Let's Translate: Lighan ses Lion by Andrew Plotkin

Playing Let's Play!
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Yeah, Zork 2 took all the parts from MIT Zork to do with gazing into things. There’s a set of three crystal spheres (red, blue, and white), and looking into one shows you the room containing the next one; you eventually combine them all into a black sphere, with a genie/demon (depending on version) trapped inside. The flask of clear liquid that magnifies things is completely separate from and unrelated to this, except that they both require the player to look/gaze through/into something.

FOLKS could also be “into”, but we already have a pretty solid “in”, and I’d expect “into” to be related to that.

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386

Oh, that’s why it includes the Gazebo.

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I was thinking “new-found wealth” could work for KLIUNEN-TINT MAZRUL, and MAZRULI UCTOE would be “wealthy adventurer.”

EDIT: That might be influenced by me connecting REVIRO with “dreaming,” if we’re free-associating based on the appearance/sound of words at this point.

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The spell FONN in your mind like a GORONG. It is YCLE “Dance”.

I’m trying to imagine how you know the name. Does GORONG denote something readable, like a scroll or page? Does FONN mean that it appears?

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(For what it’s worth, I’ve created an IFWiki page for Lighan ses Lion, with links to known previous translation attempts and other material. Risk of spoilers, obviously.)

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Not that it’s really relevant to the translation, but I note the “release information” is different between the original uncorrected version on the IF Archive and the corrected version on zarf’s site:

  • Zropse 18 / Aceba seul 540109 / Thinak z6.21 Nasaberg 6/10
  • Zropse 19 / Aceba seul 570109 / Thinak z6.21 Nasaberg 6/10

From which we can probably infer something about the date format of the world this transcript came from.

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I really like TINT = “new” to go along with TANT = “first”!

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We already have a lot of vision-based words with the root XOL, so I’d lean more towards aural world like “rings” or “sounds.” (I’m not going to lie, I’m also biased pretty strongly by the similarity of GORONG to “gong.”)

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Thinking more about the GORONG: there is a similarity here to GORNY (very likely “lungs”) and GORD (somewhat likely “breathe” or “blow”: it’s what the dragon tries to do in response to being covered with flaming liquid). “Voice” is already accounted for (BROX) but I wonder if the GORONG is something similar (“song”? “whisper”?).

EDIT: Also notice the similarity of FONN to FAN = “say”!

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FONN = “echoes” ? The similarity to FAN could be coincidence but the repeated N could be a hint at the meaning. I’m on board with the general sound/hearing link.

Elsewhere TOFAN, “intones”?

But also FANIT, from “The cavern FANIT away to the east.” FANIT = “curves”?

A few other trivial suggestions-
JEPY = “shares”. Not finding any words that might share roots.
LEDE = probably a color? English adjective order would generally put the color last if JEOLO LEDE is in fact two adjectives.

EDIT:

I’m poking further at the flame passages.

We first have:
A wall of jeolo lede flame blocks your way south.

Then, after >UPHOLSTER FLAME resulting in “Aha! It koona manan, but it is crosh mook.” and then >LISTEN FOLKS DRAW, we see a
dorop of lede flame.

KOONA is used only once elsewhere, in the intro - “KOONA UNLARV a few dwarfs”.

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Since it’s also described as “LEDE flame” elsewhere, I agree that JEOLO LEDE is probably two unrelated adjectives.

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I don’t see any parallels to JEOLO elsewhere in the transcript. Any number of constructions along the lines of “fierce yellow flame” or “roaring orange flame” or “bright blue flame” would be cogent, unless I’ve missed a translated use of one of those words elsewhere.

KOONA is the challenge for me. My gut reaction to these two passages was something like

”Aha! It looks real, but it is illusory magic”
”Look out for a few dwarfs”.

I know that’s untenable given what else we know, but I’m struggling to come up with another word that would fit in both places. I see the earlier discussion on KOONA. How many verbs can you really use on a wall of fire, without an indirect object? Especially so close to the beginning of the game, (presumably) without other clues. LOOK/TOUCH/EXAMINE/EXTINGUISH/ENTER? How many of these would realistically produce some kind of discovery/meaningful information when used on a wall of fire?

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-O endings are generally participles. So I was thinking something like “flickering” or “dancing” (or “roaring”, as you suggested). I agree that LEDE is probably a colour. The only colour we have so far is UP (red) although we can guess that PACKAGE is either blue or green (from PACSILM, which is some kind of named gem, so probably either an emerald or a sapphire).

I’m not certain even what part of speech KOONA could be. My only other attempt at reconciling the two occurrences you pointed out above is if KOONA is something like “avoid”. KOONA UNLARV=“avoid alerting” (except then UNLARV should be a participle, UNLARVO) or “cautiously avoid” (except then UNLARV should be an adverb, UNLARVII). And then KOONA MANAN is something like “it avoids hurting [you]”. But this feels pretty tenuous.

I’m not sure, but it’s worth pointing out that UPHOLSTER isn’t a hapax; it appears again here:

But it twists away from the ANOSPHULY DREIP, KIREMO their(?) UPHOLSTO.

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Notably, English has various adverbs not marked with -ly or -y (well, just, even, never), so it’s possible Lionese does too. But thinking about this as a puzzle, when there are so few adverbs around, it’s a bit surprising for one of them to be an exception unless it’s also an exception in English. Similarly, if LEDE is a color, why not make it be red, blue, or green fire?

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Right; let’s recap a bit what we know about these ANOSPHULY.

The dragon (and I’ll still call it a dragon in this post, though I’m increasingly skeptical about its nature) is trapped inside a circle of ANOSPHULY. The circle constrains the dragon, but is apparently coarse enough to allow the PC to dash inside and stab the dragon:

You SKIAL across the circle and DOGON your sword in the dragon’s BORM.

We know the dragon is constrained, because it tries to attack us, but can’t:

The dragon (wakes?) with a howl! It throws itself at you! But it twists away from the ANOSPHULY DREIP, KIREMO their UPHOLSTO.

The dragon is capable of casting spells that shatter swords and knives, so presumably these ANOSPHULY are quite robust (thick stone columns, e.g.).

The ANOSPHULY contain POLISHY:

Each one bears a few POLISHY APPLE LERULI.

It is unclear whether these POLISHY are natural (mushrooms, crystals, moss, etc.) or were placed by the dwarves to trap the dragon. What is clear is that the dragon “twists away” to avoid touching the ANOSPHULY, and that moreover these POLISHY are deeply damaging to the dragon:

The dragon twists away out of the deadly ORHELN, but it cannot avoid the shards which SCARN all around it. PURLY of small wounds RUBUC flame.

We threw shards of a shattered knife at the dragon. Now, I can believe that a well-weighted throwing knife could conceivably hurt a dragon, if thrown by a trained adventurer. Small shards of a knife? It seems here that whatever we coated the knife with (made from the POLISHY) is so harmful to the dragon that light contact with flying shards is enough to open wounds on the dragon which then catch fire(!).

Coming back to the original passage,

But it twists away from the ANOSPHULY DREIP, KIREMO their UPHOLSTO.

We can be very confident that UPHOLSTO is the present participle of UPHOLSTER (there are some Lionese words that end in -O but aren’t participles; however, since UPHOLSTER is attested in the text, surely that’s not what’s going on here.) Since the ANOSPHULY contain POLISHY that greatly damage the dragon, KIREMO likely means “avoiding” or “escaping” or some similar verb.

What could UPHOLSTO mean, then? The most tempting words here aren’t participles (“touch”, “reach”, etc.) But I think UPHOLSTO is somehow related to physical contact?

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If not a dragon, are you imagining a demon, continuing the Zork references? A demon trapped in a circle of some sort is a classic image, and holy water or the like could be put on random bits of metal and thrown to harm it.

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I’m not familiar with the Zork demon: from what I see online, the player negotiates with it, rather than fighting it? But it’s indeed an intriguing option.

Arguments for CORSET being a dragon:

  • a dragon guarding treasure is an iconic trope
  • the CORSET is heavily associated with fire (it casts a fiery spell, releases smoke and flame when hurt, etc.)
  • the CORSET howls, but doesn’t talk to you
  • Adventure and Zork have dragons

Arguments for CORSET being a demon:

  • dragons usually roost in spacious lairs, not caged inside a vault
  • flammable documents and a single gold bar are strange contents for a dragon’s hoard
  • the CORSET doesn’t breathe fire
  • the CORSET casts spells. Dragons are powerful spellcasters in some settings (e.g. DnD), but in Adventure and Zork the dragon is a big lizard that breathes fire
  • Zork II has a demon
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Also, the CORSET is apparently contained by some sort of circle. That’s more on-brand for a demon to begin with, but more importantly, dragons can fly, raising the question of why it doesn’t just fly over the ANOSPHULY DREIP.

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This suggestion might be too glib, but maybe the -o ending can denote deverbal nouns?

If UPHOLSTO = ‘touch (n)’ and UPHOLSTER = ‘touch (v)’ we have our neat explanation, but I’m sure this breaks something else.

And another vote here for BUELY = “eyes” - I can’t see a way to make “ALL SITITIN and LAMB around you, MEFALO your VOLT with ISKOLEB of your own BUELY.” make sense with BUELY = '“lungs”.

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It’s a good thought, but we see zero-derived deverbal nouns like stand (v) > stand (n) elsewhere. I’d be surprised if we had a noun-deriving suffix only in this one place.

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