tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 31 22:11:08 1994
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Re: sayings and joke
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Wed, 31 Aug 94 13:11:33 -0800
>charghwI' writes:
> >>DeghHomvam 'oH wIghHomwIj'e' 'ach jIHemmeH vItuQ.
> > My attempt was to come as close as possible to "This is my
> > small badge of genius, but I wear it proudly." Except for
> > replacing "emblem" with "badge", you pretty much got what I
> > wrote. While I'm not delighted with it, I could not quickly
> > come up with something better, though I'm open to
> > suggestions.
>Why not use {'oS} instead of the "to be" structure?
>wIghHomwIj 'oStaH DeghHomvam 'ach...
Hmm! An excellent thought! I'm not positive "'oS" is okay here, since it
seems at least a little polysemous (multi-meaninged) in English to me, and
it's another meaning that the translation for "'oSwI'" implies, but the
point is that this is *exactly* the kind of thought-processes that you need
to do a good job with Klingon and not make it sound like translated
English. Think bout deeper meanings and what stuff is really trying to
say. E-prime fanatics will go on about how "to be" hides vast amounts of
information adn is the root of all the world's evil (E-prime is a language
which is English with all forms of "to be" excised). They may be going a
little far, but it's certainly true that there's a lot of meaning glossed
over by most uses of "to be" in ordinary English parlance. Try recasting
some sentences into E-prime now and then; it's definitely a good mental
game, and helps you get more in tune with the thinking that would be
helpful in Klingon.
>Amy
~mark