Off topic: There is only one speaker of this language - Kiliki
Thread poster: Balasubramaniam L.
Balasubramaniam L.
Balasubramaniam L.  Identity Verified
India
Local time: 19:14
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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Jul 20, 2015

Haven't heard of this language? You won't find it in Wikipedia or any linguistic survey, but Indian film buffs may have an inkling of what it is (Hint: the film Bahubali). Kiliki has only one speaker - Prabhakar aka Kalakeya, the orc-like barbaric chieftain of the Kalakeyas whose hundred-thousand strong army comes to invade the ancient kingdom of Shivagami.

The film, released simultaneously in four languages - Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam - is proving to be a huge hit around t
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Haven't heard of this language? You won't find it in Wikipedia or any linguistic survey, but Indian film buffs may have an inkling of what it is (Hint: the film Bahubali). Kiliki has only one speaker - Prabhakar aka Kalakeya, the orc-like barbaric chieftain of the Kalakeyas whose hundred-thousand strong army comes to invade the ancient kingdom of Shivagami.

The film, released simultaneously in four languages - Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam - is proving to be a huge hit around the world, and despite its 250 crore rupee budget, has already raked in more than 150 crore rupees in the first few days of its screening.

The said language Kiliki was coined by the actor Prabhakar to deliver his dialogues and lend credibility to the character he is playing of a barbaric invader out destroy a high civilization. The language though cinematic and artificial, sounds extremely plausible and convincing full of clicks, hisses, lude invectives and facial expressions.

I wonder how any translator doing the script of this film will tackle these dialogues, although, the film itself provides a translation for the benefit of its audience, as the language is completely artificial and spoken by just one person, the actor Prabhakar.

For more information about this language and the film Bahubali, you might find this link interesting:

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/funny-and-fierce/article7440444.ece

In the Hindi versions of the Harry Potter series, the charms in Latin have been rendered in Sanskrit. In the Lord of the Rings series, there are frequent references to ancient runes, whose translations have been provided by the author himself in these books. In the Lord of the Ring films, the orcs themselves use some language to speak among themselves, which is explained in the film through subtitles. I am unaware of any film other than Bahubali, where such a evocative use of a coined language has been used, one which is aimed directly at the audience and not as an aside among minor characters of the film.

Have you ever faced a translation situation in literature or film script where you were called upon to translate similar exotic stuff, and how did you manage it?
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Louise TAYLOR
Louise TAYLOR  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:44
French to English
Interesting Jul 20, 2015

I have never had anything so exotic but it was interesting to read this post.
The most different I have had are various dialects of French - still spoken by hundreds of people.


 
Jack Doughty
Jack Doughty  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
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Russian to English
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In memoriam
Star Trek Jul 21, 2015

The chief villains in the Star Trek sci-fi series were the Klingons, and their language, Klingon, has been studied and can be spoken by many people, though I've never heard of anyone claiming to be a native speaker of it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language
It was used in an episode of the comedy series "Frasier", so y
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The chief villains in the Star Trek sci-fi series were the Klingons, and their language, Klingon, has been studied and can be spoken by many people, though I've never heard of anyone claiming to be a native speaker of it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language
It was used in an episode of the comedy series "Frasier", so you can hear it spoken here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGZV6fsotYo


[Edited at 2015-07-21 07:40 GMT]
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André Müller
 
Balasubramaniam L.
Balasubramaniam L.  Identity Verified
India
Local time: 19:14
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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SITE LOCALIZER
Very interesting Jul 22, 2015

Jack Doughty wrote:

The chief villains in the Star Trek sci-fi series were the Klingons, and their language, Klingon, has been studied and can be spoken by many people, though I've never heard of anyone claiming to be a native speaker of it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language
It was used in an episode of the comedy series "Frasier", so you can hear it spoken here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGZV6fsotYo


[Edited at 2015-07-21 07:40 GMT]


Thank you for this information. I was not aware that Klingon language is learnable, and it is even more astonishing that fans have gone to this length and have mastered it.

I wouldn't be surprised if some intrepid and enterprising fans of Prabhakar take inspiration from this and learn Kilki and start using it among themselves. This would be a harmless pass-time for them - as long as they don't use the language at someone else!


 
Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:44
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
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There is only one speaker of this language - Kiliki Aug 6, 2015

There is also the Dothraki language from the TV/book series Game of Thrones:
http://www.amazon.com/Living-Language-Dothraki-Conversational-Original/dp/0804160864

And the Navi language from the Movie Avatar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na'vi_language

However, in all these cases, the languages were created by a hired linguist and not, as you mentioned in the Indian movie, by the individual actor himself.

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:



 
André Müller
André Müller
Germany
Local time: 14:44
German to Esperanto
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Klingon speakers Sep 12, 2022

Since Klingon was mentioned:

Yes, there are about 50 or 60 fluent or high-conversational speakers in the world (I am one of them) and a few hundred (300 perhaps?) learners of the language.

There used to be one native speaker, the son of a linguist and fluent speaker. The father spoke only Klingon to him and the mother only English, so he grew up with both of them as native languages. But because of the lack of friends of the family (especially other kids) to speak the l
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Since Klingon was mentioned:

Yes, there are about 50 or 60 fluent or high-conversational speakers in the world (I am one of them) and a few hundred (300 perhaps?) learners of the language.

There used to be one native speaker, the son of a linguist and fluent speaker. The father spoke only Klingon to him and the mother only English, so he grew up with both of them as native languages. But because of the lack of friends of the family (especially other kids) to speak the language to, the boy stopped responding in Klingon and even refused to listen to his father speaking Klingon at the age of 4 (or so). Now the boy is an adult and does not speak Klingon anymore.

Esperanto does have a couple of thousand native speakers, though. Most of them grew up in families where Esperanto is the common language between the parents. And yes, of course all of them are at least bilingual.
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There is only one speaker of this language - Kiliki







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