Re: Another newbie question

Am 08.01.02, The RipperDoc yscrifef:

Greetings!

> I've noticed that when some of you translates your conlangs here on the
> list, you have a sort of descriptive translation between two languages. I'm
> talking about the (often cryptical) text with all the uppercase letters,
> strange symbols, etc. It's purpose is (of course) clear to me; it's
> explaining which grammar is used, syntax, etc., but I'm not at all familiar
> with the method. Anyone that could tell me more about it? Is there a common
> standard, or does everyone make up their own abbreviations?
As has been mentioned, this is the local tradition known as the
"interlinear translation". As you already know, it's purpose is
explaining grammatical points of the original text in a
abbreviated and succinct fashion. It should be noted that there
are no hard and fast rules for making an interlinear, nor any
particular guidelines for how much or little information to
give.

My own rule is to make the interlinear as succinct as possible.
I don't give detailed entries under each conlang word from the
text. I'm of the opinion that the grammar can best be explained
in a paragraph at the end, which gives me more room for
examples.

As to the abbreviations, _most_ of them are fairly common, and
you should be able to figure them out; though some have more
than one possible term, and some terms have more than one
abbreviation:

n. NOUN, or NEUTER
adj. ADJECTIVE
act. ACTIVE
ERG ERGATIVE case
ACC ACCUSATIVE case
du. DUAL number

etc. Most good dictionaries have a list of such abbreviations
in them somewhere. Most good _conlangers_ will explain the
more esoteric or peculiar abbreviations. A number of us have
had little or no linguistics experience: they tend to come up
with idiosyncratic terms (sometimes quite good, sometimes too
close to a "real" term for good taste, sometimes too ungainly)
and they too need to explain things.

> Martin
Padraic.
--
Gwerez dah, chee gwaz vaz, ha leal.