So just as a quick what I am doing (skip this paragraph if you just want the questions), I really started working with Klingon a year ago and have done a bunch of odd translations which I love to do. Anything that inspires me to wonder what the Klingon might be I do a translation. Currently I play in a Star Trek online game, Timelines and I share my Klingon and explanation of the language to the best of my ability in game chat. For my next dropping of Klingon I got the idea of getting a pic of the Thunderdome announcer and translating his “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dying time is here” and updating it to “Klingon language time is here” before going into my translations and explanations. This translation brought up some interesting questions and thought I would ask about my translation and if there is any constructive criticism or how I might approach it better or if I am missing an important aspect of the language:
So the basic thing I am translating:
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, dying time is here.
There is no “ladies” or “gentlemen” specifically so I came up with:
be’pu’neS loDpu’neS je, loDHompu’ be’Hompu’ je
So woman/man, plural, honorific and a conjunction, then boy/girl, plural and a conjuction. The honorific not often used but in this case as deference seemed a good choice. I also considered using -‘a’ the augmentative for ladies and gentlemen, as a greater version of woman and man because of the grammatical symmetry with boy and girl –Hom, which I find delightful. So:
be’’a’pu’ loD’a’pu’ je¸ loDHompu’ be’Hompu’ je
Would that work as well or not?
Then for the actual phrase, “dying time is here.” I came up with two ways to go and I am wondering which is the better or correct way to go:
naDev pawchoH poH HeghlI’
Here, arrived with change in state, then time and die with progress toward a stopping point, although I could go HeghchoH too.
or just:
poH HeghlI’ naDev
time, die with progress, and here. As there is no is in Klingon would this be grammatically correct? Again I could go HeghchoH.
So that is for the actual phrase, but then I am changing “dying time is here” to “Klingon language time is here” so for “Klingon language time” can I just go:
tlhIngan Hol poH
and just replace poH HeghlI’ above, whichever version is correct?
Any insights are appreciated!
As I wrote in reply to your message on Discord, that server is much more active than here. But since I’m here already I can answer your questions.
-neS is a verb suffix, and can’t be attached to nouns.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” is an English idiom. What idea are you trying to convey? If it’s everyone, but in a colloquial way, I’d suggest SenwI’ rIlwI’ je instead. If you need to convey deference, you could use joHpu’, but it’s gender-neutral. If you need to divide men and women for some reason, you could say loDpu’ quv be’pu’ quv je, but to me that sounds too much like a translation.
What is the subject of the verb HeghlI’ or HeghchoH? You already have a verb (paw) in your sentence, what is the grammatical role of the extra verb Hegh? Consider the suffix -meH for specifying a purpose for the time period.
paw is used for physically arriving somewhere. It’s not known that Klingons have the same spatial metaphors for time that English does. Consider lIb for an event which is about to “arrive”.