tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 16 20:24:00 1998
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Re: KLBC: Re: qechmey vIHutlh
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Re: qechmey vIHutlh
- Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 23:23:39 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
- Priority: NORMAL
On Sun, 15 Feb 1998 06:39:22 -0800 (PST) Christiane Scharf
<[email protected]> wrote:
> ja' charghwI':
>
> > On Wed, 11 Feb 1998 13:44:38 -0800 (PST) Christiane Scharf
> > <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > ghItlh Qov :
> > >
> > > > At 12:33 98-02-08 -0800, HovqIj wrote:
> > > >
> > > > }HIpIch! <chay' "We tell each other a story" vImugh?>
> > > > }jItlhob...
> > While I agree that it requires more words, I will offer how I'd
> > say it:
> >
> > lut qajatlh 'ej lut chojatlh.
> >
> > When you say, "We tell each other a story," there are really two
> > stories involved, right? I tell you one and you tell me one. You
> > can figure that the English is rather idiomatic, so it will
> > require a bit of care to translate well...
> > While we say, "tell a story", I suspect in Klingon the verb
> > would be {jatlh}.
> >
> > > HovqIj
> >
> > charghwI'
>
> Thanx, but my sentence was actually supposed to be past tense.
> I asked that question a few months ago and I already got
> answers. I like {maja'chuqtaHvIS lut wIjatlh}. The only
> problem of that sentence is that {ja'chuq} can also mean
> "discuss".
>
> HovqIj
My problem with this is that it sounds like, "While we discuss,
we tell a story." You might very well be each reading parts of
different characters of the same story, performing it to a third
person. The whole reason I offered my translation was that I
didn't like this attempt. It did not seem to convey the meaning
that I tell you a story and you tell me one.
Klingon doesn't have a second device to fall back on besides
{-chuq} to indicate exchanges between two individuals, and that
only works for verbs which can take a person as the object. In
this case, you want to have the other person as the indirect
object and the story as the direct object. The only way to do
this well is to split it as I did where the direct and indirect
objects are shown for one direction of the telling, and a second
sentence showing the other direction of the telling. It
additionally clarifies that we are talking about two stories and
not just one.
As for tense, that's not an issue in Klingon. Just give some
sort of time reference at some point in the communication and it
is taken care of.
charghwI'