yogahnee

00:47 Feb 20, 2018 

Thank you for these infomation, esp. the isfdb site! I will try to find out how the Japanese translator dealt with these words.
Yes. For now Dune I, II and III have been translated in Chinese, and IV (which I'm toiling at), V and VI are expected to be published with 2 years.

13:27 Feb 19, 2018 

RE reference search (cf one of your other questions):

I know what this sentence looks like in the German, French and Italian version of the book and unfortunately, this is a dead end. All words in your list have been translated, except for the three you're asking about.

Here's a--probably non-exhaustive--list of languages into which the book has been translated:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?869

The first book seems to have been translated and published in China:
http://blog.chinadaily.com.cn/thread-102517-1-1.html

I think this is it:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/sha-qiu-dune/oclc/768645993

But it's only the first one.

Maybe, just maybe, this here could be helpful:
http://hobbit.ddo.jp/herbert/index.html

Comparing your translation to the Japanese one is the only option you have, I guess; Korean isn't on the list mentioned above.

Best wishes

03:38 Feb 17, 2018 

Thank you! The references you gave are also useful to my job in other respects.

17:55 Feb 16, 2018 

I quote from the link:
"When Paul Atreides, Dune’s youthful protagonist, is adopted by a desert tribe whose rituals and feuds bear a marked resemblance to the warrior culture of the Islamic Caucasus, he lives at the exotically named Sietch Tabr. Sietch and tabr are both words for camp borrowed from the Cossacks, the Czarist warrior caste who would become the great Christian antagonists of Shamyl’s Islamic holy warriors."

Later on:
"The name of Herbert’s major villain, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, is redolent of Russian imperialism. Meanwhile, Imam Shamyl, the charismatic leader of Islamic resistance in the Caucasus, describes the Russian Czar as 'Padishah' and his provincial governor as 'Siridar,' titles that Herbert would later borrow for Dune’s galactic emperor and his military underlings."

These aren't made-up words at all.

Best

17:53 Feb 16, 2018 

Not sure what point you were trying to make, since I basically agreed with you that these words were "carefully chosen," as you put it. There is a "Dune Encyclopedia," but it has been declared non-canon.

Much of the Fremen language is indeed rooted in Arabic. Here's a good summary:
https://baheyeldin.com/literature/arabic-and-islamic-themes-...

Regarding Tolkien:
"Rather than create new languages as J. R. R. Tolkien does in The Lord of the Rings, Frank Herbert accomplishes his world-building in
Dune by choosing existing names that evoke a recognizable medieval, feudal
setting and depict a desert planet inhabited by a quasi-Arabic and Islamic tribal people."
http://dunescholar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/dune_world...

One source of Herbert's inspiration seems to have been "Sabres of Paradise" by Lesley Blanch: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-secret-history-of-du...

[...]

17:32 Feb 16, 2018 

@ Björn I read the whole series of books many many years ago. My boyfriend at that time was a nuclear scientist, who loved SciFi and had shelves of books in that genre so basically recommended stuff for me. I was living in Ottawa at the time. Anyway, I never used a dictionary, just read the books and guessed at the meaning of the words in the context so, no doubt if I HAD noticed this, I'd have just assumed it was a made-up word but basic meaning was soldier! As for the "languages" well, Herbert is just saying that to make it appear that they are "real" languages. Just like Tolkien drew maps of Middle Earth or whatever. These words could be based on any language imo. Have you ever seen the amount of languages and language mixes/blends Joyce used in Finnegans Wake to coin words from??

16:38 Feb 16, 2018 

I've got all of the books at home and, like you, Gallagy, I don't agree with Phil at all here. These aren't randomly chosen words.

I'm not sure about Sanskrit, although I do think, Piyush, you got a point regarding the phonetics here. I don't have a good explanation for the other words right now, but here's one hint:
"*Much of the common Fremen language is derived from modern Arabic, Romani, and Slavic words.
*Galach, the language of the Imperium, is said to be a hybrid, or more strictly speaking a creole, of Inglo-Slavic."
http://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/705173

11:26 Feb 16, 2018 

I suspect 'deranzeef' may have come from some Farsi word but I have nothing concrete.

11:11 Feb 16, 2018 

Thanks for that Piyush. As I said to Phil, I think the author didn't just concoct random words but wanted these "nonsense" words to be suggestive of something (real words in English where meaning can be guessed or intimated). And of course the Asker has to try and come up with some word in Chinese so it is really tough. I haven't come up with much for the other two words at the moment though! Any ideas on them?

10:40 Feb 16, 2018 

Although I am not sure, I think you may be on the right track. The Sanskrit word 'vAhinI' (वाहिनी) has two meanings: an army and a carrier (as in a flowing stream or river).

Yogahnee has a suggestive phonetic similarity with 'yogavAhinI' (योगवाहिनी), an army of yogis (or yoginis!). Having said that, I have found only one significant occurrence of the word through Google. It is in the context of ayurveda and seems to be in the sense of 'a carrier of yoga'.

Nevertheless, I think the interpretation of 'yogavAhinI' as 'an army of yogis is sound.