tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 08 03:42:39 1994
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Re: Quenya phrase
- From: KLI Rount Table Account <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Quenya phrase
- Date: Mon, 8 Aug 1994 14:47:00 -0400 (EDT)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "William H. Martin" at Aug 5, 94 04:25:55 pm
> According to Niall Hosking:
> >
> > Can anyone help me with the following phrase (in Tolkien's Quenya)?
> >
> > 'The stars shine on the hour of our greeting.'
> >
charghwI' says:
>
> Others may offer other translations as well, but this is how I
> see it. I also might offer that the sense of blessing might be
> better served by speaking directly to the issue:
>
> maghomchuqDI' jIQuchqu'.
>
While I generally leave translating to those who have more facility with
the language (like ~mark and krankor and charghwI' and Holtej and, well,
you get the idea) I just got back from delivering a paper at the 25th
meeting of the Mythopoeic Society and hanging out with a bunch of Elvish
scholars. In the course of my talk I translated Frodo's greeting as:
qIHtaHghachmaj rep bochbejjaj Hov
If this is wrong, do let me know, but let me point out a few things. The
context of this line in my talk was to show that while some things may be
lost in translation, other things can be gained. For example, Quenya
(unlike English or Klingon) distinguishs between incluusive and exclusive
uses of "we" (an early typo in LOTR had Frodo excluding the elves from
the welcome, applying it the star's shining to only im and his party).
This is lost, both in English and Klingon, unless you want to really go
out of your way. On the other hand, I deliberately used a nominalized
form of qIH, rather than ghom, because it was their first meeting, a
subtlty thatexists in Klingon, but NOT in Quenya.
Comments are most welcome.
Oh, and by the way, the conference was quite fun, and we may see some
more cross over from the Elvish community in the near future. :)
Lawrence