Qapla' and well met, everyone!
I am currently researching for a paper on the topic of crusade and crusading in Sci-Fi and Fantasy and come to you in search of wisdom.
T'Kuvma is an unusual character of his own, but he takes his religiousness truly to another level. He picks up a theme not commonly heard of in Star Trek when he describes (ST:DSC, S01, Ep01: "The Vulcan Hello") the fallen Torchbearer as "machoq'eghmeH maghobtaHvIS HeghwI' wa'DIch ghaH." ("first to die in our crusade for self-preservation").
Hence my question: Which is the word translated as "crusade" here, and what root word does it derive from? I doubt it has anything to do with crosses – what is the Klingon idea behind holy wars?
(I was going to say "qatlho' in advance", but that does not sound like the True Klingon Way…)
That sentence literally translates:
machoq'eghmeH maghobtaHvIS HeghwI' wa'DIch ghaH
While we battle for the purpose of saving ourselves, he is the first death
machoq'eghmeH maghobtaHvIS is the part that means "our crusade for self-preservation".
There's a couple of things to consider here. Firstly, Klingon is a verb-centric language, unlike English which tends to be noun-centric. This means that things that are often covered by nouns in English are often covered by verbs in Klingon. This is one of those cases. Klingon often has to use a short phrase or whole sentence to describe things which English has nouns for.
Also, if we look at the dictionary definition of "crusade" we see it is:
1. a medieval military expedition, one of a series made by Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries.
2. a war instigated by the Church for alleged religious ends.
3. an organized campaign concerning a political, social, or religious issue, typically motivated by a fervent desire for change.
While the conflict tIquvma started obviously wasn't 1 or 2, it was most certainly 3. When he says {machoq'eghmeH maghobtaHvIS} "while we fight in order to preserve ourselves" he is describing what English speakers call a "crusade".
So that kinda means there isn't even a noun that could be directly translated as "crusade"? Whoa. That sure is taking some liberties with the subtitles.