tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 23 16:09:15 1994

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Re: Use of question words

>> nuqDaq yuch pol?  'e' vISovbe'  "I don't know where he keeps the chocolate"
>> 
>> Would you still have a problem with it?
>> 
>>                     --Krankor

>Kevin responds:
>
>I am afriad I would still have a problem with it, O captain, my captain. 
>I agree that we do have two sentences here and so the grammar is
>technically correct.  The problem is that the resultant sentence does not
>make sense.  It translates "I do not know where does he keep the
>chocolate?"  The first part of the sentence is a question, but this
>question completely disappears in your translation.  "Where does he keep
>the chocolate?" is indeed a question in tlhIngan Hol; "where he keeps the
>chocolate" is not.
>
>I think the problem arises from the word "where" in English. 
>The word "where" can be an interrogative pronoun, in which case it
>corresponds to the tlhIngan Hol "nuqDaq".  But the English "where" can
>also be a relative pronoun of place , which as I read it, has no corresponding
>tlhIngan Hol word.  The difference between the two is the the difference
>between saying "In what place?" and saying "In the place that . . .".  
>I find no indication that Okrand intended "nuqDaq" to be function in both
>senses.

This is the key to what I am saying.  I am NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT
saying that nuqDaq means "where" in the English sense of the
relative pronoun.  You are correct, there is no direct
correspondence between this "where" and any particular Klingon word.
The fact that we get that "where" in the translation is simply the
result of smoothing during translation.  When Okrand gives us, say
"You look terrible" for "bIpIvHa'law'", we do not infer that pIv can
also mean to be terrible, we just understand that translation is not
word-for-word, one-for-one, but that you have to find the smoothest
other-language equivalent.

Let me give another example of the same technique.  This time we'll
eschew "where" entirely.  How would you translate this:

HIq jab'a' Qe'vetlh 'e' vISovchu'be'

I submit that, after smoothing, it comes out as:

"I'm not sure if that restaurant serves liquor."

Now I am *HARDLY* claiming that somehow the -'a' suffix suddenly
means "if".  This is just smoothing.

So let's put it another way:  How would *you* translate the
originally given Klingon?  I'll even throw in the internal
punctuation:

nuqDaq yuch pol? 'e' vISovbe'

>As a mere junior officer I do not wish to offend my commanding officer, so
>I eagerly await proof that I am wrong and am prepared to submit when such
>proof is forth coming.

No offense taken at all.  If you disagree, you disagree.  In any
case, I am not claiming that this is the only, or even necessarily
the best, way to say this (although it is certainly my personal
favourite).  But I think that it works well and the case for it is
pretty strong.

                    --Krankor

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