Translation Tuesday: Filipino Pride

A very common request I get is how to translate "Filipino Pride" (or some iteration of it) into Baybayin (Alibata). In today's exciting episode of Translation Tuesday, we'll learn how to write out "pride"...



You might notice I kinda had the sniffles in this video... I got a fun little project soon to be posted up, hopefully finished by this week. It'll be something to ring in the holiday cheer!

Stay up,

~cyph

Translation Tuesday: Filipino Pride

Translation Tuesday: Aimee

I forgot to go over a major point in the video, the lack of disambiguation between an "E" or "I" sound, and between an "O" or "U" sound. Traditional Baybayin is a very bare-bones writing system, which when taken to its most literal sounds in context to modern pronunciation, can not fully express all the sounds found in a spoken language. Ancient Tagalog was pronounced slightly differently than what we hear today, such that the differences between the "O" and "U" sound (and "E" to "I" sound) weren't as separated as they are today. Thus, the same diacritic indicators (kudlits) are used to express E-and-I and O-and-U...

In the video, I mentioned "E-Mi" would make a good phonetic estimation for "Aimee" (Amy), though I was pronouncing it as "Eh-Meh". Really, I was pronouncing the "Mi/Me" character strictly as "Me" (Meh), forgetting to mention that this can also be pronounced as "Mi" (Mee). It's also a very close translation to the sound of "-Mee" in the name "Aimee". Vice versa, the same characters used to express "E-Mi" (Eh-Mee) also also be read as "I-Me" (Ee-Meh).

With this in mind, I really do think that "E-Y-Mi" (Ey-Mee) is the closest phonetic estimation to Aimee; however, this is of the few times I'd actually rather opt for a traditional, cross-kudlit-less translation, simply because nothing much is really lost or gained by including the "Y" sound. There are times when a cross kudlit could completely change the meaning of a word, as is the case with "Pata" (tired) and "Patay" (to kill). This isn't one of them.

Stay up,

~cyph

Translation Tuesday: Aimee

Translation Tuesday: Mabuhay

I hope I can keep up with making this a weekly web video series...



I've been meaning to start this a long time ago, but it's only till recently that more and more people are emailing me with Baybayin translation requests, slowly making the production of tutorial videos a necessity. I'm always willing to go to conferences, festivals and other forums to present and educate about Baybayin history and methods. That's actually what the Bathala Project is mostly about; education through proliferation. However, lately I've been getting e-mails/messages asking me to translate-this or translate-that with neither a formal introduction or a "please & thank you".

Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime.

Usually with these e-mails, I'll first inquire if they're requesting me to do a commissioned piece for them (ala custom name cards, digital prints, canvas pieces, etc). But I'll always include telling them which characters for their translations to use, hoping that by showing them the break-down process, they could figure out for themselves how to translate their desired word into Baybayin. I know it can seem daunting if nobody has explained it to you before, and failure is always an option, as evidenced in my short story in the video. Still, some persist and reply back to me along the lines of "I DON'T WANT TO BUY ANYTHING JUST TRANSLATE IT FOR ME." Yeesh...

So, I hope doing these tutorial videos can weed out translation fiends and help build an online, interactive community to educate and interact with each other. I'm not sure how I'm going to make these videos interactive yet. Maybe I'll ask people to post up videos of their own translations and we'll have a translation critique session? Who knows...

Stay up,

Cyph

Translation Tuesday: Mabuhay