Hello all,
Could Toki Pona be added as a language over on Webplate? Toki Pona is a popular constructed language, and we have a number of music in TP on Musicbrainz (this collection isn’t very complete at all, it’s just what I found to be tagged with TP) with several artists doing all of their work in Toki Pona.
It would be a project I would be personally attached too and I’m sure there are more editors out there who could contribute.
It’s not in the default list of languages in Weblate, but could be added. But MB might need to reach out to the Weblate support for updating the configuration for that. @yvanzo, what do you think?
Can you translate all MBS to this constructed language?
Yes, just like any other language. There may be some challenge with things like instrument names, but there is such a wide community I can talk to to come to some form of consensus.
Sorry if my questions are dumb because I never heard about it.
Would two translators find the same translation for a same source text?
Are there dictionaries?
Or does everyone make up their words?
That’s okay! I love talking about Toki Pona so I’m glad to explain.
No. However that is the same as every other language! Compare how many translations there are of the Illiad or Odyssey.
However TP is a philosophical and minimal language. Depending on who you ask, there are only about 120-150 words. This means that when translating you have to decide what details are actually important to translate.
E.g. if I was to translate “piano” into Toki Pona I would have to decide what makes a piano a piano. Perhaps I could do “ilo kalama musi” (instrument) if I didn’t need to be that specific. Or I could do “ilo kalama musi pi linja” (instrument of strings) to specify that is has strings. I could go on specifying more and more, but the point of TP is only translating the actually necessary details. Being instruments are really specific that is why I mentioned this in the first message.
For more common words and phrases, like release, work, and etc. it would be much more straightforward to come up with. A work would be “pali” and a recording could be “kalama” and you could say “Recordings can be connected to works.” As “kalama mute ken kulupu e pali.”
Yes. The first dictionary as created by Sonja Lang was in her book “The Language of Good” (also known as the “lipu pu”). Later on she released the “Toki Pona Dictionary” (or lipu ku) which was much more detailed and contained additional words that Lang or the community had created. There are even some community ran online dictionaries. My favorite is Linku.la. This one is updated yearly with a lot of information about every word. Of course there is also the online community (mostly on Discord and Reddit, but even Facebook) which often comes together to figure out translations.
Works such as the Wizard of Oz have even been fully translated into Toki Pona. It’s a very expressive language!
People make up their words as much as they do in English or any other language. Neologisms do form often, but only some stick. Linku has a lot of info about that. Lang also sometimes will add new words herself, and most often they stick. If you’re coming up with a name you’ll probably have to create a word for it. For instance I translated my name (Ollie) as Oli. Country names are also tokiponized like this, such as Canada to ma Kanata.
I hope that is a good explanation for those questions! I’d be happy to answer more. Toki Pona, while it is constructed, is a properly functional language with a huge community of speakers.
this would be great! i’ve been thinking of starting something like this but i just don’t have the time or motivation to do it myself lol. i’d be more than happy to contribute as a big adder of toki pona music to MB!
(btw, if you’d like contributors to the collection i promise to add releases as i add them to the db 
)
my toki pona resumé is that i got the language added to MB way back 
I’ve seen your name around! I’ll happily add you to the collection, I’m glad to know it’s not just me out here!
I wondered who did that! It seems a lot of music doesn’t have it listed as Toki Pona though, so much work to do!