tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 10 10:50:13 2001
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Re: The Year of the Horse
Stephen Carter wrote:
: Next year, 2002, is the year of the horse, and the people who make
: such decisions have decided that they want to embellish the cards
: with the phrase "This is the Year of the Horse" in a number of
: different languages. I'm trying to come up with something in
: Klingon. This is what I have:
:
: tera' DISvam 'oH tep qengbogh Ha'DIbaH tera' DIS'e'
:
: lit. "This Terran year is the Terran year of the animal that carries
: a load."
That's quite a lot to put on a greeting card, qar'a'?
: Question 1 -- Is this grammatical?
Not quite; you've reversed the subject and predicate. "This Terran year" is
the subject and goes at the end of an equational sentence (i.e. one using a
pronoun as a copula) and has to be tagged with {-'e'}:
tep qengbogh Ha'DIbaH tera' DIS 'oH tera' DISvam'e'.
Also, I would drop one, if not both, {tera'} as it's obvious you're talking
about Terran years:
tep qengbogh Ha'DIbaH DIS 'oH tera' DISvam'e'.
This Terran year is the year of the animal that carries a load.
: Question 2 -- Can anyone suggest anything better than "animal that
: carries a load" as a translation of "horse"?
Use {Sargh} *sark*, a Klingon riding animal similar to an Earth horse which
was mentioned, if not seen, in one of the TNG episodes ("Pen Pals"). It's
listed in the ST ENCYCLOPEDIA and shows up in KGT as part of an idiom: {ngem
Sarghmey tlha'laH} "be able to chase forest sarks" meaning one is capable of
following anyone or anything - that is, that one is capable of understanding
even the most complex of discussions or of solving the most intricate of
problems (p.111). (In Klingon, a forest animal is one that is untamed or wild;
cf. the simile {tlhab; ngem Ha'DIbaH rur} "free [independent] as a forest
animal" also from KGT.)
So, putting this all together we have:
Sargh DIS 'oH tera' DISvam'e'.
This Terran year is the year of the sark.
or even simpler:
Sargh DIS 'oH DISvam'e'.
This year is the year of the sark.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons