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A true story.
Once upon a time,
Lexley wrote a mud related web magazine called Witch?, for the wireplay
mud scene. In one issue, I think it was issue 3, she did a list of
translations of Wireplay Wiz names. At the time I was doing stuff for
the ABC (mud2.com's mag) and asked if she could do some for us. Her
answer was as always lengthy and informative. Here is the main bit, over
a couple of e-mails. Bear in mind I was a mage at the time, and had in
fact had a long string of mages. Not sure how appropriate what she came
up with was, but it made me laugh. Oh and Lexley, if you are still out
there, or if anyone knows how to get in touch, mail me and say Hi?
Click here to mail me <g>
>so would you do for me a list of translations for
the Mud 2 newsletter
A list of translations of mud2 wizzes' names? But there must be 50 of
them! And I don't know anything about them. If
there's not much choice between syllables then a translation is
fairly easy, if limited. But if there's a lot of choice, then I'd
need to know more about the person I was
translating for so I could make it appropriate. For example, the name I
eventually got for Turrican (mud2.com's Gromit) is spot on, but I
couldn't do that for mud2.com wizzes in
general because I don't know enough about them to have an opinion.
You could probably do a better job yourself by looking up syllables in
the dictionary I link to at the end of the
article. I guess I'd have to check the pronunciation for you
though, mm, that might mean you'd spent a lot of time on names
that weren't phonetically correct.
I can try, but those 30 or so names I did for Witch? took me several
evenings to finish. Each name takes 15 to 20
minutes. It'd be a week before I could send you the 50 for
mud2.com .
>- and if you wont do the others i BEG you to do
Hawumph for me please <g>
OK. Well there's a number of ways to split up "Hawumph", which gives me
some artistic licence. I'll go for "hao"
(pronounced "how") "wu" (pronounced "oo") "fa" (pronounced like in
"father"). I could choose to insert a "ma" (pronounced "ma"!) if
that gave me a better overall meaning, but if
I do it this way I get:
hao3 = good
wu1 = wizard
fa1 = to become
 If you want to see what that looks like in Chinese characters, they're
hao3 http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/char.cgi?597D
wu1 http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/char.cgi?5DEB
fa1 http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/char.cgi?767C
That last one is the old-style character. If you want the new-style one
they use in mainland China, it's
http://www.chinalanguage.com/cgi-bin/char.cgi?53D1 .
>If that really IS the translation (i'll look
it up) then my faith in eastern wisdom is
shaken :-)
It's just one of many possible translations. That's where the art lies -
in picking the translation which is most
appropriate. I could, for example, have chosen:
ha1 = breathe out (with mouth open)
wu1 = crow
fa4 = hair
But "exhale crow hair" isn't really very good. I went for what I felt
was a reasonable description of you. I can't
always do that - some names just don't have the syllables to
worth with - but in your case I could.
Lexley |
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