Stālāg Corpus

Moments of transition

“The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”

G’Kar quoting G’Quon, in “Babylon 5”, season 3, episode 66, “Z’ha’dum”

Translation

“Hĕkr mābāzĕ pozdos llō dis, tåmāzīk, ssŏsumirlō imutta ar, gdakyizō imutta ar sperånān ma. Urtā tta pezes yō hĕko sōd uh nikō lē yagĕssasorī kos. Llō tta pezes attiko kolo ar sperånos.”

Comments

This text is a quote from a religious book written by a prophet of the Narn race, in the epic space saga Babylon 5, which was aired during the second half of the 1990s (and later with reruns, I guess) in the US, Europe and Latin America. B5 was rich in religious allusions, both real and fictional, as well as philosophical and ethical discussion (besides being an excellent visual depiction of an excellent plot line). I chose this quote because it marked a very important moment in the series, and it was rich in meaning and feeling, so I always remember it as one of the translations that I have to attempt first, in any language I create.

I used to have a B5 page but it was not a good job (just another fan page restating facts known to everybody with some interest in the series). Besides, it’s been a while seen I last saw it, and I missed the last season (that’s one my main frustrations in life, actually). Where’s a rerun when you need one?

If you have the chance to see B5, don’t miss it. You don’t need to be a science fiction geek to like it, because B5 is primarily a story of human (and non-human) struggle for life and joy, especially the right of the weak and less advanced beings to live among higher powers. If you do pay attention to the science in science fiction, B5 has mostly plausible technology -- given enough money and time, the Babylon space stations could be built today. It also reduces tech jargon to a minimum, unlike the several series derived from Star Trek, where jargon (worse yet, ad hoc jargon) constitutes 50% of all dialogue. And it pictures human, humanoid and absolutely non-human alien beings that could actually exist, with all their quirks and weird aspects, both racial and individual, without reducing them to stereotypes (compare to Star Trek, where Vulcans are all logical, Klingons are all violent freaks, Cardassians are all scheming manipulators, and so on ad nauseam). These people talk, discuss, argue, fight, make alliances, hurt others and get hurt themselves, make bad decissions and sacrifice themselves, all while being consistent within the plot.

Now, if you just want self-righteous militia men with phasers who live aboard a luxurious starship and are proud of obeying orders, then there’s plenty of that available...

Interlinear glosses

1. The future is all around us,
1. Hĕkr mābāzĕ pozdos llō dis,
1. future wholly surrounds 1pO about

2. waiting, in moments of transition,
2. tåmāzīk, ssŏsumirlō imutta ar,
2. waiting-APV transition-O moments-O in

3. to be born in moments of revelation.
3. gdakyizō imutta ar sperånān ma.
3. revelation-O moments-O in be_born-CMB PAR

4. No one knows the shape of that future
4. Urtā tta pezes yō hĕko sōd
4. no_one-O to is_known that-O future-O shape

5. or where it will take us.
5. uh nikō lē yagĕssasorī kos.
5. or where-O up_to 1p-bring-PLV-3s-PRO P

6. We know only that it is always born in pain.
6. Llō tta pezes attiko kolo ar sperånos.
6. 1pO to is_known always pain-O in is_born

Notes

pozdos ‘it surrounds’ is a P-verb (a more correct rendition would be ‘it is around, it stands as the surrounding context’). This is verbalization of pozd ‘surroundings’.
tåmāzīk ‘waiting’ is antipassivized (-āz-) so that its implicit subject corresponds to the patientive subject of pozdos: future(P)... P-surrounds... P-waiting, since the basic form of the verb is transitive (A-waits_for-P).
gdakyiz ‘revelation’ includes the intensive preffix gda- and the nominalizer -iz. The root is a phonetic alteration of ancient /ujk/, modern /uk_j/ (related to seeing, vision, showing, with metathesis of the palatal glide /j/); when the intensive is added, the root vowel /u/ becomes a glide too, and undergoes metathesis, giving labiopalatalized ky: /'gda.ujk/ → /gdawk_j/ → /gdak_w_j/.
sperån- ‘be born’ is a basic verb, but the -ån element is present in many P-verbs that express processes (cf *sper ‘birth, genesis’). In the causative voice it becomes sperånadd- ‘give birth’, and in the inversive voice with a genitive applicative it becomes the equivalent of ‘be a mother’.
peze- ‘be known’ is one of many perception/thinking verbs that have an oblique topic and displace their P-argument. Instead of ‘he knows it’ we say ‘to him it is known’ (the pattern is the same as the one for ‘seem’ and ‘appear’ in English: ‘to him it seems’).
yagĕssasorī uses the base verb gĕs- ‘bring, carry’, which is agentive-intransitive, and adds an argument (in this case only expressed by the first person plural preffix ya-) using the applicative voice.