tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jun 22 12:53:53 2014
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] ghargh'a' HoD'a' je -- cha'DIch
> Hmmm...Klingon seem to work better in short, choppy sentences. Maybe
> that ought to be my "guiding star" from now on.
I'd say that's a very good guiding star you've chosen :)
English uses a wide range of adpositions, determiners, particles and other {chuvmey} to press a lot of information into a short number of sentences.
This tends to be more difficult in Klingon. This can seem like a weakness, but at the same time, there's no reason we should think of low sentence counts as particularly virtuous.
A good example of this comes from Power Klingon, where somebody instructs his pet to bite another person's leg off:
"Bit his/her leg off!"
{'uSDaj chop! chev!}
"Bit his/her leg! Separate it!"
The English translation uses one sentence where Klingon uses two, but both effectively communicate the same message.
(The sentence above uses Clipped Klingon; otherwise, it would presumably have gone {'uSDaj yIchop! yIchev!}.)
> Sentence 1:
> {*Jeoffrey* ta' HIvje'Daq tar lIchlu'ta'}
> lit. "Into King Jeoffrey's cup someone purposefully poured poison.""
>
> Sentence 2:
> { *dwarf*'e' lupum Hoch}
> "All accuse the dwarf."
majQa'! I was going to suggest something using {... net Har.} ("it is/was believed that ..."), but I think I like your translation better!
________________________________________
From: Gaerfindel [[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2014 15:09
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] ghargh'a' HoD'a' je -- cha'DIch
On 6/21/2014 4:29 AM, Felix Malmenbeck wrote:
>> loD mach tu'lu'. loDHom tu'lu'.
> Not a grammatical mistake, but this gives me the feelings that you're talking about two separate people: A small man and a boy.
>
> If there were a known Klingon word for "dwarf", I might recommend something like
> loD mach tu'lu'. *dwarf* ghaH.
> "There was a small man. He was a dwarf."
>> rut bID loD pong.
> I'm afraid I can't check from here, but I believe one ordinarily places «bID» after the thing that's in half; for example, I know "skirt" has been translated as «paH bID» ("half a dress/robe"), at least.
>
> Of course, one could argue that «loD bID», "man's half", would be more appropriate for a man who's been cut in half, whereas «bID loD» ("half:ish man") is more appropriate for a man who exhibits some sort of ... "halfiness".
Well here's where I ran into some trouble. Not having a copy of the BoP
myself, I guessed that BID, like any other "number element", would come
before the noun it describes. But I can see your point; {BID loD} does
rather connote "half a man}, while {loD BID} comes across closer to the
appellation "half-man."
>
> Also, you'll want a -lu' on that «pong», unless you've specified elsewhere who it is that calls him "half-man" (in which case you'll probably want a lu- prefix instead, to indicate that he's called this by more than one person).
maj.
>> chIch ta' HIvjeDaq tarHey'e' nopupu' loDHom}
> As you say, this is kind of a difficult sentence to translate.
> It seems you're trying to use a sentence as an object here, with the man as the subject of the second sentence.
> I'd advise you to restructure this, for example by putting the man in the first sentence, rather than the second.
>
> To illustrate:
> Let's say we have the sentence "This guard is known to kill prisoners."
> This can be rephrased as "It is known that this guard kills prisoners."
> which can be translated as
> «qama'pu' HoH 'avwI'vam net Sov.»
The problem here is {net Sov} *cannot* apply as it is *not* truly know
if Tirion poisoned King Jeoffrey.
But let's break this down, as you say:
Sentence 1:
{*Jeoffrey* ta' HIvje'Daq tar lIchlu'ta'}
lit. "Into King Jeoffrey's cup someone purposefully poured poison.""
Sentence 2:
{ *dwarf*'e' lupum Hoch}
"All accuse the dwarf."
Hmmm...Klingon seem to work better in short, choppy sentences. Maybe
that ought to be my "guiding star" from now on.
~quljIb
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