tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 08 22:48:21 1994
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Void where Prohibited
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Void where Prohibited
- Date: Fri, 9 Sep 94 10:44:09 EDT
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Bill Willmerdinger" at Sep 8, 94 10:16 pm
According to Bill Willmerdinger:
...
> A friend asked me to translate the name of his point into Hol for him. His
> point is called "Void Where Prohibited", a nice joke in English. But, do I
> have a headache now!
Tough project.
> First, I figured I had better "expand" those three words into a complete
> sentence. After much thought (and a few false starts in Hol) I think "It is
> void where someone has prohibited it" is the best way to say it.
Good start.
> First obstacle: no word for "void". Okay, I decided to use "be illegal".
> First verb is {Hat}. "Prohibit" is no problem: {bot}, expanded to
> {botlu'pu'}
Nice.
> What do I do for "where"? I thought {nuqDaq}, but even using the example from
> Krankor's HolQeD article about "How can I own it?" gave me no help.
Okay, maybe it is time to take another step back. This sentence
really means, "If this kind of offer is prohibited by your laws
in your area, then we do not offer this to you." You don't have
to use all of this. When I recast, what I usually do is expand
a statement out to rediculous extremes and then recompress it
using the tools of the second language.
> The section of TKD dealing with relative clauses says {-bogh} can mean "who,
> which, where, and most commonly, that". Okay, so I can use {-bogh}.
>
> Hatbogh botlu'pu': Someone has probibited it where it is illegal.
This could as easily mean, "It, which is illegal, is
prohibited." That doesn't tell us much. We could have figured
that out on our own. {{:)>
> Does this look like the correct way to go with this? It *seems* to say what I
> want, but that might be wishful thinking....
I don't think you are quite there yet, though this is a valiant
try at a difficult sentence.
My own first attempt at this might be:
venglIjDaq Hotchugh Dochvam vaj SoHvaD 'oH wIlay'Qo'.
"If this is illegal in your city, then we won't promise it to
you." Of course, I'd be happier if I had a noun form for {lay'}
so I could say, "If this promise is illegal...", but I'm one of
those conservative folks in the {-ghach} controversy, so I'm
stuck. I similarly can't say, "If it is illegal that we promise
this to you..." because that uses the generic "it" to sneak in
a Sentence As Subject (since "it" refers to the following
sentence), and that's not acceptable, either.
I don't see an easy way to say this well. Perhaps my attempt
will open you to a better suggestion you may yet develop
yourself?
> Qob
charghwI'