tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 03 21:16:51 1995

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Re: Review of translations




On Thu, 30 Nov 1995, David Barron wrote:

> I recently submitted an original work to several talented 
> "Klingonists" for review. All but one, the honorable Nick 
> Nicolas, was able/willing to put forth the effort. 
> This tells me that there are probably far too few talented 
> Klingonist out there to review all the works we would  
> like to have published. (THis also assumes that  
> there are enough completed works ready for review.) 
>  
> Let's just assume for a moment that there are  
> 10 translated/original tlhIngan Hol works ready to  
> get reviewed. Can we do it?  

A couple of weeks ago, Lawrence asked Holtej & me to review half-a-dozen 
original Klingon works for an upcoming KWP publication.  (One of them is 
your lut'a'.)  It's the first time I've ever been asked to review anything 
outside this list.  I, for one, don't mind reviewing Klingon works; I 
I enjoy it.  Heck, I do it here on the list all the time.  After months 
of trying to decipher the tangled grammar of newbies, it was a refreshing 
change of pace to review the works of folks who know the language 
reasonably well.

But I echo charghwI''s dislike of reviewing poetry.  I also dislike 
reviewing non-original works translated from other languages, like Beowulf 
from the Anglo-Saxon or Pushkin from the Russian.  It's a real headache 
for me to double-check the Klingon writing with another foreign language 
- it's twice the translation work.  But I do enjoy reviewing original 
Klingon works; I can review the plain meaning of their words in Klingon 
words without having to refer back to another work to interpret whether 
they conveyed the original author's meaning correctly.

> The notorius delays of "Hamlet" indicate that we have  
> fairly limited resorces to take on such a task. I hope  
> I am wrong.  

I think there are a small goup of people working on that, which is 
probably best for the sake of consistency in translation.  You don't want 
large group of editors all working on the same piece.  Hamlet is also a 
particularly ambitious and difficult project.  It's a lot harder to 
translate Shakespearian iambic pentamenter than something written in 
modern English prose.

> I would like to get some feedback, in this forum, indicating 
> that there *is* a way to effectivly review submitted works 
> for publication. 

> Can we /Should we submit them to this list for review? 

Do you think there is a shortage of people who can review works?  Are all 
the people who are really qualified to review works being asked to do so?
It seems to me that a very small group of people are regularly asked to 
do all of the critiques.  Until this month, no one ever asked me to review 
any works for publication.  I think there are probably a several other 
competent Klingon speakers out there who could review works for 
publication but have never been asked to do so.

> david 

yoDtargh



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