Work Text:
OCTAVIA
I am Octavia of the Sky People and I wish to commit suicide.
TRANSLATION
Ai laik Okteivia kom Skaikru en ai gaf gouthru klin.
LINCOLN
...safe passage.
TRANSLATION
...gouthru klir.
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Conlang Dialogue: The 100, Episode 201
Dedalvs
Summary:
This is the created language dialogue from episode 201 of the CW's The 100. (Please note: This post contains spoilers for episode 201 of The 100.)
Notes:
(See the end of the work for notes.)
Notes:
Way back at the beginning, I had a discussion with Jason Rothenberg about how to write Trigedasleng. The language is derived from modern English, so lots of words are actually exactly the same as they are in modern English. The first line above could be written I like Octavia come Skycrew an' I gaff go through clean. The only word that's new is gaff, which is a condensation of gotta have. I showed him both options, and he decided to go with the (more or less) phonetic version that's still in use today, because it would cause the cast to approach it like a foreign language. Marie Avgeropoulos, who was going to have the first line of Trigedasleng, was not a fan. She didn't understand why we weren't using regular English words, and generally did not get the concept (which is reasonable, given that the sudden appearance of Trigedasleng in season 2 was always going to be something we were going to have to live with). Of course, she managed to get it, and thereafter, her character went on to have some of the show's meatier Trigedasleng lines.
The grammatical distinction here (the change in the verbal satellite) was predicated upon the translation itself. That is, in the original version of the script, the English was as shown above; I didn't suggest it. Rather, I needed to find a way that one could mix up one or two words and go from "safe passage" to "commit suicide". Using klir for "safe" seemed obvious, and I've used it as such ever since. For suicide, I thought of "clean" as in "a clean death", given that in this new world accidental and violent deaths are much more likely than, say, living to a ripe old age. The only way to ensure you gouthru klin is to do it yourself.
Series this work belongs to:
- Part 1 of Conlang Dialogue: The 100 (CW) Next Work →
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