How do you say ‘nice to meet you Angelina’ in ancient Babylonian?

THE ancient dead language of Babylonian is featuring in a Hollywood film for the first time thanks to a British scholar.

Martin Worthington, Britain’s leading expert on the language, advised Marvel studios on the use of Babylonian in its new blockbuster Eternals.

The film features characters played by actors Richard Madden, Gemma Chan and Lia Mchugh speaking in Babylonian, a language of ancient Iraq that died out more than 2,000 years ago.

Translations and audio recordings of the long-dead language were provided by Assyriologist Dr Worthington, author of the book Teach Yourself Complete Babylonian, a former Cambridge academic and now at Trinity College Dublin.

The film tells the story of the 10 Eternals who have been on Earth for centuries and in the early part of the film they are seen killing “Deviants” (horrible monsters) in ancient Iraq.

Two of the main characters fall in love while they are there, and interact with locals in Babylonian. Chan’s character corrects Madden on what he is saying: she points out, in English, that he said “I am beautiful” when he meant to say “you are beautiful”.

One of the most challenging aspects of Dr Worthington’s work on the film was coming up with translations for everyday phrases such as “let me help you” or “wait a moment”.

Because our understanding of Babylonian comes from written, and often quite formal, documents, mostly clay tablets, much is still unknown about “chatty” uses of the language, he said.

Generally, the more colloquial the English phrase, the harder it was to translate, according to Dr Worthington, who said the project was “thrilling”. He said that the expression “thank you” was especially difficult.

“It is ubiquitous today, but as far as we know it was not used in Ancient Mesopotamia, so I had to find workarounds – expressions such as ‘may the gods bless you’ (ilū likrubūki to a woman, ilū likrubūka to a man),” he said.

Directed by Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao, the film’s A-list cast also includes Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek.