tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 25 16:11:29 1995
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Re: Re[2]: }}} Victory Song / battle cry
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Re[2]: }}} Victory Song / battle cry
- Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 16:11:29 -0400
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Tue, 25 Jul 95 14:41:36 EST
>On Tues July 25, 1995 "Mark E. Shoulson" wrote:
>>>On Tues July 25, 1995 [email protected] (Jim Boniface) at Internet wrote:
>>>snip
>>>>which reminds me, if anyone can think of a slogan to put under the trefoil
>>>>in tlhIngan Hol I could use some suggestions)
>>>How about:
>>> taS boSop 'ej SuHeghqu'
>>>It's the closest I could come to "Eat Paint & Die!"
>>It's not that close. It's just indicative: "You eat paint, and you
>>*die*." I don't see any command in that anywhere. Do you mean "taS yISop
>>'ej peHeghqu'", perhaps? Don't forget your PREfixes! :)
>NO! It is not a command. That's why I did not use the imperitive PREfixes.
>This is an emphatic statement. Thus the correct PREfixes and suffix were
> used.
Ah. My mistake then. I thought you were trying to translate the English
phrase, which to my eye looks like a command. I can see how you might want
to make it more of a descriptive insult, though. But the English is pretty
clearly a command, and I thought you were trying to mirror that (not that
mirroring English is necessarily the right thing to do, so I shouldn't have
been assuming that).
>>It's also a pretty weird translation. "taS" is any liquid solution. I'd
>>probably consider most beverages "taS"... I don't see what drinking and
>>death have in common.
>First, you can not read. It says "eat liquid", not drink. And if you don't
>know what drinking and death have in common, call Alcoholics Anonymous.
I had wondered about "eating liquid", but that REALLY confused me, so I
sort of took it as a kind of expression for drinking (if you think of "eat"
as a generic form of ingesting, and "drink" is ingesting liquid, you can
see how it gets there). It's a stretch, I know, but I was more interested
in the broader content. I should probably have commented on that as well,
now that you mention it.
>>It looks to me like you're trying to translate the pun of English "Eat
>>paint and dye!" That's funny in English... but is about as funny (or
>>sensible) in Klingon as the sentences "A gardener grew wheat in the garden.
>>Big wheat grew in the garden" are tongue-twisters in English (they are in
>>Hebrew, but you know what? puns and tongue-twisters don't translate). Or
>>how about this howler: "What starts with a Z and ends with a Q and only men
>>have it? A beard!" And they say jokes don't translate.
>I believe this was for a paintball team, correct? I think they'll understand an
>American pun.
They certainly would... in English. But there is no pun in Klingon. Not
at all, unless you see one I'm missing. What does dying have to do with
eating *or* drinking various potions? I drink solutions all the time, and
even "eat" them (in the sense that I eat soup... though notably my British
friends "drink" soup), and so far I've managed to survive. The connection
is just plain lacking. There's no pun of "die/dye" in Klingon in this
sentence, because the words nowhere occur. The only sense in which they do
is in translation... and that's only if you view the Klingon words as
representations of single words in English (an unnatural way to think of a
language) and not as representations of concepts. After all, I can just as
well translate "Hegh" as "expire" or "pass away"; no translation would be
incorrect... then where is your pun?
>>Me, I'd be more confused than insulted by a tagline like that...
>Well, the request was not made by you...
No, but if responses weren't sought, why post this on a public forum?
Especially responses from me, since it's ostensibly my *job* to respond to
things like this? I'm sorry, but so far as I know this forum is not
moderated, and discussion is *encouraged*.
~mark