tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 06 14:12:43 1999
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Re: Klingon Drinking song
nuQum Quvar muHwI':
: There is one song with a text that she does not know the correct
: spelling. I am trying to transcribe the text. I don't know where she has
: it from. That what she gave us:
:
: EY IM-TA FEY DE-JA I...
: EJAHDAK-SO-TAS GHOS VA SKRAL BYTEEK
: EMPA JAJ LA-MOCH JAJ PUSH
: JAJ KAHLESS MOLOR-MIGH HOHK-CHEW KOO!
:
: It looks like this is the text for the actors. It also looks like how
: actors mispronounce tlhIngan Hol (compare 'ej and EY).
These are the closed captions from the drinking song heard in the DS9
episode "The Way of the Warrior".
: There's also a translation:
:
: And the blood was ankle deep...
: And the river Skral ran crimson red
: On the day above all days
: When Kahless slew evil Molor dead!
These look like the lyrics which appeared in the official novelization of
"The Way of the Warrior" (by Hilary Bader?). If you search the KLI list
archives, you'll find our discussion back when this song originally aired a
2-3 years (?) ago in North America.
: EY IM-TA FEY DE-JA I...
: 'ej 'ImtaH vay ... 'Iw
{'Im} is "render, boil fat" from KGT and surely isn't apporpriate here.
{'em} "area behind. {ngIb} is "ankle" - though I think Okrand revealed it
on the old MSN Star Trek: Continuum's old MSN Klingon Linguistic Studies
after this episode aired.
: EJAHDAK-SO-TAS GHOS VA SKRAL BYTEEK
: 'ej ...Daq ... ghaS *vaSQal* bIQtIq
{Doq} "red". {va} is an expletive (cf. TKD p. 178) short for {Qu'vatlh};
maybe used as a sort of vocative or emotive particle by the translator: "Oh
the River Skral, it ran crimson red"? {Doqchu'taHvIS ghoS *SIQal bIQtIq}
"the River Skral proceeded while (it was) crimson red" or {ghoStaHvIS
Doqchu' *SIQal bIQtIq} "while/as it proceeded, the River Skral was crimson
red" Is there a hint of this line in KGT (p.123)?
Doq bIQtIq
The river is red. KGT
Doq bIQtIq bIQ
The river water is red. (idiom) KGT
{ghoS *SIQal bIQtIq} "the River Skral proceeded..." Good use of {ghoS}.
Another nice touch: notice that whoever did this knew that geographical
labels like {bIQtIq} follow the proper name in Klingon: e.g. {voSpegh Sep}
Vospeg region, {HuD beQ yoS} Flat Mountain district, {'Iw bIQtIq} the River
of Blood (Blood River?).
: EMPA JAJ LA-MOCH JAJ PUSH
: 'em pa' jaj law'mo' jaj puS
Obviously some sort of comparative with day: {[QUALITY] jaj law' Hoch jaj
puS}, perhaps? "MOCH" might be a captioner's typo or mis-hearing for {Hoch}.
: JAJ KAHLESS MOLOR-MIGH HOHK-CHEW KOO!
: jaj qeylIS mo'lor mIgh HoHchu'qu'
Rearranging the words into proper SVO order, {mo'lor mIgh HoHchu'qu'
qeylIS} is a nice rendition of "Kahless slew evil Molor dead". I really
like the sound of that. IIRC in the episode Worf and his old friend
strongly emphasized each syllable of the final, climactic word of the song:
{HoH...chu'...qu'!} "killed him DEAD!" Exercizing some poetic licence, you
could front and topicalize {qeylIS} so as to keep {HoHchu'qu'} as the final
word: {qeylIS'e'... mo'lor mIgh HoHchu'qu'} "as for Kahless... He was the
one who killed evil Molor dead!" Compare {HaqwI''e' DaH yISam} "find the
SURGEON now!" (or, "The surgeon... Find him now!") in TKD.
It looks like someone at Paramount tried using the Dictionary but didn't
have the time or inclination to master the grammar. Too bad. There are a
couple of nice bits in it. It's a pity whoever it was didn't show their
work to Okrand; he might have been able to turn it into a fairly decent
song lyric as he did with Bader's {Qoy' qeylIS puqloD!}.
I just had a horrible thought: Maybe Okrand did translate this, but the
Paramount staff and the actors wound up scrambling it back into this mess!
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons