A composer called Daniel J Hay contacted me today asking for help with a piece he’s working on entitled Tears For Earth. In the first movement, Bones of Earth, he wants to have a chorus of speakers in counterpoint to the tenor solo repeating the phrase “bones of earth” (or “the bones of the earth”) in various languages. Could you help with this?

The translations should ideally be in the Latin/Roman alphabet and have notes on how to pronounce them.

Here are a few that I came up with:

– Welsh: esgyrn y ddaear (esgeern uh they-yar)
– Irish: cnámha an domhain (craavuh un down)
– Mandarin: diqiu de gutou (dee chee-oh duh goo-toe)
– Japanese: chikyuu no hone (chee-queue no hoe-nay)

Other translations already received.

Emilio Gonzalez, who works as an intercultural mediator with immigrant children in Tenerife, emailed me to see if I could help to translate a short story into as many languages as possible.

Here’s the original Spanish version, and the English version:

El león y el ratón

Érase una vez un ratón que salió de su madriguera y se encontró un enorme león.

El león quería comérselo.
– Por favor, león no me comas. Puede que un día me necesites.
El león le respondió:
-¿Cómo quieres que te necesite, con lo pequeño que eres?

El león se apiadó al ver cuán pequeño era le ratón y lo soltó.
Un día, el ratón escuchó unos rugidos terribles.
Era el señor león.

Cuando llegó al lugar, encontró al león atrapado en una red.
– íYo te salvaré! – dijo el ratón.
¿Tú? Eres demasiado pequeño para tanto esfuerzo.

El ratón empezó a roer la cuerda de la red y el león pudo salvarse.

Desde aquella noche, los dos fueron amigos para siempre.

The Lion and the Mouse

Once upon a time there was a little mouse who, coming out of his hole, met an enormous lion.

The lion wanted to eat him up.
“Please, Mr. Lion, don’t eat me. One day you might need me.”
The lion answered, “Why should I need someone as small as you?”

Seeing how tiny the mouse was, the lion took pity on him and set him free.
One day, the mouse heard an almight roar.
It was the lion.

When he got to the place, he found the lion trapped in a net.
“I’ll save you!” said the mouse.
“You?” You are too small for such a hard task.”

The mouse started to nibble at the rope of the net and the lion was saved.

From that day on they were friends forever.

The story has already been translated into Catalan, Basque, France, Portuguese, German, Arabic and Chinese, as well as English. Here’s a pdf with those translations.

Could you translate it into any other languages?

If you can help, please email Emilio at: animaccion[at]gmail[dot]com

A translation agency has contacted me asking for help finding someone who can translate from English to Fijian.

If you can do this, or know someone who can, please contact Stephen at stealthtranslations@googlemail.com as soon as possible.

Thank you / Vinaka

Lowlands-L Anniversary Celebration is an interesting website I discovered recently which features translations of a Low Saxon / Low German folktale, De Tunkrüper (The Wren), in numerous languages. There are also details of the languages and recordings of some of the translations. The author of the site, Reinhard F. Hahn, is keen to collect translations and recordings of the story in as many languages and dialects as possible – perhaps you can help.

The Lowlands-L website contains information about the West Germanic languages of the lowlands along the North and Baltic seas, including many varieties of Dutch, Frisian, Low Saxon and English. The Anniversary Celebration section concentrates particularly on those languages, but also includes languages from many other parts of the world, as well as constructed languages, and extinct languages such as Gothic and Coptic.