tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 11 15:59:44 2004

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Re: toQDujwIj vIQaw'law'

Steven Boozer ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

naHQun wrote:

>I obviously can't talk about phones,

Sure you can.  The word for telephone is {ghogh HablI'} lit. "voice data 
transceiving device"!  Mark Mandel, whose company helped produce the "Star 
Trek: Klingon!" CD game, tells the story:

   After we (Dragon Systems) recorded the "native speakers" to make
   the acoustic models to build the speech recognition for the Language
   Lab on the Klingon CD-ROM, I got the idea of sending each speaker
   a formal thank-you letter. I translated our company letterhead into
   Klingon and, using the KLIpIqaD font, scissors, tape, and a color
   copier, made a bunch of Dragon Systems stationery with Klingon in
   {pIqaD} at the top and transliterated Klingon and English in small
   type at the bottom. But since this was associated with an official
   Klingon product, I wanted to be sure my Klingon was correct. I had
   been working with Marc Okrand by phone and email during the project,
   and so I sent him the text of my transliterated Klingon letterhead,
   asking especially about my word for fax, which at the time was a
   compound word with no space.  He wrote back, approximately, that
   he liked the idea, but he would prefer to express it as a two-word
   phrase, {nav HablI'}; and he also suggested the corresponding {ghogh
   HablI'} for "telephone".

>let's see if I can talk about vessels
>
>   latlh Duj vIleghbe'
>   latlh Duj qIp toQDujwIj
>   *bumper*Daj ghajbe' latlh Duj
>   tlhopDaqDaj ghajbe' toQDujwIj

You could translate "bumper" literally as *{nqeQwI'} from {ngeQ} "bump 
into, run into, collide with", but it turns out that we already have the 
perfect word: {QanwI'}  "guard" (lit. "protector"), the protective armor 
plating around a wing cannon on -- wait for it! -- a {toQDuj}!



-- 
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons

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