tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 22 06:50:55 1998
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Re: Poetry
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: Poetry
- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 98 09:26:57 EST
ja' edy:
> It's really unfortunatly, because it's impossible (for me)
>to translate the exatly meaning of the poetry in english
>due the idomatic expressions. I can write the meaning of
>the words, but not the feeling.
Thus we see the common admonition against trying to translate poetry.
If you can't get past the idioms, your attempts will fail, and fail
badly. Trying to translate things other than poetry will also fail,
but not usually with quite as much spectacle. Poetry brings out the
problems much more emphatically, since so much of it is based on
evoking imagery beyond the literal meaning of the words.
This is not unique to Klingon, by the way. The problem occurs witn
translations between most languages, natural or otherwise.
-- ghunchu'wI'