tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 19 09:33:29 1993

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Comments on translations

>From: Captain Krankor <[email protected]>
>Date: Fri, 19 Nov 93 03:54:55 -0700
>Content-Length: 3350


>>  And it also makes for trouble when the noun is being
>>used differently in the relative clause and the main clause (e.g. "Because
>>of the ship in which I fled").  You can cook up your own hairy examples.
>>[Hmm, while typing this I came up with a possibly good proposed solution;
>>I'll post it later.  It'd need Okrandian sanction pretty badly, though.]  I
>>ran into this problem a few times, like "Let us cast lots [I put 'gamble']
>>to find out because of whom this bad event happens to us."  This gives us
>>another problem of what to do about the relative pronoun; I'm not sure
>>"'Iv" is right for it; it's a question word.  I used, tentatively, "nuvmo'
>>maHvaD qaSbogh wanI'vam qab maSovmeH maSuDjaj".  Any better plans?

>I'd do:  maHvaD wanI'vam qab qaSmoH 'Iv 'e' wIghojmeH maSuDjaj

>Note that I *am* using 'Iv as a question, by one of my prefered
>techniques.  The two sentences break down into:

>Who causes this bad event to happen to us?  Let us gamble in order to
>learn that.

I think I like this one.  It is a question, so the question-word "'Iv" may
be okay.  I'll probably go with "'Ivmo'", and SovmeH or SovchoHmeH, though.

>>Similarly later, when they address him as "you, because of whom this bad
>>event happens to us" (the Hebrew is really obscure, this is one reading), I
>>translate "SoHmo' maHvaD qaSbogh wanI'vam qab".  Same deal.

>Badly ambiguous at best.  I keep reading it as "This bad thing that
>happens to us because of you."  Mayhaps:  SoH, maHvaD wanI'vam qab
>qaSmoHbogh nuv

Hrm.  Maybe something like that.  The Hebrew is almost as icky (if not
more) than my Klingon translation, but I'm not here to reproduce
difficulties.

>>I "coined" a word for "whence" or "from where", which feels like the Right
>>Thing: "nuqvo'".  The word for "where" is "nuqDaq", plainly a locative of
>>"nuq", and I want the ablative, so "nuqvo'" it is.  Any better
>>suggestions/objections/death threats?

>I used to do it that way, but I've changed my mind.  I now would use
>nuqDaqvo', under the following logic:  I'm making a compound out of nuq
>Daqvo'.  So, literally "from what place".  Afterall, one could certainly
>think of nuqDaq as a compound of nuq and Daq, "what place", despite the
>claim that it is nuq + -Daq on page 69.

This one's tough; I'm not so sure.  It's true that "nuq" + "Daq"  could be
a valid derivation for "nuqDaq"--and if it isn't "nuqDaq" could be
sufficiently fossilized as a form in its own right to allow for
"nuqDaqvo'".  *sigh*.  The problem is that I want this translation to be as
close to perfect as possible, in meaning and more importantly in
correctness.  I guess I'll go with nuqDaqvo' tentatively, though it looks a
little funny.

>>I also made use of the object place in other ways.  For example, Nineveh is
>>described as being "three days' journey [across, presumably]".  So I said
>>"wej jaj nI' lengDaj": its voyage is long three days.  You have to stretch
>>your mind for this one.

>Yeah, maybe.  How about:  wej jaj poQ lengDaj

Hmm... didn't think of poQ.  I still like mine, though.  Nick correctly
pegged it as an Esperantism; I'm not sure if that's necessarily bad here,
especially given our looseness in fixinf the meanings of objects,
especially objects of normally intransitive verbs.  I'll consider changing
it.


>>Any ideas (aside from law'/puS, which is probably too hairy to put into an
>>already hairy sentence) on how to say "more than 120000 people" (in "that
>>has more than 120000 people... in it")?  Last sentence.  There may be no
>>way other than law'/puS, in which case I'm probably better off leaving it
>>out, but I wish I could find one.

>*What* has more than 120000 people?  I'll assume it's a city.  So how
>about:

>120000 juSbogh roghvaH ghajbogh veng'e'

Yep, a city.  That's good; I never thought even to look up {roghvaH}.  Not
100% sure on {juS}, but I'll see how these things fit into the sentence
(which is incredibly hairy to start with.)

>       --Krankor


~mark

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