tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 08 14:25:25 1994
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Re: Warp drives (the next wodge)
>Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 18:25:15 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>According to [email protected]:
>>
>> Thanks for all those constructive comments about Paragraph 3.
>>
>> [Paragraph 4] This time I'll try not to open a tin of gharghmey....
>>
>> Now Alcubierre has worked out a method of travelling equally fast but
>> without exceeding the speed of light.
>> DaH qech chu' chov Alcubierre - Do rap [lenglaHlu'] 'ach gho'Do lengnISlu'.
>> - OK. I know [lenglaHlu'] is illegal (two Type 5 suffixes) - is there a way
>> round this?
>No, there isn't. You have to recast. Welcome to Qo'noS. Sleep
>on the floor and get used to it.
Wellllll, there *is* lenglaH vay', but the truth is that a recast would be
better.
>I really think you are over your head on this project.
Me too; this is far from simple text. A lot of folks out there are really
too eager to say stuff like this and don't realize that it's just as
important to learn how to say Dick-and-Jane stuff too. More important, in
a way, since you can't learn to talk like Shakespeare without learning to
talk like Dr. Seuss first.
>I'm having trouble with this one because I do not fully
>understand the English. "Now Alcubierre has worked out a method
>of travelling equally [equal to WHAT?] fast but without
>exceeding the speed of light."
>Does this mean that he can travel exactly at the speed of
>light? If so, why bother with "but not exceeding..."? Is he
>trying to say that he can get to a destination before light
>travels the same distance without actually exceeding the speed
>of light? I need better English text before I can come up with
>meaningful Klingon text.
Hmmm... I thought the meaning would be made clearer by looking at the
context... but it doesn't. I don't understand the "equally" business.
The previous paragraph ended on talking about the twin paradox, but didn't
say anything about exceeding the speed of light. I think I have to agree
with charghwI' here: syntax error. I can't translate this because I don't
know what it means.
>> Previously, this had been thought impossible.
>> qechDaj QubchoHpa', qItbe'ghach Harlu'pu'.
>> [Does qItbe'ghach work as 'an impossibility'?]
>Even if it did, I don't think you want it here. Your sentence
>says something like, "Before he began to think his idea, the
>impossibility had been believed." or maybe "Before
>he/she/it/they began to think his/her/its/their idea, one had
>believed the impossibility." Try something more like:
>qItbe' qechvam 'e' Harpu' Hoch.
What can be said? How can you comment on perfection? This is the way to
think: cast the meaning, not the words, into Klingonish chunks. That
doesn't just mean reorder them, it means change the sentence structure.
You could also have gotten a chance to use "net Har" instead of "'e' Har
Hoch"... And oh yeah, this runs into the famous Obscure Rule of page 66:
the main verb of a sentence that uses "'e'" doesn't take an aspect suffix.
So maybe it wasn't perfect. But it had the right idea.
>> Space and time can be visualised as a rubber sheet that is stretched
>> near massive objects.
>> [??]
>Okay. This is it. Somebody else needs to step in here because I
>feel like I'm being assigned to a project that is interesting
>to someone other than me.
Hey, charghwI'... we're working on a translation, not a commentary. You
don't have to believe in something to say it; ask a politician! You
*certainly* don't need to believe something to say that someone else said
it, which is what a translator does. Don't be offended by my saying this,
but relax a little. You can't teach a language if you insist onhaving to
agree with everything that someone asks for help saying; otherwise you're
basically teaching people only to say things you would say... Much as I
like you, I'd rather not see a nation of charghwI' clnes and nothing else.
A language exists to say things, even wrong ones.
Anyway.
We have no words for "rubber sheet"... but what about "nav'e' SIHlaHbogh
vay'"? Paper that something can bend is pretty close. COnsider something
along the lines of
poH logh je DIqelDI', navHey'e' SIHlaHbogh vay' rurlaw' [net chaw'], 'ej
'ughwI'meyDaq, navHey tIqmoHlu'law'.
Erg, that's ot very nice, mostly because it's a rotten translation of
"stretched"... whose meaning is ill-defined here anyway. Probably best
would be to recast again, maybe combining this with other sentences, or
maybe even leaving it out, since the stretchiness near massive objects
doesn't seem to add anyathing to the argument.
~mark