open pi musi Conlang Critic

The opening to Conlang Critic is short, punchy, and comedic. Can we replicate that in Toki Pona? Absolutely.

First, the original text:

Welcome to Conlang Critic, the show that gets facts wrong about your favorite conlang!

And this is followed by jan Misali's self introduction.

Specific translations

Welcome

Welcomes are simple! They are usually expressed as an instruction using o, and ended with pona to express the well-wishing nature of the instruction. Otherwise, a welcome is a kind of arrival, so we can use kama: o kama pona

You can also use the preposition tawa to express where you're welcoming somebody to, giving us o kama pona tawa ...

Conlang Critic

Conlang Critic could be a proper name by capitalizing it, or you could translate it. In either case, jan Misali says it's a show, and a show is entertainment, which is musi. If you use a proper noun, your job is done here: musi (Conlang Critic), or whatever adaptation you prefer. You can do a little better when you zoom in on "Conlang Critic" though!

Conlangs

"Conlang," short for constructed language, could be described as both pali (creation) and toki (language). This is an important decision when deciding translations: which one is more important, and so becomes the head noun? Here, we'll say that a constructed language is a "language" before it is "constructed". But since both work, we use both words, and call it a toki pali

Critics

As for "critic," we don't need to translate it as a single phrase. Critics do one thing: talk about a subject. Let's make that a separate sentence! Our speaker will refer to themselves with mi, and will talk with toki. Then, it is common to say you talk "about" something using the preposition lon: jan li toki lon ijo. There are more ways you could translate talking "about" something, but we'll stick with lon!

Favorites

When describing their preferences, most speakers refer to things being pona tawa mi, "good to me". Then, a favorite is often expressed as being "the most good", or "first place" in goodness! With this, we can say that this is nanpa wan, which can apply to anything: ni li pona nanpa wan tawa mi. So now we know our critic will talk about toki pali sina nanpa wan, your favorite conlang!

Facts, Wrongness

Facts and wrongness often have to do with lon and lon ala respectively. lon deals with truth, so we could have our critic will speak in an untruthful way: toki pi lon ala. Let's try it!

Putting it together

Attempt #1

Here's the two halves of the opener we've made so far. Translations are under the spoilers.

Looking good so far! You'll notice that in the second sentence, we refer to only toki sina nanpa wan instead of toki pali sina nanpa wan. This is because we've already introduced the fact that the critic is going to talk about toki pali. From there, it's clear that toki alone refers back to the same toki pali.

Except there's still one problem: that's not quite the original meaning! toki pi lon ala definitely captures the idea of lying, but the statement actually says they're getting facts wrong, jokingly, about your favorite conlang. We've translated the idea of being wrong correctly; in the process, we've translated it too literally. The intended meaning is about making mistakes, which is more like pakala! Let's try again:

Attempt #2

The first half was already great, so here's the edited second half:

That's exactly what we want! It's short, punchy, and conveys the original humor as faithfully as Toki Pona can do.

Conclusion

The process of translation, especially into Toki Pona, can never be one-to-one. You make compromises, subtle changes, and artistic and informational decisions throughout an entire dialog. The skills that will help you most are recognizing the objects and actions of a sentence, and breaking those down individually without the rest of the sentence. This will get faster over time too, until you're no longer thinking about it!