tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 29 18:59:27 1994

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Response to Proechel criticisms

I know I shouldn't bore you with this; the main reason I'm doing so, I suppose,
is making sure that I'm not misrepresenting list consensus in what I have to
babble to Glen. 

Glen responded to my criticism of his translation of the tale of the adultress.
Here follow my responses to speficic points:

1. He rejected my use of _pagh_ to mean "nobody". There are several reasons
not to do so. cf. the canonical "wa' yIHoH", in which a number is used to
refer to a person. The fact that "zero people" doesn't sound good in English
is irrelevant; our criterion for acceptability in Klingon cannot be what
sounds good in English translation, but what makes sense in a strict semantic
sense. And the number of people *is* zero. It may be stilted, but until
any Klingon says otherwise, it makes sense, and it's certainly more elegant
than the alternative of always having to say vay' ...-be'. Cf. also the
ancient Greek houde`n (not one [neuter] = nothing); houdei^s (not one
[masculine] = nobody).

2. For throw [stones], Glen used Krankor's puvmoH. I countered with bach. Glen 
pointed out that bach must involve the use of a launcher. I counter that puv, 
at least prototypically, involves controlled, self-propelled flight; to extend
it to projectile flight seems to me an Anglicism. I now think it is baH which
is most appropriate here.

3. Glen translated "look up" as leghchoH. I said it should be bejchoH. He
says the distinction between look and watch occurs primarily in English.
It doesn't; and if the distinction wasn't intended to be made in Klingon,
why are they translated by different words? One sees things before looking
up; but one starts watching what is up there only when looking up. leghchoH
corresponds to "open eyes" or "regain sight", not "look up".

4. Glen defends his use of qanlaw' as an adjectival verb, and asks me to
cite chapter & verse of TKD. He should read the first sentence of p. 50
a lot more carefully. A comma before "which" typically denotes a nonrestrictive
relative clause, which here implies that *all* verbs (not just -qu' verbs),
when used adjectivally, can take no other suffix. This reading of TKD has
become established practice here --- so much so that loDpu' qanlaw' seems
to me a barbarism.

5. I translated his loDpu' qanlaw' as qup. He counters that "old men" here
refers only to age, not to social position like "elders" does. "presbu'teros"
means both elder and older man, and usually means the former. If the 
commentaries say it's the latter, then so be it.

6. I translated euagge'lion (Good News, Gospel) as De' QaQ; he as lut QaQ.
He attacks my use of De' (data, information) to mean News, saying it isn't
canonical. I've lent out my Power Klingon, so can't confirm my impression
that De' is used there. In any case, "information" is consistent with
"message" and "news". Glen reads "data, information" to mean "statistics";
I think the reading rather narrow (surprisingly so, coming from someone
who translated "call [on telephone]" as pong).

Glen justifies lut QaQ as referring to "The Greatest Story Ever Told". With
respect (he says, remembering he's an atheist), we are not here to do
missionary work, but scholarship. The euagge'lion was not the story of
Christ's life, but the *information* that the Kingdom of God was at hand.
To translate it as lut is to do violence to the original, and I believe
one of the most interesting things this project can offer the reader interested
in Christianity is a non-dogmatic look at the original documents in context
(which is why I found Mark, oldest and least sanitised of the Gospels, most 
interesting).

(When I read that comment, btw, I had a sudden urge to start translating
from the Qur'an. Pity I don't know any Arabic.)

7. I said that Glen's continuing use of -pu' was pluperfect. Glen assumes
I don't know what an aspect is. I do. The reason I spoke of pluperfects
was because of the consensus we have reached here (which is Mark Shoulson's
work, thanks to his Jonah, not mine), that the deictic centre (reference
point) for tense and aspect *in a narrative* should not be the here and now
of the narrator, but story time. chol nawlogh; bejchoHpu' ghaH is interpreted
thus not as "the squadron is approaching. At the time I am speaking, his
looking up is completed", but "the squadron approached. At that time, his
looking up was completed", in other words, "he had looked up".

There is an excellent reason for doing this in narrative. If you don't, then
9 out of 10 verbs get a -pu' suffix they don't really need. -pu' is a marked
phenomenon in Klingon, to an extent the more inflexional past tense in
English isn't, so it makes sense to drop it where it doesn't contribute.

8. I translated adultery as tlhoghvaD tlhIv. Glen thinks this insufficient:
I had to express that adultery was a violation of Mosaic law. Glen in
his translation *only* mentioned it was a violation of Mosaic law; he
said nothing about its marital nature. Furthermore, moikheu'omai ("to
commit adultery") made sense to the Ancient Greeks before they ever heard
of Mosaic law. tlhoghvaD tlhIv conveys adequately that the act is regarded
in the given society as a transgression; how Mosaic law regarded it 
specifically is a matter for the footnotes, not for the lexical translation.

9. Glen translated "strange man" (= man other than her husband) as loD
Huj. I translated loD Huj as "weirdo". Glen corrected my spelling. If Glen
ever participates in the Net, he will find soon enough that spelling flames
aren't highly regarded here. The meaning of "strange" as "foreign" is, as
I've already said, archaic and marginal. It is "strange"'s meaning as
"peculiar" which is productive. If loD Huj means "strange man = other than
your husband", what does loD Hujqu' mean? A man who *really* isn't your
husband? No. It means "really strange man". And in *that* phrase, "strange"
can only mean "peculiar". 

Glen's reading is not impossible, granted. But it is a minority reading of
the gloss, and I think it would get in the way of intelligibility ---
particulrly as readers would have to translate the idiomatic collocation
here word-for-word to make any sense of it; an activity which always makes
me clench my teeth.

10. I don't remember what it was I said about nura'. Whether 'e' is used
with ra' depends on whether ra' is considered a "verb of saying". Commands
need not be verbal; I suppose either is acceptable. Since I don't have a
copy of his original post on hand, I can't say what it was I was criticising.

11. I said wa' tlhIH to mean "one of you". Glen thinks I don't understand
noun-noun compounds. I do. That wa' is a determiner, as in wa' mang =
one soldier. wa' tlhIH is admittedly odd, but at least not ambiguous;
tlhIH wa' can be interpreted as "You #1", which is not the same thing. I
will not insist on this, though.

12. Glen says Segh is better than mut for "kind" as in "kind of woman". I
agree.

13. Glen thinks lo'taHvIS for "with" is intolerable. lo'taHvIS does have
explicit Okrandian sanction now, so it's as good as any other solution.
Furthermore, unlike -meH, it keeps the main verb as main verb. -meH may
be slightly less clumsy, but over the past year we've become quite used
to lo'taHvIS, and it cannot be considered bad Klingon now to use it.

14. I've already posted on poH pum.

(The rest of this post is mildly flamish; you need not read it.)

Glen takes me to task for my brusque tone. A few points here:

I have no patience for crude loan translations in Klingon. I will always
face them vehemently, whenever their authors, experienced Klingonists such
as Krankor or yourself, should know better. Had I realised that my post
was to be forwarded to you direct, I may have moderated the tone. It
remains a fact, though, that I do not like what you are doing to my
language. Nor am I alone in this. This needn't develop into a slanging
match; but there are good reasons for us in the list having arrived at the
consensuses we do, and your innovations to the language seem to be those
requiring justification far more than anything done here. In that respect,
I can't retract my comment that "you need some work on your grammar". I
still believe you do. I also don't think you managed to prove that my
sense of grammar is worse than yours. And it is not true that I have nothing
to learn from others; after all, I significantly revised my _Mark_
vocabulary after comments by Guido#1 ([email protected]), and am continually
fine-tuning my _Much Ado_ and _Mark_ in response to the stylistic leads
shown by charghwI' (Will Martin), Guido, and other good writers. I sincerely
welcome any comments you make on my work, in whatever tone. But you *must*
realise that you, for whatever reason, are now on the outer as far as the
development of Klingon style is concerned. As a consequence, you must expect
more than your fair share of critical commentary, and be prepared to be
outvoted. I'm not sure if I'm advocating a dictatorship of the Net over
non-Net klingonists; I do know that a dozen minds in frequent and boisterous
debate are better than any one mind.

I hope to see your _John_ soon. I'm uploading my revised _Mark_ to the
ftp server; I hope Joel forwards it to you, and look forward to your
comments.

-- 
Nick.

Back to archive top level