tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 11 10:19:10 2014
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Catholic priest seeks recording of prayer in Klingon
For me, the issue is that there should be a motive to the project of translation, and any time someone takes on the project of translating Christian materials into a language that is ill-equipped to handle it, I'm reminded of the Cherokee Bible. It's not like the Cherokee had a god and heaven, and the translation made any sense to them by replacing their earlier concepts with a newer one. They didn't start out with many of these concepts, so they bent the language quite a bit making it serve the motive of "saving" the savages.
And it worked. It was probably instrumental in getting the Cherokee to respond to The Removal with a collective, "Accept soldiers marching into our villages and forcing us to leave at gunpoint as they burn our homes and all of our possessions, then herd us into concentration camps for several months in conditions so unsanitary that many of us die of unnecessary disease, then in the middle of a harsh winter, force us to march over 1,000 miles barefoot through snow, bringing about the loss of life of perhaps 1/4 of our population, especially infants, children and old people so that we can start in a new place that already has other Native American tribes living there who don't particularly want us on their land, so that we start out building new homes without adequate tools? Sure! Why not? We'll be rewarded with a really pleasant afterlife, right?"
lalDanmey ghojmoHbogh tera'nganpu' voqHa'nIS tlhInganpu'. No need for {-'e'}. Either translation works just fine.
I speak as a part-Cherokee who speaks Klingon. The Christians have done enough damage through translation. Their quota is full. And Klingons are not savages waiting to be saved. Their afterlife is not a reward for behavior in the real world. It is merely a continuation of the life they have in the real world. They don't seek compensation for unfairness. They merely seek opportunity to revisit the thrill they were already experiencing on the battlefield.
These are not the meek seeking to inherit the world. These are the bold, ready to seize the world as many times as necessary to sustain the honor of a great house. They don't really relish victory. They relish the acquisition of victory. Domination is meaningless without the contest for it.
If the meek inherit the world, then the Cherokee are landlords to the Universe. They allied themselves with the British during the Revolutionary War (and lost). They accepted The Removal (a.k.a. The Trail of Tears) (and lost.) They allied with the Confederacy during the Civil War (and lost). No one deserves more in the Afterlife than the Cherokee, by Christian guidelines, though it's not like the non-Cherokee Christians do much to bear the burden of the cost here in reality.
So, I'd like to not bend the Klingon language to fulfill the motives of translating Christian texts. I don't think I'm asking all that much. Just don't bend the language. If the language grows to encompass specific words and ideas that can be useful to Christianity, fine, but don't push to expand that area of the language beyond what Maltz specifically explains.
I've never heard of anyone trying to translate Mein Kampf into Yiddish. It really is okay to leave some things untranslated.
On Aug 11, 2014, at 10:39 AM, Steven Boozer <[email protected]> wrote:
> BT Yahoo! wrote:
>>>> Best render God as {qa''a'} = "Great Spirit" and not as {qeylIS},
>
> naHQun:
>>> While I certainly agree that "God" should not be translated as
>>> {qeylIS}, I don't see the reasoning behind not using {Qun}.
>
> niqolay Q:
>> When {Qun} was first described by Mark Okrand, the context was of one god
>> within a pantheon of Klingon deities, and he wasn't sure if it would
>> really apply in the context of a monotheistic deity. He wasn't sure if
>> {Qun'a'} would really work either, since it would have the connotation of
>> one major deity among many. I suppose whether or not you want to use
>> {Qun} depends on how much wiggle room you're willing to accept in dealing
>> with somewhat mismatched concepts.
>
> Okrand on {Qun}:
>
> st.klingon (7/19/1999): There is a Klingon word that could be translated god or supernatural being: {Qun}. In talking of times long ago (pre-Kahless?), Klingons mention these beings, and there seem to have been a good number of them (the plural of {Qun} is {Qunpu'} since they are or were presumably capable of using language, which is what the plural suffix {-pu'} implies). Though too little is known of ancient Klingon theology, there doesn't seem to have been a single {Qun} that stood out from the rest. Indeed, the {Qunpu'} appear to have acted collectively. {Qunpu'} are distinct from {qa'pu'} "spirits" (such as the spirits of the dishonored dead which reside at Gre'thor). {Qun'a'} "great god" ({Qun} plus {-'a'}, the augmentative suffix) may or may not be an appropriate translation for a single supernatural being in a monotheistic system, since the {Qun'a'} would still be one among many.
>
>> I've seen {joH'a'} used a few times in reference to God, as Lord.
>
> Before we learned of {Qun}, the Klingon Bible Translation Project (KBTP) used *{joH'a'} for G-d: e.g. *{joH'a' wo'} Kingdom of Heaven". It would still work for overlord, lord of lords, Lord (with a capital L, maybe), etc.
>
>
> --
> Voragh
> Ca'Non Master of the Klingons - back from vacation
>
>
>
>
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