Talk:Bislama

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Bislama language template

If you are a native speaker of Bislama then you can add this template onto your userpage:

bi

Man ia i luksave toktok ia Bislama long fasin blong manples.

--Amazonien (talk) 04:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yumi Yumi Yumi translation

It would be helpful to have a more literal translation, with words roughly corrisponding. Tuntable (talk) 21:20, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

hi, thanks for the suggestion. I looked at the translation, and conclude that it is a good one: not too literal, and not too remote from the original. If we were more literal, we'd reinforce the stereotype that Bislama is a kind of broken English; the current translation treats Bislama like a distinct language, which requires some adaptation, and I think that's good. For example, Plante fasin blong bifo i stap could be translated literally ("Many manners-of-the-past exist") but that would sound very strange in English; the current translation ("We have many traditions") is much better.

I will only change the translation of Hemia fasin blong yumi!, which is currently incorrect ("We shall be united for ever."?!).

Tankyu tumas lo yu. -- Womtelo (talk) 08:54, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. The biblical section should at least correspond by sentence. I am interested to see how Bislama works, how has English been adapted. As I think are others. Tuntable (talk) Tuntable (talk) 23:27, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Womtelo that we shouldn't have things like "God he arse belong all 'gether something" which haunted popular literature until the mid 20th century. The problem with the Bible text is that the translations don't match. The Bislama version is quite close to the original, expect of the paraphrase of 'manger' as "a certain kind of box where people used to put grass inside for animals to eat", and the resumptive Tufala i mekem olsem "They did so" which is necessary because of the long intervening paraphrase. The English text, on the other side, is from the NIV with all its liberties. So it is actually not a translation of the Bislama text at all. I'll try to add a faithful translation of the Bislama text in the spirit Womtelo described above. –Austronesier (talk) 08:41, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]