tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 07 23:33:19 1998

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Re: KLBC -is this correct

lab Jonathan Thomas:

> today i translated my first line from Shakesphere's The Tempest.
> Here is Line 2

It's rarely a good idea to try to translate Shakespeare, or anything at all
for that matter, as your first exercise in Klingon. You need to learn to
express your own ideas in a new language before you can hope to translate
others. To make matters worse, the language of Shakespeare is usually
hopelessly poetic,

> HIghoS tlv,nuq Hod
> Here master what cheer
> (litteraly "Here captin,what enjoyment)

For starters, check your spelling. <tlv> should be <tIv>. Unfortunately, the
lowercase <l> (ell) and the uppercase <I> (eye) look similar, or even the
same, but they are different. <Hod> should be <HoD>. Klingon doesn't follow
the same conventions as English for capitalization, but they do matter.

I looked up the text of The Tempest to get some context. It's very difficult
to tell what a single line means without knowing what's going on, especially
in the poetic language of Shakespeare.

<HIghoS> means "come here", and the "here" in the English is not meant that
way. It is really just a word to draw attention to whatever is going on.
"Hark" and "Look" are used similarly. I'm not sure you need anything at all
in the Klingon to replace this, but <toH> might work.

The <HoD> is actually fine for "master", since it refers to the master of
the vessel, also known as the captain. It should go after the <toH>, though
or at the beginning.

The tough part is "what cheer". This has nothing to do with enjoyment or
anything similar. The master is really asking the boatswain something like
"what's going on". As such, <qaStaH nuq> might be decent. What you wind up
with for the whole thing is:

toH, HoD. qaStaH nuq?

Translating this back to modern English, you get "So, Captain, what's up?"

This is just a rough guess on my part. There are others here who have
translated Shakespeare who could probably offer better suggestions, but that
is not the point. The point is that you should really try to walk before you
try to run. Instead of Shakespeare, try these sentences for practice.

The officer hit the child.
The targ is running to the house.
The captain saw the battle.
I am hungry.
I want to eat.
Tomorrow I will go to the city.


pagh
Beginners' Grammarian

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