Were you as shocked as I was to see Superwoman speaking fluent Kryptonese in the last issue? Sort of eliminated Linda, Lana, and Cat Grant as candidates for being under the cowl.
We're you also like me in wondering just what the heck it was she said?For the record, she said "I don’t mean to bother you but with everything that’s happened in Kandor you look like you could use a friend right now."
No clues there!
Anyways, I was able to translate because a Kryptonian alphabet key was put in the back of the Superman/Batman Supergirl trade paperback.
On re-reading that trade, I was fairly impressed at how much of the first issue is in Kryptonese. When I bought the individual issues, I had no translator and so didn't know exactly what was said.
Anyways, just in case the 'all in one' scan above isn't big enough, here is the alphabet split in 2.
So now you all can understand exactly what the Kryptonians are saying to each other. For starters, how about this important panel?
7 comments:
personally, i love it when comics use foreign languages, and don't translate what's being said. of course, its handy to have a translation at the end of the comic, or as a footnote... having kryptonese pop up so much these days is great, and i do remember some issue of superman making mention that kryptonese sounds a bit like swedish. can't remember the issue, but now we know...
Thank Rao for that Superman/Batman: Supergirl Kryptonian translation key in the back of the trade itself is all I can say! Heh. :D
Heath Edwards said...
and i do remember some issue of superman making mention that kryptonese sounds a bit like swedish. can't remember the issue, but now we know...
I think it was actually in either the 1st or 2nd part of Superman/Batman: The Supergirl from Krypton arc that Superman first divulges this being said myself. :/
Ah! The panel with Supes and Kara talking is too small to make out all of the symbols! Otherwise I would TOTALLY be a big, giant nerd and translate the whole bloody thing...
Thank you so much for posting this!
--Yota.
Thanks a lot for the translation. I was a little lost with that particular speech on Superwoman's part and was curious. I'm saving this post :D
Kryptonian (Kryptonese?) sounds like Swedish? Really? It seems like all we have of phonetic samples of the language are proper names, and I guess all those hard "K" sounds could be Swedish... It would be great to hear this language in a feature film sometime, the way "Star Trek" has let us hear Klingon and Vulcan.
That reminds me: Do you think "Krypton" is the Kryptonians' own name for their world, thus making it a galactically huge coincidence (like the "S" on Supes' shield is really the sigil for the house of El, and not the 19th letter of the English alphabet) -- or do the Kryptonians have a name for their own world and themselves that we don't know (and that maybe phonetically approximates the English "krypton"), much as (I imagine) the Vulcans have a non-English "real name" for themselves?
Ok, too much time wondering....!
It takes a little work with zoom & contrast & a little wheel of fortune guess work, but I believe it says:
I AM KAL-EL.
JOR-EL WAS MY
FATHER.
THEN...
I MADE IT
I MADE IT
BUT... YOU
WERE JUST A
BABY AND...
OH, I
DON'T CARE...
I HAVE FAMILY
HERE
IM KARA.
KARA ZOR-EL.
They should totaly putt the kryptonian alphabet in office word 2010. :D
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