I was recently translating English to Sindarin when I came across the phrase "I am here to help." The nearest translation I could find for "help" was "rescue." Therefore, my translation read "I am here to rescue," which is completely different from "I am here to help."
If any of you helpful people has a translation for "help," it would be helpful if you could share it with me.
Your helpless friend,
-Lairë-
Hello there,
There isn’t a necessarily clear-cut way to translate this one. Sindarin has two attested verbs of this meaning: elia & natha, carrying the connotations of blessing & rescuing, respectively. For “help” as in assisting/supporting there exists the NeoSindarin verb *gresta with accompanying noun *grest w/ the meaning of “aid, support, help, succour“. These are both derived from Gnomish; so go with caution as to the accuracy of them.
(This is not going to answer your question.) Does the translation have to be that direct? I don't know the context you're working in, but if you want the elvish to be Tolkieny, allowing the limitations to steer a creative, possibly somewhat poetic translation, can be fun. And helpful.
I'd like to add on the NeoSindarin *tulu, literally meaning "to (physically) support", but deriving from the Qenya tulpu-, with the concept of aid.
The verb "elia-" is questionable due to Tolkien's struggling between "√Ū" and "√LĀ/ALA/AL|LA" for negation, the latter of which was his final extensive idea on the subject, and it happens to coincide with the root of "elia-", √AL(A). This is why we have both albeth lit. "good-word" and alfirin lit. "not-mortal", and according to the latter approach the former should mean something like "not-word, ?unspoken".
There are no attested "U-verbs" (verbs whose final vowel is U) in Sindarin, and we have no idea on how to conjugate them. Thus, any attempt to employ such neologisms will almost undoubtedly prove to be erroneous when a new document from Tolkien introduces the rules for their conjugation or indeed confirm that Sindarin lost this class of verbs.
Tolkien's latests notes give √THĀ/ATHA (and a variant √HATH, whose initial H would disappear in Sindarin) as the root for "help" alongside a few other meanings. Since the direct derivation atha- was used as a future suffix of "willingness", natha- "to help to" from the same document or the earlier eitha- "to assist, ease" (which should have been ethia- by regular development rules, especially since it coincides with eitha- "to stab; insult") can work. Thus, I offer:
Ni hí an-nathad. / Ni hí an-ethiad.
"I am here to help".
Thank you all so much. I think I'll go with natha-- it seems to fit the best in this particular context.
I just woke up, therefore some of the syntax here might not be the best. Without further a-do:
I would definitely not say "Ni hí an-nathad", nor "ni hí an-eithad". That is an Anglo-based idea of "to see", "to hear", etc. but what about Tolkien's "E aníra tírad"? It most definitely is not "E aníra an-dírad" and I will not pretend that it is. The only way that I'd feel comfortable with such a form is if we accept the "ir" in "ir Ithil ammen Eruchîn" to be the "ir" in "aníra". That would make the sentence mean "The Moon longs for us", simply taking the "an-" and putting it onto the plural first-person pronoun "we". But as it doesn't say "îr", as one might expect from "tûl acharn" and "gûren bêd enni", and this is an often unthoughtof translation, it might not be the case. Thus, the "an-" before verbs is most likely a reconstruction that should not be tolerated. The gerund functions itself as the "to" before the verb. Examples: "aníron istad" (I want to know), "e cên i iest dín gwannad eb ethûl i Aran" (he sees her desire to leave before the King comes back). Additionally, as the only attested form of the locative "sí" comes syntactically attached to a verb "linnathon", we have to follow this. Yes, we have "adar nín i vi Menel", with no sign of "na-" anywhere, but that is because it is reasonably assumed. While the "sí" in "ni hí" is clearly lenited because of the "na-" and I credit you for that, we must follow the form of "linnathon...sí". Thus, "non hí" should be our guess. Non? Why not naun? I'm going off of "aun" (he/She/it gave), which is why "I gave" is Ónen, an attested form. I would thus say "Non hí nathad/eithad/eliad (basically "non hí" plus the gerund form of whatever we want to use for "help"). This sentence structure resembles another Tolkien sentence "Edro hi ammen", a syntactical parallelism which I love. Going on from √THĀ/√ATHA, David Salo said "Telin le thaed" for a very similar sentence. Perhaps we should consider "thaed"? I personally prefer "natha-". On that note, nam hí le nathad!
The difference between “aníra tirad” and this phrase: the an is there to indicate “for the purpose of”, not to mark a gerund. If it was ”aníra an-dírad” it would translate as “he desires for seeing”, not “he desires seeing” as in the original version.
As for “I am”, I am very much unsure of why you would choose to employ “Na-. The copula in Sindarin (or at the very least most all Neo-Sindarin) is implied: thus the bare 1st person singular pronoun ni is used. In this case the presence of lenited “hí” is due to it starting a prepositional phrase, “here for helping”. Your conjugation of Na- leaves me further confused as in your final version you changed from your explained Non to Nam, typo?
The presence of le shouldn’t be needed: it could be used based on the context; but we don’t know any context beyond “I am here to help”.
The entire phrase Elaran gave would translate word by word as, “I here for helping”.
Without meaning any disrespect, mostly just curiosity,
Ríon Ríon
Hello Ríon! First, "nam" was not a typographical error. I was merely saying "we are" as in all of us in this Elvish community, as a separate thought. That would call for "nam". My use of "na-" is the necessity for a verb in this context. Would you mind showing to me proof that you would not use this? I said that I know about the implied verb being there, but I do not think that it is that common among the examples given to us. "Adar nín i vi Menel" is really "Adar nín i no vi Menel". Whether you would say "naw", "nâ", or "no" in this context is a separate discussion. I am merely saying where the form of "to be" would go in the sentence. I do not look at websites that provide neologisms, I simply look at Taramiluiel's Sindarin Corpus and go forward from there. I see no evidence in the Corpus for the start of a prepositional phrase being lenited. Yes, "le" is not required, but I try to stay as true to what Tolkien gave us as possible, and I am thinking of "le linnathon" and "le nallon" as a syntactical reference. Whenever I translate anything into Sindarin, I think of the closest sentence syntactically that Tolkien gave us to it. I think that more translators should be doing this. I read many things online that use ridiculous grammar and I think "Wow, you did not read what Tolkien gave us". Le linnad" means "To sing to you". I stand firm in this translation. I do disagree with what you say about "an-". I would like to see proof for this as well. I hope I have clarified of my intentions. If not, I will happily explain further. All the best. No elwid i•mbair lín!