Help Needed: Solrise Tower translation

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Felenthir Enthelion's picture
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Help Needed: Solrise Tower translation

I don't know if this is the right forum for this kind of questions.
I'm translating in Italian the Gate Town descriptions and now I'm working on Ecstasy.

What does it mean Solrise tower?
While the Moondark tower is a clear opposite of the word moonlight, I can't find the word solrise enywhere. Is it just a fictional name or it means something like solstice or rising sun?

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Help Needed: Solrise Tower translation

Sol is the Latin for sun - so it would be the "sunrise" tower. The author was being fancy.

Felenthir Enthelion's picture
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Help Needed: Plague-mort and Arch-lector translation

'Clueless' wrote:
Sol is the Latin for sun - so it would be the "sunrise" tower. The author was being fancy.

A latin-english mix, great!

Now I'm doing plague-mort. Mort is a old word for death, similar to the italian "morte" and to the latin "mors/mortis". Is Plague-mort just a fictional word or it means pestilence?
What about arch-lector? It sounds like arch-reader. Is a word that can be used even for a female (ach lectress???) ?

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Plague-mort - again, with

Plague-mort - again, with the word play. You/re dead on for the meaning, pestilence-death.

This is a primarily English habit by the way. As one of my friends has described it: English doesn't 'borrow' from other languages. It waits in dark alleyways to mug them and riffles through their pockets for spare grammar.

Arch-lector is neutral gender. I believe lector is actually a church ranking. But don't quote me on that.

Out of curiosity - which set of Gatetown descriptions are you translating? There's small ones in Chapter 8 of the PSCS, there's the canon ones in the wiki or in the published books, and there's a series that go into detail on the Gatetowns on the boards here.

Felenthir Enthelion's picture
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Plague-mort - again, with

Plague-mort - again, with the word play. You/re dead on for the meaning, pestilence-death.

Ooook, that would make in Italian something like Peste-Morte... it sounds awful. Maybe I should call it Peste-Mors using the latin word for death.

Out of curiosity - which set of Gatetown descriptions are you translating? There's small ones in Chapter 8 of the PSCS, there's the canon ones in the wiki or in the published books, and there's a series that go into detail on the Gatetowns on the boards here.

The one in Guide to the Outlands. But I'm updating it with the material I found in the planescape adventures. I already translated Sylvania, Excelsior, Ecstasy, Plague-Mort and Ecstasy.

Jem
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There is no actual church

There is no actual church that I know of with a ranking called Arch-lector.  Generally speaking, the prefix arch- refers to someone at the summit of their profession, such as an archmage.  Lector does indeed mean reader in Latin, and I believe Clueless catches a good feel in suggesting that Arch-lector sounds like a church rank.  Descriptions of Plague-Mort simply call the Arch-Lector a tyrannical ruler; it's quite plausible that the current, previous, or future Arch-lectors, perhaps the first recorded one, held power through a church setup that mocked the hierarchy of established good gods.

For your reference, here are the gate-town names of their various sorts:

Actual words: Automata, Bedlam, Blight, Ecstasy, Excelsior*, Fortitude, Hopeless, Ribcage.  *Excelsior is common only in poetic usage.  It has the same root as excellence.

Neologisms:

Curst -- rendering of "cursed."

Faunel -- from fauna, meaning animals.

Glorium -- root is "glory."  Might be a renderign of the actual Latin, gloriam.  ("Ad majorem gloriam dei.")

Plague-mort -- covered in previous discussion.

Rigus -- same root as rigor.

Sylvania -- Latin, forest lands.  ("Arbor" being latin for tree.)  Used in English place-names, most famously Pennsylvania.

Felenthir Enthelion's picture
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Thank you for the advices!

Thank you for the advices! Laughing out loud

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