tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 11 08:27:20 1994

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Re: I'm back



>From: [email protected]
>
>charghwI':
>>Sorry that I didn't express this clearly enough. Krankor has
>>repeatedly expressed rather vociferous dismay at anyone writing
>>an English word in Klingon spelling.
>
>Ah, in that case, make it: {*'ewrop*Daq jIghIQtaHvIS...}
>
>So it's just that he doesn't like Klingonizations without some punctuation or
>some such that indicates that it is a Klingonizations. Then I wouldn't mind,
>but would resort to the *-* thing, since English words/phrases in Klingon
>sentences look sloppy to me.
>
>guido*

Allow me to clarify.

It is explicit policy of this list not to do naked transliterations (i.e.
transliterations not marked with asterisks (or whatever) in the manner
illustrated above).  It confuses the *hell* out of people, especially
beginners, who often don't know not to going looking up such "words" in
the dictionary.

It is permitted but strongly discouraged to do marked transliterations
(with punctuation).  Transliteration is innately hard to understand and
requires an extra level of decryption.  The purpose of this list is to
communicate with others in tlhIngan Hol, not to be cutesy and clever.  It
does not profit anybody to have to decrypt that *maS'e'chu'Setlh* is
supposed to mean "Massachusetts".  It doesn't teach anything useful about
the language and is just a pain.  In addition, transliteration *requires*
that the person already know what you're talking about in advance.  If,
for instance, I tell you that I went to *ghlaStIr*, you'd better damn well
know your Massachusetts geography (and dialect) in order to know that I'm
talking about Gloucester.  Still another problem is that some things just
don't transliterate well, because they use sounds Klingon doesn't have.
This is particularly a problem because different people might come up with
different solutions.  I may think I'm all clever and all when I come up
with *HalIvatlh* or *'elIveqS*, but it is problematic whether or not
anybody is going to figure out that I meant "Halifax".  In short, one is
strongly encouraged to consider the issue from the point of view of the
*reader*, who in most cases, really has his hands full just trying the
understand the tlhIngan Hol without having to buy a decoder ring just to
grok your transliterations.  The point here is not to be "tidy"; the point
is to communicate and learn.  (It is also understood that formal
translation projects *do* have a legitimate need to be "tidy", so marked
transliterations in posts of formal translation works are accepted without
complaint).

So, to summarize:  marked transliteration is discouraged but acceptable.
Unmarked transliteration is unkosher.

Also:  when one does use the direct english of a word, one is encouraged
to quote it, so that people can instantly see it isn't tlhIngan-Hol.  Thus:

chay' "Gloucester"vo' "Halifax"Daq ghoSlu'?

                --Captain Krankor, Grammarian





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