tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 09 19:49:27 1995

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Re: Yet again, can someone check this please?




On Fri, 9 Jun 1995, Jim Boniface wrote:

>        Could someone check these translations for me? I think I'm getting 
> the wording down, but sometimes I get really really tripped up on structure.
> 
>    qutlh yaymey nged.

maj.  "Easy victories are cheap".  That's close enough, but if you want 
to literally say "Victories that are easy are cheap", you can say {qutlh 
ngeDbogh yaymey}.

> yaymey lo'laH Suvmo' Qatlh

This says, "Because it fights useful victorys, it is difficult".
Here, {-meH} would be better than {-mo'}.  And because the subject is not 
specifically stated and would be "one, someone, anyone", you would want 
to use the indefinite subject suffix {-lu'}.

I would say {yaymey lo'laH chavlu'taHmeH Suvqu'nISlu'taH}  ("In order for 
one to achieve valuable victories, one needs to fight hard").  Here I 
added {-taH} because I would consider this to be an ongoing, never-ending 
process.  You could also simplify this as {Qatlh yayna'} (True 
victory is difficult.)

> And one from Monty Python 
>   
>   Hoch loSmeH Hegh, Ho'Du' jej tIn
> 
>  "Death awaits you all, with big, pointy teeth"

This says, "In order for death to wait for all, big sharp teeth."  Here, 
the second half of your sentence needs a verb.

You could say: 
Hoch loS Ho'Du' jej tIn ghajbogh Hegh'e'.  (Death, which has big sharp 
teeth, waits for all.) or 
Hoch loS Hegh 'ej Ho'Du' jej tIn ghaj.  (Death waits for all and it has 
big, sharp teeth.)

> On the last one, the multiple adjectives is what was screwing me up.

We don't actually have a canon example of a noun with two adjectival 
verbs, but I don't have any problem with this type of construction.

> Jim

yoDtargh



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