tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 11 00:29:48 1994

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{lab} vs. {lI'} in ST3

charghwI'vo':

    I apreciate your patience with the delay in responding to 
my captain's suggestion that ST3 may not have examples in the 
usage of both {lab} and {lI'}. I had my transcription of the 
movie on my home PC and it required a weekend for me to make 
the time to pull it up.

    The second Klingon line in that movie is spoken by Valkris. 
This is one of those lines which the actress spoke in English, 
matching the subtitle word for word. Okrand then made up
Klingon text to fit her lip movements. The literal translation 
of the Klingon does not quite match the subtitles, but that was 
necessary in order to get the lip movements to fit. Here are my 
notes on it that I had put together for a HolQeD article that 
I've been unsuccessfully resubmitting for a year or so. 
Apparently, it has not been considered relevant enough to fit 
the priorities of recent issues:

Valkris: {HablI' Su' lab'egh} [subtitle: Ready to transmit.]
Lip movement mapping: Habli' - Ready, Su' - to, lab'egh - transmit. 
Again, the needs of the lip movements dictated a lot, forcing 
this unusual way to express "Ready to transmit." A more literal 
translation would be, "The transmitter is ready to transmit 
itself."

    The point of this is that Valkris is speaking and she is 
about to upload/send her information to Kruge. She uses the 
verb {lab}.

    Two lines later, Kruge commands his communications officer 
to download/receive the data:

Kruge: De' yIlI' [Transmit data.]

    Here Kruge is receiving the data and he uses the verb 
{lI'}. With all respect to my captain, I offer this as evidence 
that this is indeed the intended usage of these verbs.

    I was initially confused by this as I was transcribing the 
movie because I had thought the definitions in TKD meant 
exactly the opposite. If I am transmitting data TO A PLACE, I 
think of that as uploading/sending. If I am transmitting data 
FROM A PLACE, I think of that as downloading/receiving. ST3 was 
using the verbs the opposite way. That's when I realized the 
ambiguity of the ENGLISH side of the definition. Okrand is a 
linguist. He may not be all that much into data 
telecommunication, so I can see how he may have come up with 
these somewhat unconventional ways of expressing uploading and 
downloading transmissions.

charghwI'

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