tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 26 07:09:51 2009
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KLBC: The North Wind and the Sun
On 26 Jun 2009, at 00:40, David Trimboli wrote:
>> ’Iv HoS law’ ’Iv HoS puS, ’e’ ghoHtaHvIS SuS bIr Hov je, ghoSpu’
>> lengwI’. wep tuj tuQtaH ghaH.
>>
>> What do you make of it?
>
> "While the cold wind and the star argue that who is stronger, the
> traveler has gone. He is wearing a hot jacket."
Did you mean "the traveller has *come*"? Note that for the tenses I
followed the model at the top of TKD p. 63.
The source sentence is:
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when
a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
The syntax I was attempting was:
whose strength many, whose strength few, that dispute-ing-while wind-
cold sun and, come-perf travel-er. cloak warm wear-ing he.
Or in English:
"Whose strength is greater?" While the North Wind and the Sun were
disputing that (= 'e'), a traveller came. He was wearing a warm jacket.
> It looks like you're trying to use {'Iv} as a relative pronoun, but
> it doesn't work that way.
No, I was using them in genitive relation to {HoS}.
> Use /-bogh/ for that sort of thing. But here you're apparently
> trying to say "arguing about who is stronger."
Actually I had separated the "Whose strength is greater?" as a
separate sentence to avoid a prepositional relationship.
> "About" prepositions in English are difficult to translate directly
> into Klingon; you usually have to split it up into a couple of pieces.
Which I was trying to do.
> You can't put a Type 7 verb suffix on a verb with /'e'/ as its
> object (TKD p. 66), so you can't say {'e' <verb>taHvIS}.
Then...?
=======
On 26 Jun 2009, at 14:12, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> I believe it's from "The North Wind and the Sun", a popular choice
> of translation exercise for conlangs.
Yes.
> And I thought the use of questions as objects ("who is stronger than
> whom? They argue about it.") was a common device for faking relative
> pronouns. It doesn't work like the English syntactically, but it
> conveys the same meaning.
I thought the same.
========
On 26 Jun 2009, at 14:30, Terrence Donnelly wrote:
> It's "The North Wind and the Sun", which I've seen used fairly often
> in conlanging as a common text for translation. I think I've even
> seen someone's effort in Klingon before this.
Actually I did it many years ago but BOY OH BOY would I not want to
show you my first attempt at translation.
> SuStel's comments are all accurate (BTW, I'm currently the
> Beginner's Grammarian [BG], so if you mark a text KLBC, I will
> answer you first, then others get a stab at it).
See my comments to his comments above.
> Here's how I'd tackle your first sentence: {'Iv ghaH nIvbogh
> HoSwI''e'? 'e' ghoH SuS bIr qo' Hov je.} "The cold wind and the
> homestar argue 'Who is the strongest'?" This doesn't actually
> restrict the choices of the strongest to the two disputants, but
> it's a lot less wordy than the only alternative I can think of: {SuS
> bIr HoS law''a' qo' Hov HoS puS'a' pagh qo' Hov HoS law''a' Sus bIr
> HoS puS'a'? 'e' ghoH SuS bIr qo' Hov je.} On the other hand, Klingon
> seems more friendly to that kind of repetition than English, so
> maybe the longer form would be preferred. I've made the sentence
> with {'e'} separate from the question in both cases, because I'm not
> sure that you can use {'e'} with preceding questions as part of the
> same sentence. When used by itself, {'e'} to me just implies 'that
> whole thought which came before'.
Well, see above.. but since the interrogative pronoun 'Iv is treated
as a noun as far s pronominal suffixes are concerned, I assumed that
it could stand in genitival relation to HoS. If not... how do you say
"whose?" "Whose manuscript? My manuscript" = {?????. ghItlhwIj.}
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/