#Sherman's Gallifreyan

[linguistwho]

So apparently there's an official Gallifreyan translator now.

On the one hand, I'm really excited that Sherman's Circular is becoming more and more canon. On the other hand, it feels weird that such major part of the fandom is now being kinda... corporatized. But this blog isn't for my opinions and I don't want to influence yours. All I will say with conviction is that I really hope they credit the original creator.

However, for those who want some more info, I did a comparison between the new "official" translator, the old translator that most people just getting into Gallifreyan probably used, and my own style.

The first image in black is the old translator, the second in yellow on blue is the new one, and the third in blue is my style from two years ago, and all of them say "Never Give Up, Never Give In". (Though only mine includes punctuation). The first and biggest difference between the computer-translated ones and mine is that mine has the various words interlocked. This is something that anyone can do when they write the Gallifreyan on their own, little practice required, but it cannot be done by the computer translators. They only ever put the words in fixed, equidistant positions. Another major difference is the curve of the connecting lines -- this is another thing that neither translator will do for you. The old translator does allow you to curve the lines yourself, but is very finicky about it. The dots are worth noting as well -- in both translators, they are quite small, while I make them big and pretty separated, for ease of reading. In other words, in terms of style and readability, these computer translators will never replace those created manually.

However, there are clear benefits to the translators. They are extremely helpful for those who are just getting into Gallifreyan and want to double-check their work. So long as you remember that what really matters for readability -- the shapes and positions of the circles and the number of lines and dots -- the rest is just stylistic flourishes. And both allow you to download the Gallifreyan as a .svg so that you can edit it in Inkscape or Illustrator or whatever vector editing software you prefer. As for the comparison between the two translators, the new one has more color customization, and will probably better match how Gallifreyan appears on-screen (though I find it interesting that the Gallifreyan on the new Sonic has the starting point of each word be at the furthest point from the center of the circle, while this translator has them at the usual bottom), but the old one allows for more in-engine editing, and as the lines actually connect to somewhere and the dots are slightly larger, it is easier to read.

TL,DR: Manually-made Gallifreyan still allows for far more stylization and is generally the most easily readable, but both translating websites can be useful, especially as both can be downloaded as editable .svg files. The old one is more readable and has in-engine editing capabilities, but the new one allows for color customization and may be more accurate to what is seen on-screen. And Sherman needs to be credited for its creation.

[justgallifreyanthings]

Sorry if this is random but I saw this and thought of you. The BBC/doctor who website just posted an official gallifreyan translator which looks to be Sherman’s gallifreyan. I know you had opinions about them using Sherman’s gallifreyan on the doctors screwdriver because the bbc didn’t make it or credit the person who made it. Do you have thoughts about the translator?

*gestures vaguely toward my blog* haha yeah

this has, in fact, been driving me loudly insane the entire day! tl;dr i think it's basically plagiarism and it makes me really really mad. what follows is an extended rant, and i apologize in advance about that!

in case anyone else has not been keeping up with this, the Doctor Who team released an "official gallifreyan translator" today, the output of which bears a strong resemblance to Sherman's Circular Gallifreyan, the fanmade system created by Loren Sherman (he/they) in 2011 and developed over the years by them, Annie "Skribe of Sirkles", and the general gallifreyan fan community.

the DWlator does not follow the Sherman's Circular ruleset exactly, but it has clearly taken inspiration from Sherman's Circular, as it uses the same basic structure for creating words and sentences, and the letters use the same stem/decorator system. despite this, Loren is still not credited anywhere on the translator site, nor has the DW team mentioned them in any of their social media posts.

it's an unbelievably shitty, lazy, disingenuous thing for the DW team to do. they really couldn't come up with their own gallifreyan system? they had to stoop to stealing a fan's creation, without even reaching out for permission or acknowledgement? i'm absolutely certain the DW team is going to profit off of their DWlator system; Loren will not see a penny of that, even though it's THEIR system being used, their contribution to the community being exploited.

and if the DW team wanted to put out a translator, there are so many translators that already exist! the GTH does basically exactly what the DWlator does, right down to the way dots and lines are displayed - why not try to strike a deal with the creator of the GTH? why not work with the community, instead of exploiting our work and then ignoring us?

Loren and Skribe of Sirkles are unwilling to seek legal recourse about this: Loren because their goal has never been to have sole ownership of the system, and Skribe of Sirkles because being a gallifreyan artist is her full-time job and she doesn't want to jeopardize her career. i understand their perspectives, and i'm certainly not a big enough player on the field to have a say that means much, but as someone who has been in fandom spaces for decades, i am TERRIFIED of the legal precedent being set here.

i know a lot of folks in the discord server are not quite as "doom and gloom" as i am. Skribe of Sirkles, for instance, is reaching out to the BBC to say "we're excited you're using the system, and we would love to work with you as an offering of goodwill." but i'm not ready to go that far. to me, this is just another, more egregious expansion of the BBC's long history of stealing fan content.

as a corollary, i'm also quite worried that the differences between Sherman's Circular and the DWlator system mean that a lot of fans who've gotten tattoos in Sherman's Circular are going to look at the DWlator output and say "wait a second. my tattoo doesn't look like this. what the hell? did i get ripped off?" loads of people on twitter are already going "but i got the fan system tattooed, and now it doesn't mean anything :("

in fact, the DWlator is not backwards compatible with any other "Gallifreyan" DW has ever put out in the past - including Ncuti's sonic screwdriver lmfao. so even by THEIR OWN RULESET, Ncuti's screwdriver is illegible. absolutely comical.

[calligraphy-and-colour]

Doctor, are you there? This is me signing off, with thanks and love, and please send this monster back into hell, because I have to hope that the birds will sing again. There will be birds!

- The dying words of Dr Kate Stewart, season 14, episode 8: Empire of Death

[ihavestolenyourkneecaps]

So, I tried to translate what was in the new sonic screwdriver with the Sherman's Gallifreyan.

And it's a bunch of non sense, it thanslates to "the bonguj fgifeet the nefechachp fa the otshavvi the bepnefeba fa".

There are some letters that are ambiguous "the bonguj fgife(e?)t the nef(e?)chachp f(a/e?) the otsha(vi/vvi?) the b(e?)pnef(e?)b(a/i?) f(a/e?)".

Taking the frase that is ment to be "the sharpness of the tongue defeats the sharpness of the warrior", the writing becomes:

Which is doesn't looks like the sonic, just the 4 "the"s that are equal, and it's supposed to be written in Kinyarwanda, also known as Ikinyarwanda or Urunyarwanda, that's the language spoken in Rwanda, but the meaning that the show gives us translates to "ubukana bwururimi butsinda ubukana bwintwali".

Which is nowhere close to the writing in the sonic.

With that said, I think the people who made the sonic searched a little in the fandom for our way to write in gallifreyan and then took what they found pretty and merged together because it looks like gallifreyan and the system is 99% Sherman's Gallifreyan but there are some discrepancies.

If you look in the second symbol what was supposed to be "ngu" is written wrong, the circle has 4 lines but the maximum amount is 3, I consider that to be "ng" + "u" because normally we would merged together the line of the "u" with another symbol of take it to the border or merged it with one of the lines in the "ng".

You can see as well in the third that between the "fe" and the "b" there's something, I read that as and "e" but it doesn't really makes sense if you consider that it has before it another "e", when there are doubles of a letter we just make it twice.

The sixth and eleventh are equally strange, it seems to be an "f" with something, it could be an "o" but it's too big and not close enough to the border, the only one I could think that its close enough it's the "a", because it's quirk is that it's always far but for the outside, this one is "far" but for the inside.

The eighth it's as well interesting, in what was supposed to be a "vi" the way is written makes it look live a "vvi". And the last, the tenth has what looks like a "ba" but looks like it has a dot in it but there aren't any single dots only two or three dots, so I just ignored it.

And I'm not even gonna talk about the slashed "e"s because that formed a pattern and I just assumed it's on propose.

In conclusion, or I'm dumb and can't read or they just put something inspired in the Sherman's Gallifreyan to look pretty and make us go slightly crazy but in the end it's just the the normal gallyfean that doesn't means a single thing.

Ps: sorry for any wrong words or terms, I'm brazilian and my english isn't perfect.

EDIT: I'M DUMB, thank you @mesimees and @typeforty for explaining the actual way of reading this, @mesimees rebloged this with a pretty simple explanation on how really to read this, thank you for the correction and it's really fucking awesome to discuss conlangs linguistics

[thatsoverkill]

Clara Oswald - the Impossible Girl

[mel-mcz]

Soooo… here's something I promised to the people who read "Whenever I Look at You" on Ao3.

“The Doctor and Rose Tyler forever in the TARDIS, as it should be.”

(I sure hope it's right, because I've spent the whole week consulting guides to make sure it is – you know – right).

[crustaceousfaggot]

Hey btw I'm learning Sherman's Circular Gallifreyan, so if anyone has any names, words, or short phrases (let's say... 6 words or less, or 8 words if they're shorter) that they wanna see translated, send me an ask because I want opportunities to practice. You can also add a colour if you want. Here are a couple examples.

(the gold says "his wife has filled his house with chintz", the monochrome says "something beautiful is going to happen" and the blue says "hello, sweety!")

[ads-for-nothing]

As Beren looked into her eyes

Within the shadows of her hair

The trembling starlight of the skies

He saw there mirrored shimmering

[pl9090]

[Personal headcanon] Gallifreyan

Disclaimer: As the title says this is just how I think of and use what I consider to be the main fan created Gallifreyan font/languages. This is not me attempting impose it on everyone else as a definitive organisation just as reference for my work following this to avoid confusion.

Old High Gallifreyan: https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/666099/archaic_gallifreyan

Modern Linear Gallifreyan: https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/657463/assassin_s_gallifreyan

Timelord Circular/History coding: (Doctor's Cot) http://doctorscotgallifreyan.com/

Faction Paradox Circular/alt time coding: (Shermans) https://shermansplanet.com/gallifreyan/

Faction Paradox Circular/alt time coding is used by sme renegades as an act of defience hence the Doctor's ocassional onscreen use of it. It's like an Eton alumni, "rebelling" purposely using americanisms in an Austrailian accent. instead of the proper English language in a London accent as taught.

[envexenveritas]

indestructible

This is definitely a reblog and not a correction because I made b and l the wrong shapes. Shh!

[doctahpants]

Practicing Sherman's circular Gallifreyan while frustrated with work means that this (hopefully) says "this is bullshit"

[linguistwho]

I'm not sure if someone's asked this already, but have you been able to translate the Gallifreyan (gosh I'm bad at spelling) on the crib from Demon's Run?

The Gallifreyan on the Doctor's cot is not translatable. All forms of written Gallifreyan are fanmade and (until Sherman's Gallifreyan was recently used on Ncuti Gatwa's new Sonic) entirely noncanon.

Brittany G. made a form of Gallifreyan based on the design of the Doctor's cot (appropriately titled Doctor's Cot Gallifreyan) and my Linguist's Phonetic Gallifreyan is a variation on that, but as the art in Demon's Run was not written with any readable form of Gallifreyan in mind, we can still only speculate on the Doctor's birth name.

[ggtgwg]

Greetings all!

Geoffrey Groat here! I am currently trying to learn Sherman's gallifreyan. Feel free to send me asks for quotes or stuff to write down, I would love the practice!

I will try to write anything (except for crude/crass stuff), but I do tend to run out of energy past 2-3 small/medium sentences. I do enjoy adding in punctuation though.

So uhhh, yeah. Send me words please?

[the-bad-art-blog]

More attempts at writing in gallifreyan! The top is the doctor's cot system by Brittany G. The bottom is in Sherman's/ circular gallifreyan (the same system as my last post).

Doctor's Cot:

Sherman's:

[nelissya]

[thatsoverkill]

"I've only got one life, Rose Tyler. I could spend it with you. If you want."