Sindë Alda-Capil "Grey Tree-Jumper" and Lassi "Leaves" (Thing Explainer)
Original Text:
Grey Tree-Jumper
These little animals sleep in big round houses made of sticks and leaves high up in the branches.
Leaves
Trees make power from the Sun’s light using leaves. The green stuff in leaves eats light (and the kind of air we breath out) and turns it into power (and the kind of air we breath in).
Quenya Translation:
Sindë Alda-Capil
Tittë celvar sinë humë sé altë cornë coar carina lassion ar olwenion tára olvannar.
Lassi
Aldar capë tuo calallo Anaron lassinen. I laicë nati lassessen matir cala (ar vista etsúyalvë) ar vistar sa tuonna (ar vista súyalvë minna).
Lit:
Grey Tree-Jumper
These little animals sleep in big round houses made of leaves and of sticks upon lofty branches.
Leaves
Trees make power from the light of the Sun using leaves. The green things inside leaves eat light (and air we breathe out) and changes it into power (and air we breathe in).
Deriving an agental form from cap- “to jump” was tricky. I could have used some more ordinary suffixes, but the is one, -llë, that has been used both as an agental suffix and as a diminutive. Since we’re talking about squirrels here, I figured having both would work! But, you can’t have a consonant cluster like ‘pll’… I considered squirming a -i- in there, as -llë may be a variant of -il (thus combining them into -illë, and anyway, adding in a -e- or -i- to avoid consonant clusters is not un-heard of), but, I felt in my heart of hearts that it wouldn’t be proper, so I just went with -il.
I also considered using the genitive noun case; effectively, jumper of trees, or trees’ jumper. I’m not sure if the meaning is entirely accurate, and hyphenated words are pretty standard (and favored by Tolkien, for obvious reasons if you ever read a good translation of Beowulf), so I stuck with that.
There is no glossed verb for “to sleep” but there is a noun, “fúmë”, which would be read “húmë” in Tolkien’s later Quenya, which means “sleep” and implies a verbal stem hum- “to sleep”, as the suffix -ë and a lengthening of the stem vowel is often used to turn a verbal stem into a noun; in other words, the un-glossed verbal stem hum- “to sleep” turned into a noun would have the u become ú and a -e stuck onto the end, becoming húmë “sleep”.
I’m not sure of my allative case ending for “upon branches”, as it is usually used in the sense of going towards something, but there are other attested examples of it being used for “upon” so I think I’m safe.
I’ll say right now that there is no word for “power” that works in this context; trees don’t get their energy from Morgoth (at least, I hope not), so I went with a word that roughly means “physical strength” instead. I hope that’s closer to the meaning of “that which allows one to perform actions” more than “that which allows one to raise volcanos from the earth”. Maybe if we’re talking about Ents wielding swords, I’ll use a different word.
I’m bad with noun cases at the best of times, so I’m really hoping “calallo Anaron” translates to “from the light of the Sun”. I’m pretty sure it is.
I thought of using the ablative case for “the air we breathe out” but I used the prefix et- instead. Probably because noun cases scare me.
I’m just going to say that “and changes it into power (and air we breathe in)” took me about a solid hour to do, and I’m not happy with it. There was no word for “turn” in the context of “become” (the only ones I found were in the context of “turn around”) so I had to use “change”, but I don’t know if using the transitive verb was correct. I used it simply because I don’t know. And then came the problem of “into power”. There’s no preposition or noun case that I’m aware of that implies something becoming something else. But, I know that the available prepositions have more concrete meanings, and that case endings are a bit more flexible. Also, did I miss a plural? I feel like I missed a plural. I feel that very strongly. Or maybe I’m just hungry.
Gosh, I was hoping to do two entries 'cause the one for squirrels was only one sentence, but I’ve been working on this for hours now… maybe I’ll stick with one at a time, even if they are only one sentence…
