tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 12 16:22:43 1994

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Re: Stylistics




Hu'tegh! nuq ja' [email protected] jay'?

Nick, having been silent on and off, takes a break from realising his Masters
Thesis has just Blown Up In His Face to talk Stylistics...

=>> Yeah. It doesn't translate into English well, does it. I think it's still
=>> good Klingon, but that's just me...
=>     That's my only criticism of your notoriously idiomatic style. You are
=>writing something that only you can understand, and you do so in quantity.
=It
=>is the same problem I have with Proechel, though for different reasons. I
=>actually respect your position more than Proechel's from what I've seen, 

I do draw comfort from that, because I agree with most that have expressed
an opinion here that Glen is irresponsible in his use of Klingon. I don't
want to write like him (as far as I can tell, his Klingon is thinly encoded
English --- something I always vehemently object to), and I don't think I
do. I do know I write... differently to charghwI', at least, and I'll try
to explain why.

=Yes, it's those neologisms Nick's so fond of. 

I don't think so; at least, I'd be surprised to find the reason people find
my prose hard is lexical. What I think the issue is is that I explore
(experiment with?) syntax a bit more thoroughly than is usually done ---
which means that my sentences are not exactly bite-sized. charghwI', do
I read you correctly?

=just change it to {tengchaH}. I've never gotten one complaint about any of my
="creative liberties", so they must be working well.

Or maybe noone's reading ;) . There are a variety of solutions to such
problems, and I'm continually surprised by the hesitancy of Klingonists
to use compounding --- it's an article of faith in Lojban that you compound
whenever possible.

=But I think you are falling into the trap of thinking that Klingon is only as
=understandable as its English translation. This is exactly the opposite of
=how I believe languages work, at least with languages as different from
=English as Hol is.

Quite right. I'm surprised charghwI' made this comment about my literal
translation. Literal translations are nothing but a crutch for the learner;
once you acquire any fluency, they are no longer a help, but indeed a
nuisance. I think Lojbanists here would attest to that.

Klingon is structurally different to English; without getting too Whorfian,
this means that a literal translation of jIQong 'e' qaghlu'meH qar'a' bIjIj
is going to sound stupid. It does *not* mean the Klingon itself is stupid.
It may well mean, though, that the Klingon has a degree of embedding not
normally seen outside my writing. Opinions will differ as to whether this
is good Klingon. It is my opinion that it is; presumably, it is your opinion
that it isn't, charghwI'. I don't think this is an issue with a yes or no
answer, but if it has one, it certainly won't be found in any literal
translation.

=Even so, Nick's style does often carry across meanings that are extremely
=vague. But translating into English usually makes it worst, because the
=tlhIngan mindset is so far removed from that of most native English speakers.

Look, my Shakespearean Sonnets are certainly not intended as beginners' texts.
A further complication is that I, like everyone else, am still working
out what Klingon style should be. It's no surprise that Amy found Sonnet 61
easier than 97 and 98: these were written earlier, have been revised a lot,
and I'm still not totally happy with them --- there's a vagueness to them,
and a few unresolved grammatical choices. Klingon was not designed for
Shakespeare, after all, but for battle communiques. And yet I think that,
in its revised form in HolQeD (with bImaqmeH replaced by the more lucid
chovaqmeH), Sonnet 61 is acceptable (the only possible problem is the omitted
pluralisations), and Sonnet 18 has no problem in it at all. Not the most
literal of translations, but then again (as Guido has attested, to my
merriment) surprisingly close.

Mind you, each 14 line sonnet takes up 2 hours...

=>     I want to write things in Klingon that are as clear and unambiguous as
=>possible. It would be a copout for me to fall back to, "If you can't
=>understand what I was trying to say, then that is a reflection of lack of
=>skill on YOUR part." I go WAAAAY out of my way to avoid that.
=>     It is just a difference in style. I will not inflate my significance
=>enough to think my style is superior to yours. Here, I am just trying to
=>share my perspective on how our styles seem different and why I embrace such
=>a difference. I'm sure the world of tlhIngan Hol needs advocates for many
=>different such styles.

Well, yes. And I do admit it: my purpose is not *primarily* to write clear
and unambiguous Klingon --- because languages do not tend to be clear and
unambiguous when used; they tend to be economical instead. There are bits
of obscurity that I keep cleaning up in my text corpus, and I revised both
my major works considerably on completion to make their style more 
straightforward. (There was a major massacre of the -ghach's in _Much Ado_,
maybe even too great a one.) But I use my intuition to tell me what would
be fluent Klingon. And unlike you, I do think the point of Klingon should
be... to stretch the reader's mind? In part. To be autonomous, certainly.
To have only its own grammar as a measure of what is too complex and what
isn't --- not reference to the clarity judgements of what are, after all,
second language speakers.

What this means in practice is things like I leave out ghaH and chaH when
they're obvious from context. Interestingly enough (charghwI' may well
feel vindicated by this ;) --- it shows at least how complicated this is)
when I reviewed Krankor's text, I recommended inserting a ghaH where, in
my own prose, I wouldn't bother.

I'm starting to get confused; I guess what I'm saying is... the reason why
I'm an artificial language junkie, and why this got me into linguistics,
is the fascination of the fact that you can get a Sprachgef"uhl, an
intuition of what is proper style in a language, on minimal input --- as
long as you spend enough time writing in it and playing with it. For *my*
ends, a 'fluent', natural-seeming Klingon *that can convey sophisticated
thought (i.e. Shakespeare)* is of primary interest. I do not mean to say
that I don't intend my Klingon to be clear. I don't even mean to say that
I think 'clear' and 'fluent' Klingon are irreconcilable. But I do feel
the factors at work in determining *my* Sprachgef"uhl are at variance
with yours, precisely because I am using the language to ends different
to yours. My end is to make it a vehicle for Shakespeare. I do *not* want
to do this by slavish translation and calquing, and I certainly hope that's 
not what I do. This may mean you find my Klingon unpalatable; I do feel
though (and I know Mark, at least, agrees with me) that your usage has
influenced ours substantially, and that our usage can foreseeable converge
into a single, potent language, with minor divergences in idiolect.

It was only when I was finishing up translating _Mark_ that I realised
I finally had internalised this *Sprachgef"uhl*. It has your usage's stamp
all over it. Not that you're likely to read it, but them's the breaks...

A final thing: one may retort that, where I deviate from charghwI', my
style alienates readers. I have two responses. First: noone's reading them
anyway (I know of three people who have *started* to, and I strongly urge
them to comment), and I might as well satisfy *my* sense of what is good
Klingon. They'll find it difficult? Perhaps. But they can learn. I intend
my writings for those who needn't look up their dictionaries more than
5 times a screenful, and who never need to look up the grammar section of
TKD. I'm sure I'm not an audience of one, and that such an audience can
endure the trial. (I look at my writings, and you know, they really don't seem
to be as bad as everyone makes out.) I'm also sure that someone who
*hasn't* achieved that level of fluency will miss the forest for the trees,
and won't apprehend any stylistic judgement I or any other may have imbued 
the text with. 

Second: I am motivated by a feeling of respect to the originals
to make the Klingon able to carry their text as thoroughly as possible, while
trying to minimise the violence to *either* Klingon or the original. Like
I said, I have competing motivations in my work. I cannot produce a text
that throws out unwieldy relative clauses --- though I'm quite prepared
to shuffle them into places where they annoy the Klingon reader the least.

Enough ranting for one day. If I could summarise with an aphorism, and echo
charghwI''s thoughts: We are all on the same side; it's just that we're
not necessarily all on the same flank ;) .

(It wouldn't be politic of me to comment on Guido's last para ;) ;) ).

-- 
Nick.
-- 



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