A fair point. If thalny is points Then “your score is 0 points PISE a possible 8” has limited possibilities. From? From fits pretty well, especially in
(pise se falok)
A fair point. If thalny is points Then “your score is 0 points PISE a possible 8” has limited possibilities. From? From fits pretty well, especially in
(pise se falok)
Yeah, I think pise has to be “from”. So is koobar “total” or “possible”? I don’t see it anywhere else, so we may never know.
Possible is the default SCORE term, right? Has it ever been maximum instead?
No, I think you’re right, and I just misremembered. The library does indeed say “possible”.
I also re-read your comment, and I realise you’d already seen everything I thought I saw ![]()
Falok, falno… falok = container (generic)?
Yeah, I agree pise is likely to be “from”!
Assorted other thoughts: ilsh seems like it must be a direction, and I the abbreviation for it. Later we go IT, which if directions in this language work like they do in English makes ilsh either north or south.
I agree with this (not that you need my endorsement, you definitely know more about this stuff than I do)!
As far as verb inflection goes, we also have the prefix gu- in Zao gu-dwen ve-present se bowl vlop os drop?, which looks like a disambiguation; Zao gu-kounam ve WIVLENT, MUGRENT e loid neglonen, oxol zaol STOP, help kuri WATCH hepy sogo, os XYZZY?, which is asking what you want to do after presumably beating the game; and Zao gu-sogen… in what seems to be the equivalent of an AMUSING response. It looks to me like gu- marks a question.
From that we can also get a few other things: dwen is “meant”, although unless dw is a possible word in this language it must be irregular or follow a different conjugation pattern than other verbs we’ve seen. Kounam is probably “want”. Sogen is probably “tried”; this might be related to sogo, which we see a couple other places, although if sogo is “try” then it also doesn’t follow the pattern of bi/bien and egg/eggen.
Wevaxen looks to be “won”, and XYZZY seems to be “quit”.
I still think Askiosy is “thanks”, which in the context of Askiosy rau loovao LIGHAN SES LION! suggests rau is “for” (thanks for playing…).
And then jumping all the way back up to the beginning, we can guess loovany is “players”, with Tant-moose loovany being “first-time players”, which fits with the guess that ta is “one”.
That also fits -y being a plural marker!
If tant is “first”, we have another instance of it in (tant eggo se polishy) which seems like it’s probably “first taking the [plural noun of some sort].” We’ve seen egg before in a number of places, so from this can we guess that the -o suffix forms the present progressive/present participle/possibly other things the -ing suffix is used for in English? So then sogo would be, not “try”, but “trying”.
-o for -ing also fits with the grammar of the AMUSING suggestions at the end:
Zao gu-sogen…
- Snoosto se door?
- Seago se sudnogil man?
- Prono se wave dance pose se zaokneby?
- Swingo se door knife “kralni”?
There’s lots here that I’ll be adding to the translation in due course! I’m not going to plough ahead and dump everything in right away because I want to capture some of the process for those who might be reading the thread but haven’t spent ages poring over the transcript itself. @Hituro suggested that we should be doing this with real-time chat and a wiki, which was basically how the previous community translation effort which I took part in 24 years ago worked. But it has the disadvantage that you can step away for a few hours or a day and suddenly there’s a whole load of new grammar and vocabulary that’s appeared seemingly out of nowhere. So I’m going to go with journey before destination and slow it down a bit to showcase at least some of the reasoning that goes into working through the translation.
From the message “Zaol stop bi 0 thalny pise e koobar 8. Seis pray zao se korb pe Ligani Uctoe” we get “stop” = “score”, as noted above. Along with the “-o” suffix being “-ing”, this also gives us another word from the phrase “Zarfi Stopo Molk”, which I will therefore render as “Zarfian Scoring Scale”. Zarf himself notes that the name of the thing has never been completely fixed anyway; “scale” seems pretty universal, but the word “molk” appears nowhere else in the transcript in any case, so there’s not much point losing sleep over that one.
“Pray” = “give” is worth noting because it appears in one of the player’s commands; we give a GET MOUSE to a DOOR, and receive a point for doing so. “Thaln” = “point” is also one to bear in mind; although the word “thaln” doesn’t appear anywhere in the actual game text, we should keep an eye on the possibly-related words “zathal” and “thalshaim”.
“Ta” = “one”, and this is probably related to “tant” = “first”, which appears both at the start of the game (“first-time players should type ‘info’”) and in a message reporting an implicit action (“first taking the POLISHY”). We also have “bant”, as in “thanks to my KYUAY-BANT”, which given its resemblance to “tant” could possibly be “second”, giving “second-testers” as a literal rendering of what we would probably localise as “beta-testers”. Although I’m slightly confused as to why “-bant” would appear as a suffix there but “tant-” functions as a prefix in “tant-moose”.
I’ve put in “el” = “by”, which seems pretty likely, but “-el” also appears as a suffix, and I’m not certain that “by” is the right rendering in that case; it looks like it might be a possessive to me, but we may need more context to be sure.
Since the response to >STOP (i.e. >SCORE) gives the score in digits, we can infer that “fre” must be “four” (we gain four points at the end of the game for picking up four items, which are presumably therefore treasures?). The words “frelm” and “frezy” appear once each in the transcript; I’m not sure yet whether their resemblance to “fre” is just coincidence.
Finally, the last line of the transcript (“[Dress sle nire ve-station]”) is obviously “[Press any key to exit]” as @Draconis notes; this gives us “dress” = “press”, which appears in one of the player’s commands. I’m leaving “sle nire” for now because I’m not certain which word is which (i.e. whether “any” functions as an adjective here and therefore comes after the noun), which matters because “nire” appears in the sentence “Se turn plor milga se garst, oin va xolne neido nire” which I don’t feel ready to tackle yet. But “station” = “exit”, along with “neat” = “up” from the scoring message, lets us make some progress with a room description or two:
BORYL
You are PASE a BORYL CALAMI PE ZILFANY, FIRE PREL. Exits SYLN AUSH, ZERNH, ILSHZERNH, and EAT.
And after going EAT:
BORYL
You are PASE a BORYL PE ZILFANY CALAMI, FIRE PREL. Exits SYLN ZERNH, ILSHTARNH, and up.
“Eat”, of course, is “down”, to go with “neat” for “up”.
That’s all for now, so I’ll leave you to ponder this: “askiosy” is clearly “thanks” (note the -y which denotes a plural noun), so what’s the meaning of “askiosi”, as in:
Se door lighan se digrogi pise se coas. Va shisyle pise se torsho, xolo mronsor no askiosi.
Translation-in-progress link (now with slightly modified colours) here.
I’m interested in pase, which pops up in a lot of these room descriptions. It seems to be a preposition, like the possibly-related pise (which we currently think means “from”). You can just bi pase something, but you can also bi ercio pase something—I’m thinking maybe “be near” and “be standing near”?
Also, for another word that pops up in a lot of these room descriptions, pla is probably “here”.
Of course, we’re a little short on content words right now, and focusing on those would probably be more helpful than figuring out more function words, but the function words are easier.
Re askiosi, are we totally sure it’s not a typo?
Could pase not be in? “You are in a” is a pretty normal way of phrasing a room description.
Oh, duh, yes, that makes more sense. In/standing in.
I am interested in the repetition of “Dance” in the sequence
Se wave fonn pase zaol sipass prel e gorong. Va bi ycle “Dance”.
> FAN DANCE
Se Dance wave seton leid fus zao pron va. Se seaty sititino poorvo fus se wovel leid puplen, lark se dorop xoprel e nerb pe paint noifi, calmao sikii kinj firpsa ve-shalok sesl bisylen.
The first use of “Dance” in quotes makes me think this is an out of game reference, something gets called “Dance” and then is immediately used in a command and repeated in the next sentence. Is the first like a clarification or help request? Is it renaming a command? Could ycle mean now (as in X is now “Dance”).
Looking at some of the verb conjugations:
[Your score has bisylen up by one point.]
Exits syln zernh, ilshtarnh, and up.
I suspect “go” is an irregular verb here: syln “go”, bisylen “gone”. We also see bisyle in a place where “goes” might fit.
>UNLOCK DOOR SWITCH PLOVER
You courne a triv dexini. The door-el east bisyle calminjo vort the doblen.
If we’re willing to entertain the notion that these propositions don’t exactly have to match the same English word every time, pase could be both “in” and “into” while pise is “out” or “out of”. (Some dialects of English replace “out of” with “out”, after all.)
Of course, then there’s pose…
Could pose be “on”(/onto, if we follow the pattern we’re guessing for the others), maybe?
There’s a reference in this that is pretty obscure, wasn’t intended to be as obscure as it was, but still was a lot easier to figure out in 2001 than it would be today. Just knowing this is probably a bit of a hint, but if you want more of a hint, let me know ![]()
If it wasn’t intended to be obscure, then I’d like the hint! The intended level of challenge is plenty high already.