So last night the online Mando'a reference was released to Hyperspace members. I've been looking forward to this for ages, so despite the late hour (it was like 2am when I saw it... I had been gaming and watching TV for a while so I'm not sure if it was up much earlier or not), I decided to be the first one on blogs.starwars.com to post an entry completely in Mando'a. It was a lot of work, even for a short entry, but I wanted to make it semi-meaningful and still communicate a few thoughts. Well, now I will provide the translation of the entry, and explain some of my thoughts regarding the language and its translation when I was writing it. So without further adieu, the exclusive behind-the-scenes "making of Amy's previous entry"!

For easy reference, here's the Mando'a text of my previous entry:
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Nu'ni sol'yc miit'gaanar olar o'r Mando'a (ijaat bah Rive) a ibic ven cuyi sol'yc ru'miit'gaanar yaihi'lyc o'r Mando'a. Ret. Ibic kyr'amu ca'nara. Ni copaanir kar'taylir Mando'a darasuum.

Nu sa Tra Akaane (*ni nuhuna!*)... a ni nari Kyrbej T'ad: Vu'traat ori'ca'nara. Ni Verd'ika Sol'yc Siver. Bic ori'nuhur.

Jetiise Vu'traat: Ehn Naasad ven olaro o'r ta'raysh t'ad tuure!

Ibac luubid ibi'tuur. Re'turcye mhi!
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Here's the translation, more or less. Sometimes I couldn't find a way to say something exactly, so I improvised a bit... see comments below:
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I'm not the first to write here in Mando'a (honour to Rive) but this will be the first written fully in Mando'a. Perhaps. This takes a long time. I want to know Mando'a eternally.

Not related to Star Wars (lol)... but I've been playing Battlefield 2: Special Forces a lot. I am a Private First Class. It is very fun.

Republic Commando: Triple Zero will arrive in twelve days!

That is enough for today. See ya!
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Disclaimer:

I have no idea how readable or understandable these comments will be, but I'm writing them mostly for my own benefit - so I know when I look back what it was like when the language was new.

Comments:

Ok, I know I messed up in the very first sentence, because Mando'a isn't supposed to have a passive voice and while I'm no grammar expert, I think I sorta invented one with the "written" bit. Heh. Ah well. "Fully" was interesting - I took the word for "full" - yaihi'l - and added yc to make it an adverb. The other interesting part of this paragraph was I could find no way to say "a long time". Instead, I opted for "kills time". It has the same meaning, though I mean it literally, not in the colloquial way we use it in English: to mean "using up time doing something meaningless". I don't think Mando'a is meaningless, and I certainly didn't write all this just to kill time! The last sentence in this paragraph is also the title of the entry, and it literally means "I want to know Mando'a eternally"... but the phrase kar'taylir darasuum to the Mandalorians also means "to hold in the heart eternally" or "to love"... because to them, love involves complete knowledge, not romantic mystery. (I learned that from the Star Wars Insider article!) I've wanted to know how to say "I love Mando'a" since forever, and now I learn that loving Mando'a and really knowing Mando'a are one and the same. Cool! So really, the last sentence can be translated either way and it'd be true. (Though I guess I'll have to hold off on saying I love Mando'a until I know it better!)

Paragraph 2: This is where I started having a bit too much fun. This paragraph isn't about Star Wars, but when I saw there were words for both "Battlefield" and "Special Forces" in the Mando'a dictionary, I knew I had to mention my current favourite game. Ok... so I know you're not necessarily supposed to translate titles, and certainly not literally... but it's just way too fun. Also I translated "Star Wars" too... hehe. I couldn't find a word for "star", so I used tra which means "starfield". Thus Tra Akaane is literally "Starfield Wars", but I figured it was closed enough. And then in brackets, I wanted to say "lol" to communicate that I was giggling to myself over my translation, but I had to come up with a Mando'a equivalent of "laugh out loud". I eventually opted for nuhuna, the word for laugh, and surrounded the words "I laugh" with *s, which commonly indicates the action. Thus "*I laugh*". Hehe. About the word "playing", I couldn't find an equivalent Mando'a verb. So I was stuck using the generic action verb, narir, meaing "to act" or "to do". Also, there's no weird tenses in Mando'a so I couldn't say "I have been" (what is that anyway... imperfect past? something weird like that...). So instead of using past tense, since playing this game is definitely NOT only in the past, I opted for present tense. Thus that part of the sentence is literally "I do Battlefield 2: Special Forces". LOL! Ah well, it gets the point across, I hope. Well, aside from the fact that BF2 is a game and I'm not really "doing" anything related to a real battlefield... but I guess they don't have games in the GFFA, or at least the Mandos don't. For the end of that sentence, I couldn't find a way to say "a lot" or "often". So I opted for ori'ca'nara, which literally means "big time". I hope that would be similar to "a long time" and get the same meaning across. Next sentence (phew, this is a long explanation!): pretty straightforward, I just said my rank in BF2. There's a word for Private (the rank) and I added the word for "first". Couldn't find a word for "class" or "type" or the like, so I opted for "degree". Thus I am a Private First Degree. And then "it is very fun" was straightforward to translate.

Ok, another amusement: me trying to translate "Republic Commando: Triple Zero". "Republic" was easy, but I couldn't find a word for "commando". So I just used vu'traat, the word for "special forces" again. I'm no military expert, but "Republic Commando" / "Republic Special Forces"... close enough, right? Then for "Triple Zero", I didn't know how to say "triple" so I was going to say "three zeros" (get it, "triple zero", 000?). Ehn is three, but there's no word for zero, so I had to use naasad, which means "none" or "not any". So you get "Republic Special Forces: Three None"... lol! Ah well. The other interesting part was "twelve"... I just put "ten two". I hope that's right! I think I need more examples to figure out how the numbers work.

The last paragraph was pretty simple. Though I translated re'turcye mhi as "see ya!" because that's the way I talk. And I suppose that if it's supposed to be like the French "au revoir", "see ya" works just as well.

Well, I suppose that's it for now! Oh... my brother got Empire at War today. (Mine's still in the mail.) Yayness! This game rocks a lot. I hope the full game is as fun as the demo was! *off to install and watch him play it*