In the absence of any significant insights, we can maybe keep inching closer to a completed translation. Let’s look at this:
You are standing in a wide pit which CARAB deep PARO the VOLTO.
I started looking at this sentence because I was interested in VOLT/VOLTO. But actually PARO fills an interesting role here. It’s clearly a preposition of some kind, but we have a lot of those already. It begins with the same letters as PASE, which we have as “in/into”, so it could be “within” or “inside”. But it also ends with -RO, which is literally “to”. So could this be “into”?
Almost every use of PASE works fine as “in” rather than “into”. The exception is this line:
SE STAND VASI VORHEL PASE GREY ADAMUR
… which we currently have as “the nasty knife shatters into metal shards”. I can’t see a good way to make that fit using PASE=“in”. We also have POSE which works everywhere as “on”, and PISE which was originally “out of” but mostly works if we just translate it consistently as “from”?
So … PARO=“into”, or would it be better to try to make it work as “within” or “inside”?
I definitely agree that PISE should be taken as “from”. I suspect the “…out of a total of…” library message was slightly rephrased so that it could use a preposition also found elsewhere in the text, and “…from a total of…” also makes sense.
I also like the idea that -SE means position and -RO means direction. I totally missed the connection with “to”, but that makes it even more appealing. I don’t have a great explanation for the metal shards, but if the theory is right, the whole system would be logical enough that I would actually suggest a typo.
It could be, it could be. “Deep into” in the cave desc is an almost irresistible translation. Maybe PASE is used for the knife description instead of PARO because there’s no sense of direction involved?
I’m inclined to pursue PARO=“into” just because it literally has the word for “to” at the end of it. But our translation of the sentence in question currently also assumes OLET=“deep” which I’m now questioning. We are pretty confident that OLT=“high”; have we seen any comparative adjectives yet? Could OLET be “higher”?
Not sure about everyone else, but I initially speculated that OLET=“deep” primarily because PASVORN OLETI seemed plausible to me as “inhale deeply,” and the idea that OLT=“high” arose secondarily out of that. Although I see that the in-progress translation has PASVORN as “breathe” instead, which obscures the “PA-”/“in-” prefix reasoning suggesting “inhale.” EDIT: and if anything, the current interpretation of PARO=“into” as literally PA (in) + RO (to) further supports PA- as a prefix meaning “in”.
Doesn’t necessarily mean that OLET can’t be “higher,” but then “OLETI” would be “higherly” (or “more highly”?), which feels questionable? And PASVORN would need to be revisited as well.
Right, this is a consequence of the thread going on so long (I believe we have just passed the record for the longest thread with the lets-play tag on the forum): I can’t always remember the reasoning that led us to some of our current conclusions. I’d entirely forgotten PA-=“in-”, but that definitely further corroborates PARO=“into”; I don’t think we have any other untranslated words where the PA- prefix is useful. (There’s PAINT, but is that a prefix? We have it pretty much confirmed that PACKAGE=“yellow” so certainly not all PA- words are “in-”.)
So back to VOLT. We see this in two cases:
You are standing in a wide pit which CARAB deep into the VOLTO.
(It’s possible that “pit” is wrong, but this was our best fit for what works with the mention of Red Hat stock.)
ALL SITITIN and LAMB around you, filling/flooding your VOLT with ISKOLEB of your own eyes.
BUELY is almost certainly a body part and we don’t have anything other than “eyes” that fits in context. I’m inclined to think that LAMB is either “rise” or “fall” from the phrase ZATHAL LAMBO which probably refers to either stalactites or stalagmites.
So VOLT is a noun, but the participle VOLTO can also be used as a noun and refers to part of a cave/cavern. I can’t think there are many words that fit this context, even before we start considering what could be filled with ISKOLEB of your eyes.
It’s possible (we’ve seen a few examples of irregular words that don’t seem to follow the same grammar as the rest) but, since the word VOLT also appears, it would have to be a deliberate red herring in a puzzle which is frankly hard enough already.
So I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve stalled out here. For me at least, this isn’t a case of losing motivation; it’s just that I can’t see how to make any more progress. For the key phrases that I really want a translation of in order to continue (mostly TAKE ALL, but also VOLT and ISKOLEB), I can’t come up with a single plausible translation that’s consistent with what we have so far.
I’d rather draw a line under this than let it peter out; I’d like to start another more traditional LP thread at some point and I don’t want the spectre of this one haunting me. So I’ll give it a couple of days just in case anyone comes up with a novel way of getting unstuck, and if not, I’ll edit the thread title to make it clear that it’s on indefinite hiatus and post the final state of my translated transcript here. That way, if someone discovers this thread in a couple of years and the links have gone dead in the meantime, they can still see where we got to and try to pick it up again.
I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to this thread, so I’m not sure what has already been ruled out as far as the “take all,” but to me, this passage
>**TOY SLEEP**
(with the take all)
The take all look in(to?) the sleep with a tlac.
With a oanor varavi, the door swings open.
[Your score has gone up by one point.]
>**ENTER DOOR**
looks a lot like unlocking a door, but the player not specifying the key, and Inform guessing at what object the player might plausibly want to unlock the door with, and guessing “take all”.
So, could “take all” be a key?
And “tlac” could be “click.” The (whatever) key fits into the lock with a click, or turns in the lock with a click.
“Take” = key, “all” = some kind of descriptor?
For example,
all = skeleton → skeleton key
all = iron/golden/whatever material → iron/golden/whatever material key
all = rusty → rusty key
If not, then could the door be opened by melting the lock (with a heat/flame source or a chemical)? Or an unlocking potion?
Yes, if that was the only passage, some kind of a key would be a good guess. But it’s complicated by the use of some of those other words elsewhere in the text:
At one point, ALL (which is therefore a noun as well as a verb) comes out of the TAKE and possibly puts out a fire
The verb used for how the TAKE ALL goes into the sleep is LOOK, but LOOK is also a noun for some sort of mechanism or control, which can be interacted with using at least two other verbs, neither of which is “unlock” or “open”
At the end of the game, there’s a monster which casts a spell to surround the player with ALL
(Reading your suggestion, I would find it delightful for TAKE ALL to be “skeleton key” and all of the other references to ALL to be “skeletons”, but grammatically, ALL is a mass noun, not a plural noun, so I don’t think it’s possible.)
Yes, I’m afraid we’ve been up and down the mountain with a myriad of theories on TAKE ALL. I’m not saying that that translation is the key to the rest of the puzzle… but it would surely be appropriate if it was.
Yeah, I’m still partial to a WATER BOTTLE being attached to a WATER GAUGE; water can put out a fire and flood the caverns at the end. But there are problems with this interpretation too. The main alternative proposed is that it’s a MAGIC WAND, but it’s unclear what MAGIC SOMETHING you would automatically insert a wand into.