Here's how it works:
- Inside the guts of the script, the Risus: The Anything RPG rules are are used to generate phoneme frequencies for English. The actual text doesn't matter so much as that it was always the same. This model is hidden from the user.
- The user supplies a model corpus (in the Latin alphabet) that should produce very different phoneme frequencies. I particularly like the works of Clark Ashton Smith (in English or in translation).
- The script then maps the most common phonemes in Risus to those of the model text.
- The user enters text to be "translated". The script replaces phonemes using the map generated in the previous step.
Here is an example:
Model Text: Esperanto "translation" of The Witchcraft of Ulua.As long as the model text is the same, the "translations" will be consistent. As you can see above, the "-uary" suffix maps to "-uaro" and the "-ember" suffix maps to "-apan". The faux-conjugation of the verb "to map" also produces an interesting simulated grammar.
Text to Translate Output January February March April May June July August September November December Floluaro Maruaro Roj Ankid Ria Flula Flugo Eecurgh Tambrapan Betapan Damapan one two three four five six seven eight nine ten ola zi knua mien mita tij tatas iej bila kas spring summer autumn winter lil tullan eenuj fikan map mapping mapper mapped roj rognil rognan rognajn
Note that "march" and "map" both translate to "roj" due to a mismatch in the number of phonemes in the different model texts.
Anyway, this isn't a real language but it may be close enough for your roleplaying needs. Simply pick a different corpus for each language and you can always go back and generate more words as you need them.
UPDATE: Today's update adds support for many (but not all) accent marks that appear in English and other languages that use the Latin alphabet.
8 comments:
The accidental re-use of phony words in "translations" may actually be an interesting brainstorming tool... for example, I used a Lorem Ipsum sample and translated some texts and noticed that "lord" and "lock" were both translated as "tras"... If the culture really did use a word that meant "lock" to also mean "lord", that could lead to all sorts of cultural speculation. Do landed nobles act as metaphoric locks on the doors to the wilderness, in the eyes of the culture?
Clever. :)
I think Talysman makes a good point, too. Such cyhers can be a the jumping off point for at least a "naming" language.
I was wondering how it worked! :D
Though an option to translate back into English would be nice.
@Talysman & Trey: I love the idea of looking for ideas in the re-use of words. And yes, this is entirely intended to be a "naming" language. :)
@Aarneus: I'm afraid I couldn't guarantee that it would translate back correctly. But it is definitely something worth checking out...
I tried Irish, Spanish, and Italian texts as the model, and lord and lock still ended up being the same word. Spanish, for instance (using a few paragraphs of The Abominations of Yondo), produced lord = ris and lock = ris. Taking the same paragraphs from the Italian translation of that text, we get lord = qin = lock. So it doesn't really appear to be a function of the model text so much as some factor present in those two words or the reference corpus.
This is an excellent and interesting tool, and I am very interested in finding new applications for it, but it does seem to have a few limitations.
@Aaron: Thanks for pointing this out. I'm going to take a closer look when I get the chance. I freely admit to its current limitations, but I hope make additional improvements here and there to make it even more useful.
Hi there. This is one of the best things I've seen for a long time. I am creating a space strategy computer game with lots of alien races. Can I have your permission to use your tool (or at least the ideas you have presented here) to generate alien languages?
@Phi Dinh: go right ahead! If you use the algorithm then just try to give mr a shout out. :)
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