tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 13 08:16:04 1998

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KLBC: tayghom Dun

ja' Edy:
>    In my new adventures in sacred music and just translate
>this text. I gave an explanation in (*) terms to clarify the
>translatiion. Please take a look and   *batlh yIlughmoH*

You've picked something a bit ambitious here.  I'll try to ignore the 
oddly translated vocabulary at first and concentrate on the grammar.

>tayghom*1 Dun  (O great mystery*1)

{Dun} "great" implies that something is wonderful, pleasing, or just
really good.   I think a "great mystery" usually refers to something
qualitatively more important than a "mystery".  The augmentive noun 
suffix {-'a'} is probably better than the verb {Dun} for this.

>wa'DIch 'ay' (First part)

Ordinal numbers come after the noun they are modifying.  This should 
be {'ay' wa'DIch}.  I assume you really are concerned with the fact
that these sections come in a particular order.  If they were just 
numbered in order to refer to them conveniently, {'ay' wa'} "part one"
would work too.

>tayghom Dun 'Ipghom*2 Dunghom DunDaq je joH bogh luleghpu'
>Ha'DIbaHmey 'ej SopmeH pa'*3 Qam. 
>O great mystery and wonderful sacrament, in that
>the animals have seen the Lord born and laid in
>a manger***. 

The English phrase is not a complete sentence.  It looks like it's a
"vocative" (a phrase which identifies a person or thing to which the
rest of the words are spoken) followed by an explanation of why the 
particular words were chosen.

{Dun} does seem more appropriate for "wonderful sacrament" than for
"great mystery".  But what are you trying to do with *{Dunghom}?  It 
isn't a legal compound, and I don't see how it fits in the sentence at
all.  If I ignore it completely, things make just a little more sense.

The phrase "in that" means "because".  The {-Daq} which you used is 
not the right way to translate this.

You're using the capitalized word "Lord" here.  That's obviously a 
name for God; {joH} is just a title of position and respect.  It's
customary on this list to use {joH'a'} to refer to God.

"The animals have seen the Lord born" should be rephrased to say that 
"they have seen that the Lord was born".  It looks like you might have
interpreted it as "they have seen the Lord who was born", using {bogh}
as an adjective, but then the English would have been "the born Lord."

Good, you did use the {lu-} prefix correctly. :-)

{SopmeH pa' Qam} means "They stand there in order to eat."  The 
subject of the previous sentence was {Ha'DIbaHmey}, so that would be 
the likely subject of this one as well.  I'm sure that's not what you 
intended.

Let's rephrase the English some more to bring out the necessary 
grammar.  "They have seen that the Lord was born and he was laid in a 
manger."  Ignoring for a moment the word "manger", I'd say it as
{boghpu' joH'a' 'ej "manger"-Daq lanlu'ta' 'e' lulegh Ha'DIbaH}.

>mungDaj wIleghpu' 'ej lunaD qa'pu'*4 bomghom. Qapla'
>We have seen his birth and choirs of Angles praising the Lord 
>together. Alleluia.

I wouldn't understand {mung} "origin" to be referring to his birth 
unless you told me.  {bomghom} sounds more like a collection of songs 
than a choir.  And I'm pretty sure that this means that both the birth
and the singing angels were seen.  Forgetting "angels" for now:
{boghpu' joH'a' 'ej lunaDtaH bombogh "angels" 'e' wIlegh.}

"Alleluia" is a command, roughly meaning "praise the Lord!"  Using 
{Qapla'} instead doesn't capture the meaning at all.

>cha'DIch 'ay' (Second part)

{'ay' cha'DIch}

>DevwI'pu', 'IvvaD DaleghlI''a' (?)  yIjatlh ej HIja'
>Whom have you seen, shepherds? Speak and tell us:

I can accept {DevwI'} for shepherd, but it definitely fails to have 
the right implication of taking care of a flock.  Maybe something with
{Qorgh} would be better.  If you're not worried about making the 
translation absolutely precise, perhaps you could used {wIjwI'pu'}.

{'IvvaD DaleghlI''a'} is "Are you proceeding to see it for whom?"  Get
rid of the {-vaD}, use {-pu'} instead of {-lI'}, and drop the {-'a'} 
because you're already using the question word {'Iv}.
{'Iv Daleghpu'?}  "Whom have you seen?"

{yIjatlh 'ej HIja'} is fine for "speak and tell us" unless you're 
talking to more than one person.  Since you're considering plural 
shepherds, this should be {pejatlh 'ej ghoja'}.  And make sure you
don't forget the {'} in {'ej}. :-)

>'Iv narghpu'. 
>Who has appeared? 

"Who" is the subject:  {narghpu' 'Iv?}

>mungDaj wIleghpu' 'ej joH lunaD qa'pu' bomghom. Qapla'
>We have seen his birth and choirs of Angles praising the Lord 
>together.  Alleluia.

See above.

***

Now to address some of the vocabulary.

>*1 tayghom - mystery - conjunt of rites.

"ritual-group" is a concept that doesn't mean much to me.  It sure
doesn't have anything to do with what I think of when I hear the word 
"mystery".  The religious meaning of "a truth that can be known only 
by divine revelation" doesn't really have anything to do with the 
original Latin word for "secret ritual".

>*2 'Ipghom - sacrament - conjunt of oaths

Similarly, "oath-group" doesn't have an obvious meaning to me.  Though
the word "sacrament" does come from the Latin meaning "oath", that's 
not what it *means*.  You need to focus more on the meaning of the
ideas underlying the words, not the meaning of the words themselves.

>*3 manger - place where animals eat. SopmeH pa' (place in order to eat)

{pa'} is "room", not "place".  {SopmeH pa'} sounds like a dining room 
or a mess hall.  A "manger" is a trough for animal food, basically a 
box with an open top, usually elevated to a comfortable height.  It 
often resembles a narrow crib.

How about {Ha'DIbaH maHpIn}?

>*4 qa' - spirit in manner of angel

I'm tempted to suggest {HoSDo'} instead.  I'm not saying it's any 
better than {qa'}, but *I* like it.

***

Edy, I thought you knew better than to try this.  These aren't *your* 
words, so translating them is twice as hard because you have to figure
out what they mean before you can express them in another language. 
They have phrases that don't literally mean what they say.  The words 
"in that" didn't have anything to do with location, for example.  And 
choosing a piece full of problematic vocabulary gives you an extra 
challenge which you might not be ready to face yet.

Please step back a bit and speak your own words.  Tell us about your 
favorite subject in school.  Describe the things you see when you walk
around your neighborhood.  Give an argument for or against the use of 
dilithium crystals in highly advanced auxiliary life-support systems. 
Okay, maybe not the last one. :-)  But for now, at least, try to stay 
away from topics that don't have established vocabulary, and wait for 
a while before tackling translation of someone else's writings.

-- ghunchu'wI'

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