tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 20 11:05:58 1996

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Re: Maqbeth needs checking.

Chris Lipscombe writes:
>   I'm new at this and I have just finished translating some of Macbeth.

wejpuH.  The dreaded "beginner tries to translate Shakespeare" syndrome.

I'm called ghunchu'wI', and I'm the list's current Beginners' Grammarian.
My job is specifically to help people who are beginning to learn to write
and/or speak tlhIngan Hol.

If you want feedback on what you have written, put KLBC (Klingon Language
Beginners' Conference) in the subject line of the message.  That tells me
that I should look at the message quickly.  I will be ready to assist you
with any questions you have, or to check your grammar, or simply to offer
my opinion on your writing.  The KLBC marker also indicates that the rest
of the people on the list ought not to jump in with their comments before
I have had a chance to give my response.

Before I take a look at your work, Chris, I'd like to share with you one
of my core beliefs.  I firmly believe that people who are just starting
to learn Klingon should not try to translate other people's words into
Klingon.  They should instead try to express their own feelings and their
own thoughts.  Until you have had practice in *creating* Klingon sentences,
your attempts to *translate* will be doomed to failure.

>I would like for someone who is better at KLingon than I am to take a look
>and see what they think.

I'll do as you ask, but I warn you, you won't much like what I have to say.

>Act 1 Scene 1
>
>poSmoHlan

If this is supposed to be "open place" then you've made five mistakes.
1: {poSmoH} means "to open"; {poS} by itself means "to be open".
2: {lan} is a verb meaning "to place"; you probably wanted instead to use
   the noun {Daq} "site, location".
3: When a verb is used in an "adjectival" sense, it *follows* the noun it
   is modifying.  "Open place" would be {Daq poS}.
4: We don't really know how to combine nouns and verbs into new words, so
   {DaqpoS} isn't a valid compound noun.  The words must remain separate.
5: The verb {poS} "be open" applies to things that can be closed or opened,
   such as a door.  You're trying to express "wide open", perhaps something
   like "unenclosed".  Maybe simply {Hur} "outside" would be appropriate.

At this point, after having found five problems in a single three-syllable
"word" of yours, I don't think any further detailed analysis would be very
useful.  A quick glance at what you've written shows me that you don't yet
even understand the correct word order; almost every sentence seems to be
a word-for-word translation from English.  You're using question words like
{ghorgh} where syntactic markers like the verb suffix {-DI'} are appropriate.
You're also misusing some verbs as nouns, and exclamations as verbs.  And a
couple of words seem to be just a bunch of syllables with no obvious syntax
tying them together.  Spelling mistakes I can forgive, for now, but they're
present too.

>Don't be to harsh as this is my first attempt.

I hope I'm being realistic, not harsh.  This was an extremely misguided
first attempt.  Please don't start by trying to translate Macbeth, or
Beowulf, or The Iliad, or even The Cat in the Hat.  Dick and Jane, just
maybe.  But the best way to learn Klingon is to use it to express your
own words.  Describe yourself.  Tell us about the events of your day.
Use simple sentences.  Don't worry about how to say complicated things
until you know how to say easy things.  Most of all, though, don't give
up.  We all started out where you are, but we improved with practice.

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

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