Translator’s Note

Liturgical Karedian is a complex language, unusually inflected and inheriting a vast and nuanced vocabulary from the diverse origins of the culture that created it. The etymological origins of each word have a great influence on that word’s tone and connotation, and many terms derive meaning from their association with myths and tradition. I have noted such layers when significant, but it is difficult for a translator so removed in time from Karedian culture to be cognizant of all such instances.

When encountering a word with an especially multifaceted and culture-dependent meaning, it is common for scholars of Karedian to leave the term untranslated and simply transliterate it (as if it were a concept unique to Karedian!) resulting in a text that is “exotic” with foreign words. Not only do I think this a disservice to the reader (even if complex, each of these words contains literal meaning in the etymology and semantic components of the glyphs used to write it), but it appears that the author of this particular text has herself had to translate foreign expressions into Karedian, carefully choosing lexemes with which to do so, and to merely transliterate such words would waste her efforts.

We are fortunate to also wield a language with a wide vocabulary, one which can sustain a thorough and precise translation without resorting to duplicate words to translate distinct terms, and so transliteration has been avoided. Where no suitable translation could be found, I have instead constructed an appropriate term from familiar roots and etymologies to match the underlying Karedian semantics. Notes have been included where an accurate translation could not be fit into the flow of the text itself.

While the text renders nearly all place names, demonyms, and other proper nouns using intersemantic glyphs and so can be translated as described above, personal names are mostly rendered using the Karedian phonetic abugida, and so have only been transliterated.

Lastly, translation has been impeded by the breadth of Karedian script, in which uncommon terms are inscribed using rare or even totally unique glyphs with no recognizable subcomponents, resulting in many hapax legomena, and, as a result, certain terms and passages have proved beyond our ability to decipher.

Translation efforts continue, and major updates will be recorded in the Translation LogTurn to chapter.