Dear Persian speaking friends, I am new here and I am trying to translate lovely Persian songs to Turkish, so my Turkish fellows can enjoy them.
We, who are not native Persian speakers, have a hard time to figure out colloquial and shortened forms in lyrics which are a lot. For a foreign language, one uses dictionaries but dictionaries generally consist of literary forms (with an exception for Wiktionary, where I can usually find forms of Tahran dialect). I can identify and guess many forms (e.g. you drop many h and y sounds and long a becomes u etc. Plural forms are written as 'a' not ha as in gola for golha, or bazam is baz+ham, shabbo is shabbuy, biyaran is beyavarand etc.) but still it is very time consuming and some times I fail to find. LT offers a tool for adding annotations. When I select a word on transcriptions a button appears and lets me to add an annotation and after saving it, the annotation added appears when one hover over that word (if I am not mistaken). If you native speakers could add annotations to the colloquial forms revealing their literary forms (if it's not too much of a trouble) I'd appreciate very much and I think it would help to reduce wrong translations for others too. Thank you for your time.
P.S. If this is a subject already discussed in the forum I am sorry.
[SOLVED] Adding annotations for colloquial and shortened forms
Selam. Hoşgeldin!
The phenomenon you are referring to is known as 'diglossia':
"a situation in which two languages (or two varieties of the same language) are used under different conditions within a community, often by the same speakers. The term is usually applied to languages with distinct ‘high’ and ‘low’ (colloquial) varieties, such as Arabic" or Persian.
The problem is not necessarily with 'colloquial' language, but rather with SPOKEN language. The way we speak and pronounce words is different from the way we write them down. So lyrics that are transcribed as sung (spoken short forms) are difficult for foreigners. For example:
Spoken:
چشامو بستمو تو رو دیدم که دیگه وایسادی کنارم
(cheshaamo bastamo to ro didam ke digeh vaaysaadi kenaaram)
vs.
Written (formal):
چشمهایم را بستم و دیدم که دیگر تو کنارم ایستادهای
(cheshmhaayam raa bastam va didam ke digar to kenaaram istaadeyee)
Spoken short forms in Persian vary in its different dialects. So نان (naan) in standard Persian, become نون (noon) in most dialects and accents in Iran, but not necessarily in all varieties of Persian.
Rewriting the spoken transcription in standard, formal language is so much work! You could ask native speakers of Persian for help through a private message:
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/members/none/0/322/0/0?order=Last+seen
By the way, I have the same problem with non-MSA Arabic lyrics.
Hi. Persian, like other languages, have many 'registers', depending on the context and usage. It can be official or non-official, formal or casual, childish (speaking to a child), etc.
Different registers are not just 'shortened' forms, they can be totally different. "تو" and "شما" are two totally different words that both means 'you'. The first one is colloquial, you will never use it to address a judge in a court. There is also the so called 'secret language' invented by the current Iranian youth (e.g. words like "خفن" - almost "damn cool", 'فاز' - mood, etc), which is a fairly new phenomena in colloquial Persian.
Please find here a very good paper about the common rules of converting standard, written [Iranian] Persian into colloquial, spoken one. It is based on the author's research on teaching Persian to non-Persians. It should give you a kick-start in the spoken Persian, and probably answer many of your questions.
I suggest here as the first stop for Persian words' meanings. It is a combination of several dictionaries, some very reliable, and include many colloquial terms.
Hope this helps.
Just wanted to say that whatever song you wanted to translate from Persian into other languages, you can ask me to annotate it for you (and others) in at most 24 hours as long as I am active at LyricsTranslate. That is not time-consuming for me at all, and that would be my pleasure.
