues to work it out

[Althern]

I think this is Gandalf again:

Very pretty!" said Gandalf. "But I have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.

(I found an online Georgian lexicon, and a description of the grammar, but it was the fonts that defeated me in the end. So, I had to guess.)

From the grammar:

dagvalevinebdito ("'you would give it to us to drink', he said") may be broken down into the following grammatical units: da-gv-a-lev-in-eb-d-i-t-o preverb – indirect object marker – pre-radical vowel – verb root (-lev- "drink") – causative marker – present/future stem formant – stem augment – screeve marker – plural marker – indirect speech marker.

Yipes! This agglutination is far, far worse than anything I have ever experienced in Hungarian (at least 4 words are needed for this).

[HerenIstarion]

fonts re: that's why I transliterate it in Latin

Online lexicon re: I should have said back in one of my previous: That is, I reckon, why there is no Georgian online dictionary whatsoever (as far as I know)

Would you mind providing a link? I'm curious to take a glance

Yipes! This agglutination is far, far worse than anything I have ever experienced in Hungarian

I feel somehow proud (silly of me, I know, yet still). We have even a word with 7 consonants in a row (the unique thing to the best of my knowledge):

vbrdgvnit - we tear it apart right now (used as a battlecry by yours truly in various competitions to bring good luck about, usually shouted by a team with hands held together, what with Georgian reputation, must have been giving opponents willies all right )

I should say also that similar thing may be found in Arabic as well (though languages are not related whatsoever, even if we have picked up a lot of arabic words, what with Arab invasion back in 7th century and what not), where one should know the stem to find thing in the dictionary (as the words are listed by the stem letter, not by one they actually start with, so 'fa'ala', 'mif'al' and 'Tafa'ul" will all be found on the F page, under f'l stem

I should confess in trickery too - I used an idiom in a tranlsation too (so it is not word to word) - ar mcxela - literally means "I do not feel hot", and may be translated as "I have no time for that", but in a bit of a rural way (not the expression to be uttered whilst, say, attending an official meeting, but has a lot go in between in casual conversation

So, after torturing you for half a page, I finally has driven to the point

You are right, pray proceed

[Althern]

This is the Georgian lexicon that I found by following the links from yourDictionary.com

As Hungarian and English are the only languages that I feel comfortable translating into, I will have to subject you to some more magyarul:

Nem koldus módra, mondta _______, hanem, mondjuk, a kószák kapitányának módjára, aki nem szokott városokhoz, koházakhoz.

Clues. koldus = beggar, kószák = rangers, and the worst agglutination is -akhoz/okhoz = to the (something, plural)

[Mariska Greenleaf]

Is it this one?

"Not a beggar, said Aragorn, say a captain of the Rangers , who are unused to cities and houses of stone."

[Althern]

Too easy, I see. Please proceed.

[Mariska Greenleaf]

Too easy, I see. Please proceed

If it weren't for the clues, I wouldn't have found it in a 1000 years...

New one, Dutch again...

"Luister naar me, Heer!"zei hij, "Nu voelen we het gevaar waarvoor we gewaarschuwd waren. Zijn we dan naar de overwinning gereden, enkel om versteld te staan door een oude leugenaar met honing op zijn gevorkte tong?"

If clues are needed, let me know.

[HerenIstarion]

that'd be Eomer to Theoden at Saruman's door:

Lord, hear me!' he said. 'Now we feel the peril that we were warned of. Have we ridden forth to victory, only to stand at last amazed by an old liar with honey on his forked tongue

[Mariska Greenleaf]

That was fast!
And correct of course...

[HerenIstarion]

Well, I don't know Dutch to be sure, but with 'honing' on the 'tong' and 'Luister naar me, Heer' it was not hard to work out even without online dictionary

It may not be the case for the insiders, but for outsiders (that is, those with native tongue not of Indo-European family) all European languages (again, that is, apart from Magyarul above and Finnish, o'course) look very much alike after several hard glances at )

so, the next one will be Russian:

proshu proschenia, no ia nikak ne dumal, chto vi vse eche v dele

[Althern]

Time for a guess: Bilbo to Gandalf

I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business.

[HerenIstarion]

That's your guy. And another one too. Go on

[Althern]

I'm still limited by what I can translate into, so more of the same unfortunately:

"Talán", mondta a tünde, "de lehet, hogy itt még egy nehéz csizma sem hagyna nyomot; suru a gyep és rugalmas."

Clues: talán = maybe, csizma = boot