Translator's Notes
by Professor Mu-Chao
Translating a work such as The Journals of a Howling Trickster Archetype is just as difficult, if not more so, than writing the stories from whole cloth would be, if one were so inclined. Coyote originally wrote these pages in Blate 4237(1) and dual-encrypted them with Jabberwock(2) and another, unidentified encryption scheme as well. To top it off, the pages were unnumbered and came to us out of order.
Nobody knows WHY Coyote would encrypt these works, since he has historically been quite the braggart, and suggests in several passages that the Journal was meant to be widely distributed. We suspect that it was done later by the direction of Multiverse, Inc to minimize any risk that the contents would leak to mortals. So much for that.
Since we suspect Multiverse, Inc. of encoding the originals, none of them are assumed to have been written in Coyote's handwriting. We have subjected the documents to careful study and suspect that Mi-got, a Minor Demon of Cryptography, is responsible for the encoding, but no one can know for sure.
Once the encryption schemes were broken by my esteemed colleague Dr. Siwel Nosegdod, the next step was to translate the dead language they were written in. Blate 4237 is a Bitterio language, and thus must first be translated into Multiverse 1 before it is then carried over into English due to a lack of shared conceptual verbiage between the two languages.(3)
For this reason, the text as translated may in fact veer in places from what was actually written. If you have an ERIS clearance of 8 or higher, you may request photostats of the original documents from our home office in Minnesota, USA or one of our secret satellite offices (as may be found on VSS map 45).
Also, since Coyote has a much larger view of the multiverse than most readers of these documents will, I have been very careful to footnote everything I possibly could that might make one's understanding of the Journal more complete. These may seem to detract from the Journal itself for some of the more knowledgeable readers, so I hope that if you do not feel you need footnotes, you skip over these as being largely inconsequential. On the other hand, if I do not footnote something that you do not understand, please convey this to me so that the omission may be omitted, as such.
In the fashion you would expect if you know anything about him, Coyote tends to go on and on about himself, in some places admiring his cunning during a particularly devious moment for twenty or thirty pages. All told, the Journals contain about 16,000 pages of densely hand-written material. Due to this fact, I am translating disparate sections and placing them here as they are translated to give a better overview of Coyote, his friends, and their interactions with Eric, Eris, and Castle Chaos.
I have divided the journal into 23,000 fragments and have chosen those fragments that are the most entertaining and/or informative to translate. I obviously will not be able to personally translate all of these fragments into English as I do not want this to become my life’s work, but this method should make it much easier for others to pick up where I leave off. At the top of each translated fragment is a fragment number that matches up to the numbers I have placed on my copies so that sections of the original text may be identified without extensive duplication of translation.
The fragments are numbered in the order I picked them up from the original file, so the first page of the book could be fragment 21293, for all I know. I have only read a small number of the pages at this point and so chance guides my hand as to what I can find. This is especially irritating when a fragment ends in a most interesting place and I cannot find the next logical page, but it is really the only way I can go about this work and stay sane.
We here at the Secret Order of Odd have elected to take on this project because Coyote's Journal is suspected to be the largest source of information that exists about Castle Chaos here on Earth. Several other documents exist that are about Castle Chaos itself(4), but most of those that have come down to us are not written by insiders, such as the Tricksters were, and in addition are usually not complete enough to give us a true picture of Castle Chaos or the Isle of Dementia.
1. Blate 4237, known more commonly as Bohzo, is a language that was invented by the Tricksters (primarily by Manabozho, thus the name) and was unknown to many of the other Gods and Demons. The Tricksters and their friends used this language when writing to one another or to communicate private or trick-related matters in mixed company.
It is referred to in this introduction as Blate 4237 so that it can be found on the Multiverse Language Chart more easily. Throughout the text, I have translated it as Bohzo for esthetic reasons - Coyote would not have referred to it as Blate 4237.
2. Those that have worked with Jabberwock might be concerned that the text has been rendered untranslatable by its subjection to this encryption scheme, but let me assure you that I have looked over the text carefully and it is my opinion that Jabberwock only decimates the English language when the proper Jub Jub cannot be found. When it is applied to other languages, the text can be decoded back to its original state quite well without the Jub Jub.
3. There are so many languages being used in the multiverse that they had to be separated into families. Some of these families are so disparate from other families in the words they use and the concepts they attempt to articulate that a straight translation between them is next to impossible.
Multiverse 1 is not an actual spoken language but is instead a "utility language" that was invented for the sole purpose of translating between languages that are separated to this degree. It was invented by Curio, the Supreme Demon of Language.
The Bitterio family of languages is comprised of about 30 distinct languages, by far the smallest family on the Multiverse Language Chart. These languages are unique because they communicate several levels of meaning no matter what the statement. Each sentence spoken or written in Bozho communicates its core meaning, but also with it the speaker’s internal feelings about each element within the sentence, how important the sentence is in the grand scheme of things, and (most likely) another entire level of meaning along with or in addition to the core meaning.
The best way to explain this, I think, is to give you an example. The sentence "usu flAN-gee carUmanetitEEEeee" is a phonetic representation in English of a Bozho sentence. A literal translation of this to English would be "It is raining."
However, if you translate the sentence to Multiverse 1 and then into English, the literal translation is "I despise the fact that it is raining and I despise rain itself, but can you think of any way we can USE the rain for our own ends? Perhaps make it fall up? That would be fun, and as you know I like having fun! In fact, I think having fun is the most important thing - all this other stuff is just work."
Of course, it would get quite old to compose every sentence of the translation in this manner, especially simple Yes and No statements. I have kept many of the levels of meaning that I have encountered, but have dispensed with the speaker’s feelings about everything unless it was germane to the statement or the action/answer that results from the statement. English is not well suited for that level of communication, and the Journal would become tiresome very quickly if it was translated in this manner.
4. We will soon be compiling a bibliography of all known texts that reference Castle Chaos and the legendary goings-on in same.