Hi there. I haven’t actually come across The Terror but it looks pretty interesting.

I had a quick look at a couple of clips online, eg this one from episode 5:

As far as I can tell she is saying Huuqmi tuqujumavit? which would be Inuktitut.

The (standard, ie West) Greenlandic equivalent would be Soormi toqujumavit?

So as you can see the two are very close which is why Inuit is sometimes described as a single language existing in a dialect continuum from Alaska to Greenland, rather than multiple languages.

So it would not be difficult for a native Greenlander like Nive Nielsen to play someone speaking Inuktitut. I note she is described as a Netsilik inuk, but I don’t know enough of the dialect there to know how accurate the dialogue is generally. The following chart from Fortescue* shows that Netsilik (Net) is one of the West Canadian Inuit (WCI) dialects. One notable point is the appearance of “h” for standard Inuit “s” which Fortescue confirms is a standard reflex for Netsilik Inuit (along with the neighbouring Copper (Cop) and Caribou (Car) dialects, as well as the North Greenland (NG) dialect, which was populated by a relatively recent migration from Canada). So it may well be accurate.

*Comparative Eskimo Dictionary (Fortescue et al, 1994)

Breakdown:

huuq/sooq - why

-mi - emphatic particle (and/then...)

tuqu/toqu - die

-juma- - want

Is it acceptable and accurate to use it to translate Netsilik? Or is there a better translation website I can use? Should I be using Netsilik or Inuktitut?

I'm going to have to put some Netsilik in 'Roll Better!' eventually and I want to get it right.

It’s like “excuse me while I go home and write an entire goddam song about your sorry piece of ass for my wife to deliver in front of the whole village”. The content of those songs, as one can imagine...

So after these recent two posts, here’s my first attempt to add some Inuktitut subtitles to The Terror, fittingly starting from the start. 

I struggled with this a bit, since my own studies have been on Kalaallisut (the dialect of Inuit spoken in Greenland), and I may not have got this quite right, but I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m very happy to be corrected!  I have done a bit more but I’ll start with this for now.

Isumata.ngu.juq taku.nni.laur.łuni Aglukkar.mik una

Leader.be.3s-INDICATIVE see.ANTI-PASSIVE.PAST.4s-CONTEMPORATIVE Aglukkaq-INSTRUMENTAL that-one

I can’t quite match the grammar to the Interpreter’s translation, which is why I’m still not 100%, and also the final word I’m not sure about either. 

One other thing following up from the question in the posts above re Silna. Whereas she more clearly appears to be speaking Netsilik dialect, the Netsilik Hunter’s dialogue actually appears to be a different dialect, more like “standard” Inuktitut from a more eastern dialect. Notably the “s” is pronounced (whereas Netsilik lacks “s”, using “h”). This may be because Nive Nielsen was a Greenlander making a more conscious effort to imitate what was a foreign dialect to her, whereas Johnny Issaluk was already a native Inuktitut speaker and it was felt that he should just speak his native dialect (presumably from Chesterfield Inlet where he was raised). Speculation on my part.  Distance between Gjoa Haven and Chesterfield Inlet shown below. 

Water the River of Life; we are all you need together. On a sunny Arctic day, fishing involves eating raw river fish.