tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 13 20:49:50 1996

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Re: another translation..



Stefan writes:
>toQDujmaj chu' cha'a'vamvad
>
>It is supposed to be:
>-These awsome torpedoes are intended for our new Bird-of-Prey..

{toQDujmaj chu'} indeed means "our new Bird of Prey", but the word
{cha'a'vamvaD} is "for these great torpedoes".  You need to put the
suffix {-vaD} on the thing that is receiving the benefit.  In this
case, it's the new BOP: {toQDujmaj chu'vaD}.  Notice that the noun
suffix has been placed on the adjectival verb; TKD 4.4 describes how
type 5 noun suffixes do this.

So far as I know, something can't just *be* for something else's benefit.
It needs to take action or have a quality.  I remember a similar phrase
on this list from a very long time ago: "The chocolate is for the captain."
I think the best translation turned out to be "one keeps the chocolate for
the captain"; applying that rephrasing to your sentence gives:

{toQDujmaj chu'vaD cha'a'vam pollu'}.

Notice that I didn't use the verb prefix {lu-} here; {cha} "torpedoes" is
one of the singular words with a plural meaning.

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




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