Game of Thrones has become one of the most popular television shows ever made, airing in countries around the globe and resulting in a revival of the fantasy genre within mainstream media.
Part of its success can be attributed to the show’s attention to detail, which prompted producers to hire language creator David Peterson to develop realistic languages for the show. Now well known by the show’s fans, the language of Dothraki has been recognised as a fascinating example of how languages evolve and adapt over time.
What is Dothraki?
Dothraki is the first language developed by language creator David Peterson for use in the Game of Thrones series. Peterson originally claimed his place as the show’s dedicated language expert when he won a contest within the Language Creation Society. As part of his winning proposal, Peterson developed a 180-page plan, including a dictionary that now contains over 3,000 words and audio files.
So far, only a fraction of this vocabulary has made it into the show, but it’s used by Peterson and his team to help them compose accurate sentence structures and to inform grammar in similar phrases.
How Has Dothraki Developed?
As Game of Thrones has grown, so too has Dothraki. Now one of multiple languages used in the show, it is constantly updated with new words and phrases to suit the content of each episode.
In evolving in this way, Dothraki is following a path similar to many traditional languages. In fact, one of the driving forces behind the language’s development is its adaptation by its speakers. Specifically, improvised passages spoken by the show’s actors have prompted Peterson to bend Dothraki’s grammatical rules to ensure each phrase is an accurate representation of the language, thus encouraging its ongoing development.
We see this in action with actor Iain Glen, who plays Jorah. During filming, Glen was required to improvise a translation of the phrase “take all the gold and jewels” in Dothraki after Peterson’s translation failed to make it to the set in time. Once the scene was filmed, Peterson took the line and adapted the language’s vocabulary to ensure it was consistent with previous use.
Assuming some minor mistakes on the part of the character, who was not a native Dothraki speaker, Peterson managed to get the improvised line to mean “the loose valuable are for loading”. This adaptation is a more discernible example of the evolution of traditional languages that has taken place over time and led to the alterations we see in action in our own languages today.
Just like traditional languages, Dothraki also features colloquialisms that have developed within the series to reflect the environment and context within which it is being spoken. In English, the word ‘flower’ is used to describe a specific part of a plant, but some English speakers also use the word as a term of endearment when speaking to a friend. Despite being a young language, Dothraki already boasts similar features. For example, the word ‘erinat’ means ‘to be good’, and ‘erinak’ means ‘the kind one’. However, it can also be used to describe a lady, while implying that she is good or kind.
How Can Dothraki Be Applied to Marketing?
To some, translation simply means the direct translation of words from one language into another. But at Bubbles, we see translation as much more than simple word-for-word changes; for us, the artificially created and condensed evolution of Dothraki is a perfect example of the complexities of language and the need for translation to take into account the colloquialisms, adaptations and cultural variations that develop over time.
This human-to-human approach to language allows marketing material to be translated to connect with people from multiple countries and cultures to ensure that consumers everywhere are reading a brand message in words they relate to.
References:
http://www.dothraki.com/about-dothraki/
http://mentalfloss.com/article/49763/7-fun-facts-about-dothraki-language-game-thrones
