tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 23 22:59:53 1994
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Briefly, trying to figure what I can offer newbies, I think my strong
suit is that the best part of what I do when translating English to Klingon
happens BEFORE I start looking up words in the dictionary. I recognize things
that are idiomatic to English and rephrase them in English before trying to
find the right Klingon words. This process continues once I start looking up
the words. I don't stop my willingness to restate the English before making
it Klingon. It makes for an interesting view of English.
Typical examples revolve around the English tendency to nominalize verbs
(convert them into nouns), then use some variation on "to be", "to have", or
"to give" with the "noun"s. An example is "Give me your answer." We just took
the action of answering a question and turned it into a noun and used "give"
with it. The more naturally Klingon way to say this is "Answer me."
"I have a test tomorrow." Literally, that means that there is a thing
called a test and tomorrow, you will possess it. This is weird. What you
REALLY mean is "Tomorrow, my teacher will test me." You may argue that the
piece of paper is a thing called a test, but what if you are taking an
archery course and the test is a shooting match, or a gymnastics course and
the test is performed on the mats, or what if it is an oral exam? A test is a
process; an action, and more naturally a verb than a noun, but English
prefers nouns.
The whole point of Klingon is that it is supposed to be foreign,
especially to English speakers. That means that to speak Klingon well, it is
good to put aside some linguistic preferences that English holds so dearly.
If you can recognize a nominalized verb in English and figure a way to
restate the sentence so it uses a verb as a verb instead of making it a noun,
you'll get a jump on the process of translating into Klingon, and you'll
spend a lot less time either cursing the dictionary for not having all the
nouns you like, or pasting together suffixes to twist a verb into a noun's
role.
Also recognize cultural elements of language. How can you say, "You are
welcome," in Klingon? The answer is, you can't. "You are welcome," has no
meaning. It is something you were taught to say in response to "Thank you,"
as a formality. It stamps you as a member of a class of people who are
polite. Klingons have little cultural value for that sort of thing. They
speak things which hold meaning, or they don't speak. Those who witter (I
love that word; kudos to the fellow who introduced me to it here) are shunned
by the average Klingon (if they are in a good mood), and things like "You are
welcome," successfully qualify as "wittering".
Then again, there are English sentences like "How about that," which
make absolutely no sense at all in any language except English. Very
wittering.
charghwI'