tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 28 17:02:55 1994
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Re: KBTP: Psalm 23 revisited; pIn tIn
- From: [email protected] (Nick NICHOLAS)
- Subject: Re: KBTP: Psalm 23 revisited; pIn tIn
- Date: Fri, 29 Apr 94 18:45:37 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Joel Anderson" at Apr 28, 94 11:38 am
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Joel Anderson jay'?
Och, look, Glen's already livid at me because of my comments to the last
piece he posted here, and I'm too busy for flamewars in my life right
now (at least that thesis is back on track), and if someone is going
to defend the consensuses this list has arrived at to him (like the
story-time omission of perfectives in narratives), let someone with more
time on their hands do it, but honestly, how else can I react when I
see
I shall not want. [17th century English for "I shall not lack anything"]
translated as
= not jIneHbe'.
I will never not desire?
Ignoring the superfluous -be', "to want" here has only a tenuous connection
to vIneH; it has everything to do with Dach, loj, and 'ut.
Klingon is NOT a sausage-machine where you put in English words one end
and churn out Klinglish the other. neH is not how you translate "to
want" in its archaic sense, just as Huj is not how you translate "strange"
in "strange man" (= man other than your husband). bIHuj does not mean
"you are not a member of my family"; it means "you are peculiar". Appealing
to the etymology of English ("stranger") is not the sensible way to
read the TKD wordlist. The sense of "strange" Glen is appealing to is
marginal, archaic, and idiomatic. It's sausage-machine stuff.
And frankly, I don't see how it's defensible at all. He who "shall not want"
will still desire; the point is that he will not *lack* (be wanting in) ways
of contenting that desire. This literal translation makes the psalm
sound more like a Buddhist tract than a Jewish psalm.
I mean, is it too much to ask that I not realise I'm reading a word-for-word
translation when I'm reading Klingon prose?
[The rest of the psalm had no such blunder in it. But really, one is
enough. It actually makes you suspect the translator doesn't know what
"shall not want" actually meant in the KJV. Heavens know what he'd make
of the Pauline "do not stand in the way of evil" (= mIghwI' HeDaq
yItu'Qo'lu'; *AND NOT* mIghwI' He yInISQo').]
--
Nick.