What about ‘raised’, then? That’s something that happens to a score and an axe.
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Unless I completely hallucinated earlier, I believe the OT now has “bisylen” = “gone”.
“gone” is currently used in the translation, but I don’t entirely buy it.
Maybe “go up” and also “fly”?
The dwarf’s axe BISYLE CALMINJO VORT the DOBLEN.
The dwarf’s axe flies spinning(?) across(?) the DOBLEN
While we’re on the topic: I think VORT could be “across” (seems conceptually related to VOR=“half”), and I’m beginning to suspect that the GRALAM might be a “pile” (of treasure or coins or something) rather than the circle that I initially guessed it as, although that maybe depends on how strict you are about stuff “standing” vs “lying” in a pile.
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Also, DOBLEN seems like it could be “room” or “chamber,” although for that we already have SARD, currently translated as “chamber.” Maybe DOBLEN could be “floor”? Unlike SARD, no location is directly described as being a DOBLEN.
EDIT: Wait, -EN is the past-tense ending, although DOBLEN is definitely a noun. Is there an obvious past-participle-used-as-substantive-noun candidate here?
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Hold on a second.
-EN is the past participle suffix. Sometimes it comes with an implicit helper “has” to form the perfect tense, e.g. ZAO WEVAXEN = “you have won.”
BI is “to be,” so BIEN = “been” or “has been.”
i do not see how
Your score BIEN BISYLEN up
can be anything but “has been BISYLEN”, which doesn’t fit BISYL = “go.” If BISYL were “go”, then “your score has gone” would be rendered simply ZAOL STOP BISYLEN without the helper BIEN.
EDIT: Incidentally, I increasingly like the @jwalrus’s very creative idea that
Vas tobii man Daimar Up bien pase se garsty kudorii.
is
Too bad Daimar Up stock has been in the pits lately.
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I will unbend enough to give one hint, which would not have been necessary in 2001:
If you want to know what color of morvont might have been on my mind that year, take a look at Being Andrew Plotkin.
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Ah, so it was a reference I wasn’t getting…
It looks like Daimar Up should be Red Hat (Red Hat - Wikipedia) then? And the upusilm presumably a ruby?
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Yep. And I guess we aren’t hanging a hat on the PACKAGE gem.
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Regarding the UPHOLSTER:
UPHOLSTER fire
Iai! It KOONA MANAN, but it is CROSH MOOK.
and later the dragon:
It throws itself at you! But it twists away from the ANOSPHULY DREIP, KIREMO their UPHOLSTO.
The “iai” could well be pain onomatopoeia; and KIREMO something like “avoiding”, with UPHOLSTER something like “touch”.
I think it makes more sense as “aha”, as in solving a puzzle.
I dunno. You don’t get anything, nothing in the room obviously changes, and you don’t get a point.
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Yes, perhaps “Ouch!” instead of “Wow!”
While we’re on the topic of proper nouns… Calcevornia is pretty obviously “California,” no?
The setting of Shade, incidentally.
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So I remembered back in 2001 someone suggesting that “Red Hat stock certificate” was among the treasures, but I hadn’t been paying close attention to that part of the translation and assumed it was just a throwaway joke; in particular, I hadn’t noticed until this new attempt that there’s clearly a colour in the name of the company. I guess Zarf’s comment also indirectly confirms that we must have got enough of the vocab right to have worked out that it was a stock certificate in the first place!
I don’t know whether this makes the “in the pits lately” interpretation more or less likely. My memory of 2001 was that Red Hat was seen as falling out of favour somewhat in tech circles, which might mean this makes sense as the author making a joke at his own/his employer’s expense. But the Wikipedia article on the history of Red Hat suggests that things were going pretty well for the company at that point, so I don’t know.
Anyway, now we know that UP is “red”, we can guess that UPUSILM (literally a compound of “red”+“jewel”) is “ruby”. That means we have a MOBI ruby, which, although I have no idea what it means, sounded familiar enough that I looked it up and realised that “moby ruby” is one of the treasures in Zork II.
This makes me even more certain that “a PACSILM (emerald/sapphire) big enough to CRELN your FIRF” on must be a reference to something. Not only does it seem a very particular choice of phrase, but also, as the author, if it was an arbitrary choice then why wouldn’t you make it “hang your hat on” and put in another clue to the word DAIMAR?
I’m also mildly curious about whether UP=“red” could give us any kind of hint to the meaning of UPHOLSTER/UPHOLSTO?
We’re running out of easy ways to figure stuff out based just on deciphering the grammar, but here’s one more:
- All you REMP to do is get in and KOONA UNLARV a dwarfs KUI.
- FI one VUPRAM a KUI POLISHY APPLE LERULI.
KUI appears to be an adjective, but in particular, in both cases it applies to a plural noun, yet takes a singular article. Given how grammatical structures in this language tend to echo those in English, I suspect this means that KUI has to be “few”.
Here’s a couple more things I noticed while updating the translation:
- Is it possible that SWORD (which we speculate may be “memorise”) is related to AWORD (which we think is “become aware of”)?
- NER JANAI in the prologue is probably “no problem”, but does this help us any with the word NERB (part of that confusing sentence involving the SEAT and the PAINT) or NEROM (part of something that happens to the smoke)?
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I assumed Calcevornia was a place in Lion-land that happens to sound like California for the joke, more than literally being California.
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A few more translations:
ADAMURI = “steel” or “iron”
FIWEEM = “casts”
I think that “turn” makes more sense as a translation of PRESENT than “push”. I agree with @evouga that VOR means “half”, and with @draconis that HAPY means “things” or “actions”.
Is it certain that the -O ending is only used for words with “-ing” endings in English? Along with HALO YOSO, there’s also KURI WATCH HEPY SOGO, which seems to mean “some amusing things to try”. I can’t think of any equivalent phrases that use “trying”.
I prefer “not difficult” since -I endings are usually adjectives.
NE is commonly associated with negation in Lionese. Several of our verbs and adjectives come in opposite pairs.
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No, as you say there are exceptions. LERUO is another example of a plain verb (in the indicative) that ends in -O, for instance.
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Good catch! “Moby” was contemporary MIT slang for “huge” (because using it that way meant “Moby Dick” could be slang for, well…) and it shows up in a couple places in Dungeon and thus the Zorks.
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We already have PRON = “cast”, so what’s the difference between these two?
PRESENT should be “turn”, have I (or anyone else) got it as “press” somewhere? “Press” is DRESS.
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