tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 29 15:59:10 1995
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Re: -vaD vs. -Daq on pronouns
According to [email protected]:
>
> I am attempting to translate into Klingon:
>
> I have to put a splint on her broken arm.
>
> DeSDaj Hom ghorlu'bogh 'oHvaD vIHgho'naQ vIlannIS
Above all else, I have to rather strongly accentuate that
despite your focus on other parts of this sentence {vIHgho'naQ}
is complete gibberish. Since there is no word for "splint",
nothing you can do will be universally recognized by all
Klingon speakers, but you must at least come a little closer to
a legal construction for such a new word. My first gut response
is to use something like {vIHQo'wI'}. I don't like it much, but
I like it much more than {vIHgho'naQ}.
We can wrestle with this to try to tune it to a clearer
meaning, like {vIHbe'moHwI'}, but you must realize that
anything you come up with will make a lot more sense to you
than it will to those trying to read it, because you were part
of the effort to think through how to go from the English to
the Klingon, and your readers were not. They must instead go
from the Klingon to the English and might very well head off in
some other direction entirely. It's like trying to trace from
effect to cause -- a logically impossible task.
Now, when you face a construction that crumbles while you try
to construct it (like {DeSDaj Hom ghorlu'bogh 'oHvaD}, since it
has a conflict over multiple Type 5 suffixes desired for the
pronoun, since it is both the beneficiary/indirect object of
the main verb AND the head noun of the relative clause) you
might choose to recast. Simply put, instead of hammering in
screws, get a screwdriver. Hammers are for nails. There are
other ways to say this which lack this problem.
DeSDaj Hom ghorlu'pu'mo' DeSvetlh vIHbe'nISmoHlu'. DaH betleHlIj
tlheghHom je HInob.
There. No new words. No controversial constructions. The idea
is preserved in a way that is not ambiguous. If you think it is
too wordy, just pull out your disruptor and forget the first
sentence. Disruptors tend to make clipping much more clearly
understood, since the pointees tend to be very attentive.
charghwI'
--
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