tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 07 18:26:08 1993

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charghwi' SaHghachmey



Note: I'd write this in Klingon, but I think more people will really *read* it
in English, and I'd rather not post the same thing in both languages.

charghwi''s announcement of his unsubscription because, to his mind (I hope I'm
not misunderstanding), the list has become primarily a religious list disturbs
me greatly. I am a not-very-religious Jew, and the only reason I started to
translate Esther was to give myself a challenge and develop fluency in Klingon
and get more of a feel for the language. Organized religion generally leaves me
out in the cold, and I certainly did not intend to proseletyze any religion by
posting Esther, or indeed by anything else I've done on the list (or elsewhere,
in general). I can't speak for others, but this was my intent. Indeed, like
charghwi' and ~mark, many of my ancestors were killed by people attempting to
justify themselves with the Bible.
charghwi', you have been a great asset to the Klingon list, and I would hope
that you will rethink your decision to leave the list. I, for one, am extremely
disappointed at this decision, and I'm sure there are many other people who
feel the same way. If the list becomes sci.lang.klingon.religion, I too would
almost certainly unsubscribe. I think the fact that people are attempting to
translate longer texts, be they the Bible or Shakespeare, shows that we are
starting to take ourselves seriously and starting to believe in the feasibility
of Hol'a'. Indeed, Esther is, if I am not mistaken, one of the least religious
books of the Bible (please correct me if I am wrong; I don't know the Bible
very well at all). Other people may feel differently about this, but to me the
Bible is simply good material to translate because of its narrative style and
often convoluted sentence structure, not because of its religious content.
In short, then, I do not feel that the Klingon list has become an essentially
Christian (or any other religion) environment; frankly, I'd rather translate
the exploits of qeyliS than the book of Esther. I often skip over KBTP entries
because of their sheer length, and I don't feel I'm getting any less out of the
list for not reading them immediately, or even skipping them entirely. There
is, to my mind, enough interesting new material on the list to keep it
interesting -- the KBTP is only a small part of what's out there. Let's keep
enough non-KBTP material going around so that this remains the case.

Qapla' Qichqemwi'vo'.
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