tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 10 22:27:11 1996

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Re: translation help needed..

Stefan writes:
>im writing about the Klingon language for my BA and i've a problem
>that i need help with:
>Qu=92wIj vIQapQo=92 Juppu=92qoqmo=92=20
>the sentence should be:
>Because of my so called friends I will not succeed with my mission
>What have i done wrong?

The *first* thing you did wrong was to use fancy characters that turned
the note into a "quoted-printable" MIME mess. :-)  I'll fix that:

>Qu'wIj vIQapQo' Juppu'qoqmo'

Nouns with {-mo'} are neither subject nor object, and must therefore
precede the object (see TKD 6.1).

You wanted to say "not succeed", but by using the suffix {-Qo'} you
have said "refuse to succeed".  {-be'} is what you need here.

{Qap} doesn't look transitive to me; {Qu'wIj vIQap} wouldn't mean
"succeed *with* my mission" anyway.  How about rephrasing it to say
that the *mission* will not succeed?  {Qapbe' Qu'wIj}

You miscapitalized the {j}, and you apparently left out the suffix {-wI'}
for "*my* so-called friends": {juppu'qoqwI'mo'}.

The end result is {juppu'qoqwI'mo' Qapbe' Qu'wIj}.
"Because of my so-called friends, my task did/does/will not succeed."

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

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