Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard

Following on from the previous post, below is a translation of the Ido words (which I created using the German original and English translation) into English. As for how I am going to present my analysis, I have decided to give the translation line by line as definition terms and definition descriptions in a definition list. The translation itself will be what I call “word literal”, that is, a translation where the order of English words tries to reflect the order of the Ido words, even if this is an unnatural order for English. The intent is to make clearer the meaning of the individual Ido words, to give a sense of the grammar behind Ido, and to convey how the ideas are built up word by word throughout a line, such as whether a particularly powerful word is saved for the end of the line, or used to start a line. For extra comparison, the German and English lyrics can be found side by side on Wikipedia.

It’s not just you, there really is a lot of mention about this language, so much so that I’ve created a category in my blog for it. Also, I do have a tendency to write long posts, which is why to some extent the previous post, this post, and the next post form a series. Originally I had intended to include the English and Ido lyrics (and possibly the German too) in one blog post, but accepted that some people may not want or need a language other than Ido to fully appreciate the words. Having the translation in another post also allows the reader to flick between the two languages at will, rather than scroll up and down or have two copies of the same over-long page open viewing different parts. In the next post, then, I will present a line-by-line translation into English of my words, and in the process explain some of the choices I made in translating “Ode to Joy” into Ido. Firstly, however, there are some general things I want to say about what I wanted to achieve with these words.