How to Translate Druid Akkadian Texts

(April 23, 2024) Druid Akkadian texts use runes which are letters used in words not having inner vowels. The word "Rune" is Indo-European in origin. Its earliest attestations are Old English run, rune; Old Norse run; Old High German runa, Gothic runa, Celtic Gaelic run, and Welsh rhin  where they mean "secret words." The modern usage is from late 1600's when German philologists reintroduced the word when referring to the letters from any ancient Scandinavian source.

Runnymede (Runic Island) is the place in Surrey, England where the Magna Charta was signed.

Reference

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rune

(July 31, 2022) Translations for historical study and reference need to be done according to the scholar’s standard.  The standard is:

1. The goal of translation is to transmit the intent of the writer, not to spin the text for any other purpose.

2. Letter assignments must be consistent and cannot be deliberately mis-assigned to make a word. 

3. No letters can be added, subtracted, or shifted in the text to make a word.

4. Each ancient word is assigned one and only one English word or phrase for its translation. The only exception may be to adapt the word to its grammatical context. Semantic context (sentence meaning) is no reason to change word definition. If the ancients used one word then so should we.

5. Proper names are the last resort because they can represent any letter pattern and so are a wild card. Names do not represent a translation.

6. The lexicon providing word meanings must be based upon numerous independent texts with many being long texts.

(June 1, 2023) No language of an ancient Pagan culture is well understood. One reason is that ancient Pagan people thought about things differently than today making their spiritual texts difficult to understand for most moderns. In other words, ancient Pagans had a different culture which defined a different mental framework (paradigm). Unlike today, ancient Pagan thinking was not:

1. Centered on dualism with its assumption that everything is good versus evil. The modern lack of awareness that a middle ground always exists and the lack of any desire to seek it out gives rise to today's extremist thinking and intolerance of others.

2. Centered on lordified, human only deities. Deities of today are like lords of a royal court. They tend to be perceived as human beings living on a higher plane. Ancient Pagans perceived deities mostly as clusters of powers which could be optionally personified if needed. This makes sense because in the absence of visual identification people can only be identified by their personality, that is, by their individual cluster of powers. This sort of Pagan paradigm survived in Greek philosophy in which the goddess Sophia, for example, could be a personified goddess or represent the power of wisdom. Because lords were mostly male this biased modern religion towards male gods and downgraded the divine feminine. In contrast, ancient Pagan culture was balanced between masculine, feminine, and genderless/hermaphrodite powers.

Another reason for a lack of understanding of ancient Pagan languages is the lack of translation standards. Without such standards peer review does not exist, only group-think. The decision to publish is not based on whether the article has quality information but is instead based on whether the reviewers agree with it. 

Academic institutions involved in ancient language translations are not pushing to incorporate any sort of translation standards. This would force them to realize that they have no real understanding of Pagan culture and force them to admit that most ancient translations done so far are incorrect. This seems to originate in the inherent corruption of today's academic system in which researchers are forced into short term conformist thinking in order to get awards, funding, and publications for a career. In order to have an academic career researchers must publish short, quickly researched papers that do not offend any funding source. In the field of ancient linguistics those funding sources are controlled by today's (lordified, revealed, dualist) LRD religions and related nationalist interests. The existence of a universalist, nature based Pagan culture challenges both.

In contrast to the inherent short sightedness of modern academics, advancing ancient translations towards the scholar's standard is a long term iterative process. This process starts with a small sampling of quality texts with the words used in the translation going into a lexicon with one text word getting one and only one corresponding English word or phrase. As the number of translated texts increases so does the refinement of the word meanings as they are changed in the lexicon to be consistent across all ancient texts.

As an example of a word having two meanings in the recent cuneiform Akkadian dictionary consider the Akkadian word ba'alu shown in the image. The cuneiform Akkadian dictionary gives it two meanings "large" and "bright." In contrast, the Alphabetic Akkadian Dictionary which is done up to the Scholar's Standard defines it as "great" or "great-one" (if used as noun) defining it as in the upper limit of any parameter such as size or brightness or governing.

(July 31, 2022) The rules are:

1. Alphabetic Akkadian words do not have inner vowels. This means vowels begin words and so indicate where words begin. This is important because words are not separated by spaces in ancient texts.

2. Translate by clauses, that is, separate the text into a string of words glued together with one verb. The clearest verification of this approach is the Phaistos Disk which uses vertical lines to separate each clause. Other texts use vertical lines optionally for reading clarity.

3. The letter “A” is your friend! It either begins a word or means the word “this,” or “that.”

4. Dual use letters are those letters which are vowels when they begin a word and consonants otherwise. They begin a word 90% of the time. The dual use letters are Vav (W and U), He (H or E), and Yod (I or Y). This is why the “Y” even in English can sometimes be a vowel.

5. Using vowels as grammatical word endings is extremely rare and when that happens a vertical line is also used delimit the clause. Consequently, the partial grammar of the alphabetic form is provided by relative word position. Remember the alphabetic form started out as a memory aid device so it did not have much grammar at its beginning.

6. A verb at the end of a clause defines a general statement form like “dogs eat food.” A verb in the middle of the clause or sentence defines the ongoing form like “dog is eating the food” or a conditional form like “a dog can eat the food.” A verb at the start of a clause defines the imperative form like “eat the food.” 

7. The negative word “no” at the end of a sentence defines a question like “Is the dog eating? No.”

8. An adjective always comes after the noun.

9. Two nouns together form either a possessive relationship like “Joe’s dog” or a prepositional phrase “the dog from Joe”

10. Proper names are the last resort because such names can represent any letter pattern. Lots of names in a text is often a clue it is a failed translation.