ETCSL and Me Don't Agree

[ninurta2008]

Well.... sort of....

I've translated the sumerian kings list, and I've noticed some huge differences between the way I translate it, and the way that ETCSL translates it. Am I getting something wrong?

I translate the first 9 lines as follows:
1. Kingship from heaven descended to
2. Eridu; Kingship of
3. Eridu: King Alulim
4. did 28,800 years
5. Alalngar did 36,000 years
6. 2 kings;
7. They did 64,800 years.
8. Eridu fell;
9. It's Kingship (went) to Badtibira

[ninurta2008]

Alternatively, I'd translate line #2 as: In Kingship (of)

Am I translating this wrong or what? Or is ETCSL not really strictly translating the text, but paraphrasing it?

[enkur]

I'm not the right person to help in this matter but as far as my own amateur occupations with some very simple sentences have showed to me, I could say I feel the ETCSL translations are correct yet somehow indirect in comparison with the translations in my native language probably because the English is not so close to the Sumerian, while my native language, though Slavic in form, has something in common with the Hungarian-Turkic languages, which are closer to the Sumerian.

[ninurta2008]

How is sumerian closer to them? It's a language isolate, and Hungarian is Uralic, and Turkic is Altaic. Indoeuropean, Uralic, and Altaic, according to Nostratic, are Eurasiatic, and are cousins of Sumerian, but equally distant, according to nostratic, but its an umproven theory. I'm not certain if there are other theories running around.

I'd say it translates for the most part just fine into english, I think that they may have translated it the way they did, to paraphrase the text. As the verb used isn't "to rule" but is "to do; act"

[enkur]

I said they are just closer to the Sumerian than the English. I'm not a linguist to argue how much they are closer and why, but I've felt somehow my native language fits better the Sumerian construction than the English.

For example: In "A balbale to Ninĝišzida (Ninĝišzida A)", line 15 is transliterated

d nin-jic-zid-da jidru ud su3-ra2 tum2-tum2-mu-bi mu-e-zu"

and its English translation reads

"Ninĝišzida, you understand how to wield the sceptre, into the distant
future."

In my native language it could be translated literally and directly as:

"Ninĝišzida, the sceptre afar to carry you know"

I don't know if it makes sense when said this way in English but in my native language it makes very good sense and translates literally this way, the word order being the same as in the Sumerian. The English translation really seems like a paraphrase in comparison.

[adapa]

ETCSL was an Oxford project directed by Jeremy Black et al. which provides solid, scholarly, modern translations of the Sumerian texts. They are certainly not paraphrasing. However, due to our still fairly small understanding of Sumerian, alternate translations are often possible. As far as the Sumerian King List goes, there's nothing wrong with your translation, you got the major nouns and verbs, but you miss the nuances of the grammar ( as far as we know the nuances!).

First here is the Sumerian of the passage in question:

1. [nam]-lugal an-ta ed3-de3-a-ba
2. eridug.ki nam-lugal-la
3. eridug.ki a2-lu-lim lugal
4. mu 28800 i3-ak
5. a2-lal3-ĝar mu 36000 i3-ak
6. 2 lugal
7. mu-<bi> 64800 ib2-ak
8. eridug.ki ba-šub
9. nam-lugal-bi bad3-tibiraki-še3
10. ba-de6

Here's how I would translate the passage:
1. When kingship descended from heaven,
2. the kingship was in Eridu.
3. in Eridu, Alulim was king.
4. He ruled 28800 years.
5. Alalgar ruled 36000 years.
6. 2 kings
7. who ruled 64800 years.
8. Then Eridu was destroyed
9. and its kingship
10. was carried away to Badtibira.

the grammar in the king list isn't necessarily simple. In line 1 the verb is e3 "to go down", but the -de-a-ba after the verb indicates a temporal clause, ETCSL translates it as "after", but I prefer "when." Who is right? Who knows.

Line 2 is difficult. We know what it means, but how do we get there grammatically? Here's how I explain it: (the Sumerian is Eridu nam-lugal-la) the -a at the end of the phrase is the locative, "in" referring to the location of Eridu, so "in Eridu," then we supply an unexpressed "to be" (which in Sumerian is perfectly acceptable!) which in this case we'll translate as "was". So we have: in eridu was the kingship".

Line 3, I agree with ETCSL that we have to have an implied locative "in" so it's "In Eridu, then we supply another "was" and we have "In Eridu Alulim was king" (in a variant text the writer actually supplied the "was": X lugal-am3, X was king).

Now in line 4 the verb is /ak/. That verb doesn't usually mean to rule, but it means to do, to act, to perform. However, it's also used as a helping verb: al...ak means "to hoe", literally "to do the hoe," en-nu-ug3...ak means "to guard", literally "to do the guard" or "to perform like a guard", etc. you get the idea. In this phrase the /ak/ is referring back to the word lugal (king) in line 3, so Alulim is "doing king" "performing like a king" which we would translate in English as "ruling."

Line 5. Alalgar ruled a bunch of years, again the /ak/ refers back to lugal and is translated as "rule."

Line 6-7. This line is straight forward: "2 kings who ruled for 64800 years." To make better English we insert the "who" which is only implied in the Sumerian.

lines 8-10. the verb in line 8: "ba-cub," this form is often translated as a passive in English. The verb cub means a lot of things, one of which is "to be completely and utterly ruined" so we insert a "then" to make the English flow better, and we have: "then Eridu was destroyed." The verb /de6/ means "to bring, to carry, to carry off", the /-bi/ on nam-lugal (kingship) means "its" so we have "then Eridu fell and its kingship was carried off to Badtibira." This line is interesting to me because the words create an image of kingship as a thing that can be carried off by a conquering army, like the statues of the gods often were.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I didn't mean to write a treatise, it just came out that way!

[ninurta2008]

It does help! Thank you.

I'm learning on my own, so it helps to get feedback from those who aren't selftaught with dictionaries that lack Grammar Notes. That's why I thought I'd submit it here, to see if perhaps I got something wrong or if I'm getting the text right. This is the first text I attempted to translate without looking onto any other texts in english, as I wanted to see if I could do it.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Very nice responses! Your linguistic experience is always appreciated Adapa It's certainly invaluable to hear plain English explanations of Sumerian grammar - such explanations are rare as owls teeth and the scientific structure is at once inaccessible and also the only thing that makes the texts even partially intelligible.


Ninurta2008 - It is of course admirable to undertake to learn an ancient language. Anything is possible for the independent learner, I think it all comes down to attitude. I think with the case of Sumerian, one will have to assume that the experts hold our best interpretations- any place there reading differs from yours will be lets say, a helpful indicator that grammar secrets you have yet to uncover.

In this study the learner dynamic seems simple to me - Stage 1: the learner discovers and absorbs the grammatical apparatus of Sumerian and learns the science behind interpretation - or they don't. Stage 2: the learner improves current readings. My assumption is stage 2 will never preceed stage 1


Let me know if the language resources Adapa suggested do not prove adequate though I think I'd suggest the same thing.



P.S. As for Enkur's feeling that his language is closer in some way to Sumerian, despite that this is a language isolate, there is something to that. Sumerian is an agglutinative language, so it strings affixes onto the end of a word to modify it -
I will use wiki here for sake of ease:

"agglutination is the morphological process of adding affixes to the base of a word."

English uses this principle but to very limited extent: " English, which has an agglutinated plural marker -(e)s and derived words such as shame·less·ness"

Though not directly related to Sumerian, some modern language use a similar grammatical scheme: "Examples of agglutinative languages include the Finno-Ugric languages, such as Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian."

Wiki gives an example in Finnish, which is not the best example language: " For example, Finnish epäjärjestelmällisyys has the root järki 'logos', and consists of negative-root-causative-frequentative-nominalizer-adessive-"related to"-"property", and means "the property of being unsystematic," "unsystematicalness." The word has lots of stem changes, so Finnish is not the best example of an agglutinative language."

[ninurta2008]

I see. I thought he meant related genetically. English tends to be more inflectional, and towards the isolating end, grammatically. The Uralic languages aren't familiar to me, but I can definitely see the connection in that they're both agglutinating.

Apr 8, 2011 2:43:58 GMT -5 us4-he2-gal2 said:

Ninurta2008 - It is of course admirable to undertake to learn an ancient language. Anything is possible for the independent learner, I think it all comes down to attitude. I think with the case of Sumerian, one will have to assume that the experts hold our best interpretations- any place there reading differs from yours will be lets say, a helpful indicator that grammar secrets you have yet to uncover.

In this study the learner dynamic seems simple to me - Stage 1: the learner discovers and absorbs the grammatical apparatus of Sumerian and learns the science behind interpretation - or they don't. Stage 2: the learner improves current readings. My assumption is stage 2 will never preceed stage 1

I become so sure of myself sometimes on certain things. ;D
Don't mind me, I know that I have alot to learn.