Lamb to the slaughter and less is... less!

After a few days, new post on Atlas!

Before getting to the main point today, a few highlights:

• Grammar updated with a new explanation on prepositions, more examples and some other explanations updated.
• Dictionary updated, headers added.
• News page coming soon with the most important news as they come.
• Grammar will be reupdated soon with a few more explanations and more practice.

And now referring to the title of the post, the first long(ish) translation has been completed! It is Lamb to the Slaughter, of Roald Dahl.



The translation can be found here:

Dake de qung-swivhewana

Of course you can find the original searching online.

Interesting how the word "lamb" is created here! young-sheep, basically. Let me point out as well that the title is not a direct translation from the original, and it means "hit of lamb", basically.

But I do not want to speak about word formation, you will find more information on that in this blog obviously. I want to speak about a phenomenon that I find extremely interesting in Atlas. With only 500ish roots and all the rest of the words created by combination of these roots, one might expect that some Atlas words might be long, or longer than in other languages. That is certainly the case for some words:

lamb - qung-swivhewana

No question the Atlas word is a long longer, so we could expect the language to be longer than other languages. But, magic... in Atlas, less is really less! although some words might be a bit longer than in English, the language is so optimized that these are the results for the translation from "lamb to the slaughter":

English words:  2439, characters without spaces,  10334, with spaces 12638

Atlas words: 2032, characters without spaces,  9487, with spaces 11465

Difference: -17% / -8% / -9%

So there you go, Atlas uses 17% less words than English, and 9% less total space, for the exact same translation. No words or fragments have been omitted.

So that is a big difference! it shows that Atlas is not only a mixture of roots and words with no sense. If you take a look at the translation too, you will see that less is less, and the 500 roots system works!

But wait!! This is only a text.

But it happens (more or less) in all texts, even from other languages. I have translated a short text too from Spanish (find it at the end):

Spanish words:  143, characters without spaces,  677, with spaces 819.

Atlas words: 131, characters without spaces,  602, with spaces 730.

You do the maths this time!  It is a similar pattern.

So in Atlas, less is less! and that means less space, less words to learn, less grammar, less difficulty!

Keep coming back for updates!!

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"La sirvienta se detuvo antes de entrar al bosque. Había escuchado leyendas sobre lo que ocurría en su interior. Durante años había temido, y ahora debía convertirse, ella misma, en protagonista de esas historias.
Se sorprendió al descubrir que ya no miraba más una masa oscura, como unas enormes fauces, sino que prestaba atención a cada árbol como nunca lo había hecho. Las raíces, los troncos, las ramas, eran más reales de lo que nunca había sido ningún otro árbol en su vida.
Caminó durante horas, fascinada, pensando en todas las historias que le habían contado sobre el otro lado.
Cuando llegó allí, el cielo parecía más cielo, el pasto, más pasto. Y ella estaba más viva.
Había atravesado su desafío con temor pero sin retroceder. Y, al verse los pies, eran otros pies. Eran los pies de una mujer libre. Y sabia"

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“Al-itedua stopet do ze al-liveset al-direbzuu. Ze hiaret seihonen eal-hone i al-melie de ez.  Linianen ze zoret, ta u te ze houeset mux , zemem, al-honitsa de le-honen.

Ze vaqet de naitet, ze nai visat bix zaiicibu anneri, w detbokun seibesi, ma ze nai dianat onar direbo, w xen ze u hakunar duet vo. Al-direbbasun, al-direbduixun, eset veri bi de andar al-direbo u vie de ez eset u hinekar vo.

Ze siret li heren, huxdaki, ze denkat dukar al-stehonen beelezzet nah andar al-saide.

Ez viket i ce u xen, al-zelu anwuqudet bix zelu, al-hewanzeron, bix hewanzeron. Ta ze eset bix vii. Ze wezveset al-seisloqe de ze w zore ma z houvese. Ta ze viset al-vutuk de ze, ezek eset andar vutuk. Ezek esat al-vutuk de qenata vrai. Ta dani."