Balafon

I led a brief multilingual Paschal Greeting in church this past Easter Sunday. When I was researching the greetings I found the Wikipedia article and various websites not very useful for getting actual pronunciations. With the help of more research and some native speakers I came up with the following list. The second line of each part is my attempt a phonetic transcription, and the third line is aimed at getting native English speakers as close as possible (for monolingual English speakers) to something resembling the actual pronunciation.

English
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
[ kʰɹɐʲst ɪz ˈɹɪzn̩ hi ɪz ˈɹɪzn̩ ɪn.ˈdiːd ]
Kraist ihz RIH-zen! Hee ihz RIH-zen ihn-DEED!

French
Christ est ressuscité! Il est vraiment ressuscité!
[ kʀist ɛ ʀe.ˌsy.si.ˈte il ɛ ˈvʀɛ.mã ʀe.ˌsy.si.ˈte ]
Kreest ay ray-SÜÜ-see-TAY! Eel ay VREH-mahn ray-SÜÜ-see-TAY!

Cantonese
基督復活了! 他確實復活了!
[ kei˦˥ tɔk̚ ˥ fɔk̚ ˨ wʊt̚ ˨ liuː˩˨ taː˦ kɔk̚˦ sʌt̚˦ fɔk̚ ˨ wʊt̚ ˨ liuː˩˨ ]
GAY DOLK folk wuht leew! TAA KOLK SUT folk wuht leew!

Spanish
¡Cristo ha resucitado! ¡En verdad ha resucitado!
[ ˈkɾis.to a ɾe.ˌsu.si.ˈtaː.ðo ɛɱ βɛɾ.ˈɗaːð a ɾe.ˌsu.si.ˈtaː.ðo ]
KREES-to ah ray-SU-si-TA-dho! En ver-DADH ah ray-SU-si-TA-dho!

Mandarin
基督復活了! (Jīdū fùhuóle) 他確實復活了! (Tā quèshí fùhuóle)
[ tɕiː˥.tu˦ fu˥˩.xu̯ɔ˩˥.lɯ̯ʌ˧ tʰaː˦ tɕʰy̯œ˥˩.ʂi˩˥ fu˥˩.xu̯ɔ˩˥.lɯ̯ʌ˧ ]
CHEE-DOO FOo-khwO-luh! TAA CHwö-shI FOo-khwO-luh!

German
Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!
[ krist.us ɪst ˌau̯f.eɐ̯ˤ.ˈʃtan.dɨn eɐ̯ˤ ɪst vaˤ.ˈhaf.tiç ˌau̯f.eɐ̯ˤ.ˈʃtan.dɨn ]
KREES-toos ihst AWF-eya-SHTAHN-den! Eya ihst vaa-HAHF-teekh AWF-eya-SHTAHN-den!

Korean
예수 부활 하셨네! 참으로 부활 하셨네!
[ ˈje.su ˈpu.ɸʷɐl ˈhaɕːjɔnːɛ ˈtɕɐm.u.ɾo ˈpu.ɸʷɐl ˈhaɕːjɔnːɛ ]
YAY-soo BOO-hwal HASS-yon-ne! CHAM-oo-ro BOO-hwal HASS-yon-ne!

Arabic
!المسيح قام! حقاً قام
[ ɜl mɜ.ˈsiːʲħ qɑːm ˈħɐqː.ɐn qɑːm ]
El-ma-SEE-ehh QAHM! HHAQ-qan qahm!

Greek
Χριστός ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!
[ xɾi.ˈstɔs aˈnɛs.ti a.li.ˈθɔːs aˈnɛs.ti ]
Hree-STOESS a-NESS-tee! A-lee-THOESS a-NESS-tee!

When I first came here, this was all a swamp of structural linguistics. Everyone said I was daft to build a Universal Grammar on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them.

First I built a Transformational Grammar. That sank into the swamp.

Then I built a Government and Binding. That fell over and sank into the swamp.

So I built a Minimalist Program. That burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.

But Recursion stayed up!

Until that pesky Dan Everett came up out of the Amazonian swamp…

Apologies to Monty Python.

In the past couple of months I have released new versions of NeuroLab and IronMeta.

NeuroLab version 1.2.3 is a maintenance release containing numerous fixes:

• Fixed grid generation after resize.
• Fixed grid viewer not always reflecting latest grid status.
• Fixed grid saving and loading losing grid network.
• Fixed activation gradient rendering for links of length greater than 1.
• Fixed inhibition for links of length greater than 1.
• Source code fixes and refactoring.

IronMeta version 2.3 contains the following:

• Made generated code more general so it is now possible to combine parsers by inheritance or encapsulation.
• Added the ability to use anonymous object literals in rules. They match by comparing their public properties with the input object’s properties.
• Fixed a bug where string and char literals were not correctly handled in parsers whose input was not of type char.
• Fixed an off-by-one error in input enumerables.
• Generated code now compiles with Mono.

Released NeuroLab 1.2.1: http://neurolab.bitbucket.org

Neurocognitive Linguistics is an approach to linguistics developed by Sydney Lamb (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lamb/) which uses relational networks to model what the brain actually does when it handles language. You can read more about it at the LangBrain site (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lngbrain/main.htm) and Glottopedia (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Neurocognitive_linguistics).

Neurocognitive Linguistics Lab (“NeuroLab” for short) is a program for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux that allows you to experiment with relational networks using a convenient GUI, and record the results of your experiments in tabular form.

Eddie at Kouya provides a handy glossary of Bible translation terms:

• Meaning Based: “a translation which prioritizes the meaning rather than the form of the original language.”
• Form Based: “a translation which prioritizes the form of the original language rather than the meaning.”
• Literal Translation: “a form based translation”
• Word for Word: “a form-based translation and I don’t know much about languages.”
• Free Translation: “I don’t like this meaning based translation.”
• Paraphrase: “I really don’t like this meaning based translation.”
• Accurate: I like it.
• The Most Accurate: means either
  • as an opinion (I believe this is the most accurate translation) “I really like it.”
  • as a statement of fact (this is the most accurate translation) “I know nothing about translation theory or languages.”
• Dynamic Equivalence: “I read a blog post about translation once.”

I’ve demonstrated before that what you think is “word-for-word”, or even one that conforms to the grammatical structure of the source text (“formal”) is actually nothing like it, but let’s have another example.

From Anabasis by Xenophon we have this scene in a battle:

τὰ δ᾽ ἅρματα ἐφέροντο τὰ μὲν δι᾽ αὐτῶν τῶν πολεμίων, τὰ δὲ καὶ διὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων κενὰ ἡνιόχων. οἱ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ προΐδοιεν, διίσταντο: ἔστι δ᾽ ὅστις καὶ κατελήφθη ὥσπερ ἐν ἱπποδρόμῳ ἐκπλαγείς: καὶ οὐδὲν μέντοι οὐδὲ τοῦτον παθεῖν ἔφασαν, οὐδ᾽ ἄλλος δὲ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ μάχῃ ἔπαθεν οὐδεὶς οὐδέν, πλὴν ἐπὶ τῷ εὐωνύμῳ τοξευθῆναί τις ἐλέγετο.

Word for word, this is:

The and/but chariots they-went/were-driven the on-the-one-hand through of-their-own of-the of-enemies, the on-the-other-hand also through of-the of-Greeks without of-drivers. Those and/but when they-might-see, they-stood-apart: he-is and/but who also was-seized like in in-hippodrome panicked: and/but nothing indeed but-not/neither this-one to-suffer they-said, but-not/neither another and/but of-the of-Greeks in in-this in-the in-battle suffered no-one nothing, except on on-the on-right-wing was-shot someone it-was-said.

To make this even minimally comprehensible in English you need to make a lot of changes:

And the chariots drove some through the enemies’ own lines and some through the Greeks’ without drivers. And whenever they saw, they stood aside, but there was one who indeed was caught like someone panicked in a hippodrome, but indeed they said that he suffered nothing, nor did anyone else among the Greeks in this battle suffer anything, except on the right wing one was shot, it was said.

We had to re-order words, add words, change tenses, get rid of double negatives, and otherwise munge things to get even this clumsy text. And yet there’s a lot we still don’t have: who is the “they” in the second sentence? It becomes clearer with the context, but it’s not good English to have a pronoun refer to a referent in a possessive construction. What’s a hippodrome? I didn’t know they had guns in the 4th century BC…

Here’s Carleton L. Brownson’s translation:

As for the enemy’s chariots, some of them plunged through the lines of their own troops, others, however, through the Greek lines, but without charioteers. And whenever the Greeks saw them coming, they would open a gap for their passage; one fellow, to be sure, was caught, like a befuddled man on a race-course, yet it was said that even he was not hurt in the least, nor, for that matter, did any other single man among the Greeks get any hurt whatever in this battle, save that some one on the left wing was reported to have been hit by an arrow.

My favourite Bible translation in English is the Revised English Bible.