tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 15 06:09:18 1994
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Re: Help, please
- From: [email protected] ("Coz")
- Subject: Re: Help, please
- Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 17:07:01 -0700 (MST)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "Topic Goran" at Mar 15, 94 03:19:23 pm
>
> porgh lI'be' QaQ law' yab qal QaQ puS
> (Can I do lI'be' useless adjectivally? Can adjectival verbs take be'?
> If not, then lI'be'bogh porgh)
>
I appreciate the responses I've seen so far, really; I do. But the above
translation is *exactly* the kind of thing that *completely* loses the
meaning of the original idiom. To translate "Better to be crippled in body
than corrupt in mind" as "A useless body is more good; a corrupt mind is
less good" is to minimalize the statement. The point is that *niether* of
these states of being is desirable, but that, if these are the only two choices,*then and only then* is one better than the other.
E.G., Soviet Primier Breshenev, in a speech to th NATO Alliance, once said,
"We will bury you." He was using an idiom. He did not intend to say, "We
will kill you and then plant your bodies in the Earth." He was using the
idiom to mean, "We will outlive you" or "We will still be around, long after
you are dead and gone."
I was originally thinking of something along these lines:
porgh righ SiHtaH maSbej (some sort of conjunction) yab qal bechtaH maSbejbe'.
(It is certainly preferable to continually endure a lame body; it certainly
not preferable to continually suffer a corrupt mind.)
Or something like that. But I still don't find either of these to be really
acceptable. BTW, please excuse grammar mistakes; I'm still learning.
Anybody got any better ideas?
Thanks,
KoSneH