Toki Pona - Tumblr Posts
tenpo suno ni li pona!
toki! mi jan pona sina. mi wile lape. sina pilin seme? mi kama sona pi toki pona. ni la, toki mi li ike. toki mama mi li Inli. mi tawa!
My favourite thing from jan Misali's toki pona tutorial series is when they spent a whole episode going through all the guidelines for tokiponising people's names, and concluded that ultimately people's names in toki pona should be whatever they prefer, and followed that up with "this is also true in english btw". I think about that all the time.
So I've been thinking about translating Pokemon to Toki Pona, and the general linguistic nature of the games.
Like, Pokemon X and Y are very strange to tokiponize, even just down to the titles. Because like, those letters are not part of the Toki Pona alphabet. Yet, the letters are core to its box legendaries, Yveltal literally looks like a red Y, and has Y in its name. How do you translate this? Well, you look up the origin of the name and find an article stating they were named after the x and y-axis. It seems weird at first, but it's fully consistent with the legendaries. Xerneas is a soweli, who travels horizontally, while Yveltal is a waso, who travels vertically. Even the akesi Zygarde, representing the z-axis, moves vertically. I think it's fair to say poka and sewi, aside and up, should be the new titles for Pokemon X and Y, maybe sinpin for front instead of poka, but I'm not sure about the legendaries.
As for other Pokemon, well, I'm actually willing to transliterate in certain cases. This one other post I found has Pikachu as "sowelo", roughly translating to "yellow creature." This is like, fair as a choice, but the name Pikachu is a very iconic one, and if somebody were actually playing a tokiponized Pokemon game, they would instantly recognize this yellow creature. Pikasu just seems like the natural fit, considering it hasn't been localized into anything else. Plus, it lets you set up Pikasuli (suli meaning big) as the name for Raichu. But then we get into much thornier territory when we ask that about literally any Pokemon that isn't Pikachu. There are many other Pokemon that have preserved their original name across localizations. Like, all of the various Pika-clones to show up throughout the series, like Pachirisu and Togedemaru, kept their Japanese name in an attempt to capture the same Pikachu spark. Should they have their names tokiponized as Pasilisu and Toketemalu?
I guess this brings us into a deeper question of the distinction between a Pokemon name being the name of an animal, like a pigeon or a mouse, versus the name of a character/mythological figure, like a Phoenix, Tsuchinoko, or Bigfoot. For example, the legendary Lugia is called that in all languages, but its counterpart Ho-oh is named differently in Korean and Chinese to match those cultures' mythological birds. The Treasures of Ruin have Chinese names (despite them being different in both pronunciation and order across different localizations) and the fact the names are in Chinese and they're part of a quartet indicates legendary status. Except in China, where it doesn't, so they added 古, meaning ancient, to the start of each name. So the question for a Tokiponist is, how do you convey a Pokemon's legendary status through naming structure alone? I genuinely don't know, but I have a few ideas. Perhaps adding suli meaning important or majuna meaning ancient (I know majuna isn't in the original Toki Pona book, but it is in the official dictionary) could convey that status handily. Let me know what you think.
Lastly, wordplay! This is a kind of fun with language that should be preserved. Of course I'm going to translate Ekans as Iseka, the word for reptile backwards. Of course Girafarig is gonna be Nenanen, the palindromic version of nena meaning bump, and its evolution Farigiraf as Anenena. You've gotta be able to preserve the silliness too. Anyway I'm bad at coming up with normal creature names so that's gonna be it for me
toki a ! mi jan Kusatowi. mi lukin e ni: sina kama sona e toki pona. pona a ! mi lukin e ni kin: sitelen lili sina li jan Vee pi sitelen The Owl House. mi lukin ala e sitelen ni, taso, jan sitelen li epiku lukin. ni li pona tawa mi: lipu mi li pona tawa mi. :)
toki a! pona tawa sina! mi jan Tantatanta. mi lukin e ni: sitelen lili sina li jan Sylvie pi sitelen Epithet Erased. sitelen ni li pona tawa mi :3
soweli
mu
I think it’s a shame when people say toki pona is “about simplicity” or “about minimalism”. The ideal of pona on which toki pona is based revolves not around removing as much as possible, but instead around removing as much as you personally think is acceptable. Ignore everything you don’t care about and focus on what’s important to you.
kalama musi is a perfectly reasonable translation for music. But if you think that’s too abstract and doesn’t properly articulate what you think defines music, use more words! Use different words! Maybe music is an important part of your life, and it’s kalama pi nasin mi! Or maybe you think two words is already too many and music is simply kalama! Or, wait, is sound the most important part of music to you anyway? Maybe it’s not kalama musi, but musi kalama. Or is the sound completely irrelevant to your view of music, and it’s just musi?
This is also why no one can truly say how many words are in toki pona. Sure, the 137 nimi ku suli are a great list, but there are probably thousands of nimi sin created by different people with their own views on what concepts can be abstracted into simple descriptions. I’m fond of isipin myself! Of course, if you think the original 120 nimi pu are all you need—or even if that’s too many and you think we could do without some of them, that’s up to you.
Toki pona is about interpretive simplification, not objective minimalism.
ni li kama tan lipu ni:
https://tenor.com/view/toki-pona-spinning-kijetesantakalu-gif-27030005
ilo Seli li pilin pi ijo taso. ni la seli ona li kama laso telo.
everyone from baba is you speaks toki pona
Baba (as well as every other playable character) from Baba Is You speaks Toki Pona!
concept: toki pona translation of cookie clicker where all the numbers bigger than three are just "mute"
The toki pona word for "smartphone" translates to "exciting rectangle"