Indeed, since then I have been doggedly plugging away at a translation of a formidably gigantic 19th-century novel, La Chartreuse de Parme. Yes, that's right, the novel is in French and I am translating it into Occidental. The beauty of this is that this activity improves my understanding of French, so the time is in no way wasted, and the novel is no longer under copyright so it is freely available.
Where have I been doing this? In my blog in Occidental, which is called Li joya de linguages. As regular readers of The Joy of Languages would know, I have largely stopped blogging in English (except for very occasional posts like this one) until January 2011 so that I can work on my fourth novel.
Anyway, if you have not yet visited Li joya de linguages, I recommend you do so now. I am actively writing and publishing there in Occidental and if you speak any of the major Continental European languages you will probably be surprised to discover that you can understand at least a little Occidental without prior study; quite possibly you may be able to read whole passages relatively easily and understand most of it. Of course, if there is something you don't understand, simply obtain a copy of the novel in your native language and compare. To locate a copy of the novel in your native language, go to the wikipedia page and look at the left margin of the page: here you will see the page is available in several other languages, so click on your native language and hopefully you will find a link to a free, downloadable version of the novel in your native language; otherwise you should be able to purchase a copy from a bookshop as the novel is well known.
A warning to speakers of English: Occidental is much harder for us than it is for native speakers of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and other Continental European languages. Therefore do not judge the difficulty of Occidental according to its difficulty for English speakers; the language is actually remarkably easy for many Europeans. If your native language is English, quite a lot of effort is required to learn Occidental, although many words are instantly recognisable. For example, here is some Occidental:
Democratic? No. Practical? Yes.
Hmmm. That looks exactly like English! Yes, but it is actually Occidental. Let's take a look at those sentences written out in full, however, and then you realise that Occidental isn't quite so easy for English speakers.
Esque occidental es democratic? No.
Esque occidental es practical? Yes.
Is Occidental democratic? No.
Is Occidental practical? Yes.
So that is what Occidental is like for English speakers. You instantly recognise many of the words, such as democratic and practical but you have to spend some time learning the "glue words" or "linking words" which hold sentences together (here I am intentionally avoiding grammatical terms) such as esque which is a question marker that you can read as "Is it true that... ...?" And you have to learn a little bit about how the verbs work; this is extremely easy since almost without exception the verbs in Occidental are entirely regular and there is almost nothing to memorise (unlike, say, learning French or Spanish). For example in the above sentences es means "is". Now, many Continental Europeans will be able to read the above sentences instantly; Occidental is often really easy for them.
Interested? Here is a list of Occidental resources on the web, including dictionaries and the complete grammar. Try the Yahoo group for general help.
Anyway, all that is beside the point. Here is the point:
The joy is back!
Yes, I'm having fun again. Translating The Charterhouse of Parma into Occidental is a whale of a lot of fun, mostly because the language actually works as a literary language. It actually works. It is practical. It is expressive. It is beautiful. And—here's a novelty—people can actually understand it.
Let's restate this: I have now reached a huge milestone. I have now translated over 2000 words of a single literary work into a foreign language, to literary standard. This would be impossible for me, right now, in any other language; this includes all other natural languages and all other constructed languages.
If this is not a reason to jump for joy, nothing is.
To put this in perspective, my native language is English and I do not fluently speak any Romance language although I know a few words of Portuguese and have a basic, beginner- or early-intermediate-level knowledge of French. Therefore it takes me on average about 20 minutes to translate one long sentence from the French novel into Occidental (and I use a pre-existing English translation of the novel as a guideline). However it is getting noticeably easier.
This is a joy, an absolute joy, and very educational. My knowledge of French is improving exponentially, I am learning much about European history and culture which will be useful to me in my English-language novels, and I am becoming proficient in an eminently practical auxiliary language for literature: Occidental.
Things are looking up.
