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How To Speak Kerbal! With Translator!

Tanner Rawlings

By Tanner Rawlings
in KSP Fan Works

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HeadHunter67

HeadHunter67

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Pronouncing a word spelled backwards is not the same as reversing audio of the word pronounced normally.

I was thinking the same thing. Anyone who's ever listened to the Chatterer plugin knows that it's not as simple as backwards spelling.

A better way would be to record oneself saying these words in Spanish, then reverse the recording. I think Windows comes with a utility that can easily do that.

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annallia

annallia

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I was thinking the same thing. Anyone who's ever listened to the Chatterer plugin knows that it's not as simple as backwards spelling.

A better way would be to record oneself saying these words in Spanish, then reverse the recording. I think Windows comes with a utility that can easily do that.

I am working under the assumption that Kerbals speak english. This is because the IVA notes are in english. Not just the hitchhiker pod either, the PPD-12 or whatever module has a note from either Bill or Bob (It is signed B Kerman). The note is in english saying he ate all the snacks. There was something else too but I forget what it was.

That and since you brought up chatterer there are words in there that are in english... May not make much sense in their usage but they are clearly english words (Jeb keeps screaming where are the waffles at me...)

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HeadHunter67

HeadHunter67

Posted
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If you play the official KSP videos backwards, you'll see that it is backwards Spanish they are speaking.

As for Chatterer, I brought it up to illustrate that spoken language played backwards sounds different from backwards spelling. Try not to read anything else into the analogy (BTW, there's Russian in Chatterer too - but the Spanish don't exactly have their own space program, you know?)

As for the written text in the game, it's for the player's benefit - there's no way of knowing what those symbols mean to a Kerbal.

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Whackjob

Whackjob

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How to speak Kerbalese.

Chapter 1: Variation in tone during terrified screaming to convey horrifyingness of impending demise.

Chapter 2: Handy phrases, such as "More boosters. Now." and "Where are my boosters?"

Chapter 3: Death rattle.

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Diche Bach

Diche Bach

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I think really the most important questions I'm still not seeing answer to is:

1. Is the proper way to refer to their native tongue: "Kerbish" or "Kerbalese" or "Kerbch" or perhaps "Kerbian" maybe even "Kerbwana" or "Kerbhili" possibly even "Kerbonics" or "Kerbon?"

2. What alphabet is used to write the Kerbal native language?

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Johnman

Johnman

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Posted (edited)

Reversing Chinese is a phonetic nightmare.

More on topic, if in the chatterer mod it's English and German, while official videos feature Spanish, then saying "speaking Kerbal" would be like saying you speak "Human". They have their own languages, which by chance correspond to human languages in reverse. Naamrej, Shilgne and Shinaps are just the ones we've come across so far.

Also, regarding phonetic representation of the words (using the roman alphabet and English pronunciation rules), look at what I tried to do with the language names: write it so that read aloud by an English native it would sound roughly as the English word in reverse. I'm not English native, so I might have gotten it wrong there, but you get my point. Of course, when writing in Shinaps, you would use Spanish orthography and pronunciation rules, for Naamrej, German, and so on.

Attempt (native speakers sorry for destroying your language and please feel free to suggest corrections):

So yeah, difficult, and not a language in the proper sense of the word, but still very fun!

!Nuuf eerev li-its tub, drew aeth foh snes reporp aeth neh edgegnal a ton dna, tluhceefid, aey os.

And while writing this I thought of something. Note the exclamation mark at the beginning of the sentence, since you would need to emphasize the "beginning" of the sentence, as you would hear if heard in reverse. Right? Right?

EDIT:

For a written system for each Kerbal language, I would imagine using a set of symbols that represent all the phonemes of its Human counterpart in reverse. See an IPA table for reference.

Edited by Johnman
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MalfunctionM1Ke

MalfunctionM1Ke

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<shameless mod plug> http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/25367-0-21-Chatterer-v-0-5 </shameless mod plug>

Based on this mod, the radio chatter is a mix of russian and english backwards. I realize that kerbals have no contact with human culture but that still makes total sense to me!

I love this mod. If I am correct, it is made of Radio transmissions from Russian and US Spacemission, sped up and reversed. Sounds pretty Kerbal though :)

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Tanner Rawlings

Tanner Rawlings

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Posted
Reversing Chinese is a phonetic nightmare.

More on topic, if in the chatterer mod it's English and German, while official videos feature Spanish, then saying "speaking Kerbal" would be like saying you speak "Human". They have their own languages, which by chance correspond to human languages in reverse. Naamrej, Shilgne and Shinaps are just the ones we've come across so far.

Also, regarding phonetic representation of the words (using the roman alphabet and English pronunciation rules), look at what I tried to do with the language names: write it so that read aloud by an English native it would sound roughly as the English word in reverse. I'm not English native, so I might have gotten it wrong there, but you get my point. Of course, when writing in Shinaps, you would use Spanish orthography and pronunciation rules, for Naamrej, German, and so on.

Attempt (native speakers sorry for destroying your language and please feel free to suggest corrections):

So yeah, difficult, and not a language in the proper sense of the word, but still very fun!

!Nuuf eerev li-its tub, drew aeth foh snes reporp aeth neh edgegnal a ton dna, tluhceefid, aey os.

And while writing this I thought of something. Note the exclamation mark at the beginning of the sentence, since you would need to emphasize the "beginning" of the sentence, as you would hear if heard in reverse. Right? Right?

EDIT:

For a written system for each Kerbal language, I would imagine using a set of symbols that represent all the phonemes of its Human counterpart in reverse. See an IPA table for reference.

yes, now that sources have surfaced im going to redo the entire thing, mabey a big ass community project where we try to translate earth languages into the many kerbal ones, im going to list off a few it believe should be translated first (english, spanish, german, russian, chinese, persian, swahili,)

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