tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 15 10:45:43 1995

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Re: Revision of help!

>Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 13:29:55 -0800
>From: Adam Walker <[email protected]>


>OK. One more try using you suggestions and my own attempt to get the 
>warroirs to stand in the right place.

>'etDaq ghaH Qampu' SuvwI''a'pu' law'.  'etDaq ghaH Qampu'mo' 
>luQaw'lu'.

>or 
>'etDaq ghaH Qampu'mo' SuvwI''a'pu' law' luQaw'lu'.

>OK I realize that's really two attempts, but did I get it right this 
>time??

Not quite.  I think someone else has already made a comment, I just want to
expand on it a little.

I see what you were trying to do: use "'etDaq ghaH" for "before him."  It
doesn't quite work that way.  Klingon doesn't have the wealth of
prepositions that English has.  In particular, it doesn't have all the
spatial prepositions (before, behind, under, over).  For constructions like
that, Klingon uses "-Daq" in conjunction with nouns of place (just like in
English, we say "in front of", using the preposition "in", the noun of
place "front", and then another preposition of possession ("of") to
indicate whose front we're talking about).  So in Klingon, to say "before
the captain", we say "in the captain's front" (stretching, perhaps, the
meaning of "'et", since it's the only word we have that looks like it'll
fit): "HoD 'etDaq".  Note that "HoD" precedes the "'et", because that's how
possession works in Klingon: the possessor comes first (imagine an
apostrophe-s between the nouns).  We can't say "*ghaH 'etDaq", though,
because pronouns are different.  Just like in English we don't say "me's
book" but rather "my book", Klingon pronouns form possessives differently,
by using suffixes.  So "his front" becomes "'etDaj", and then the locative
makes that "'etDajDaq."  It's sort of like if English didn't have two ways
to make possessives.  English uses both apostrophe-s and "of" (the
captain's book, the book of the captain).  So we can say "in front of the
captain" and "in front of me" (note that you don't usually say "a book of
me"; this possessive form is restricted).  If we only had 's, and were
completely regular about it, we'd have to say "in the captain's front" and
"in my front."  Welsh has a lot of complex prepositions along the same
pattern, and is consistent with its possessive.  Ordinary possessives are
like in Klingon, except the order is reversed (possessor comes last).
Pronouns form them with special particles that come *before* and optionally
after the thing possessed, and they cause all sorts of changes.  So "in
front of the captain" is "o flaen y capten"; "o" is a preposition, "blaen"
means "front" (changed to "flaen" because of the "o"), and then "y
capten"/the captain comes after.  But "in front of me" is "o fy mlaen i",
since to make a possessive with "I", you put "fy" in *front* of the thing
possessed.

Sorry to be long-winded, but I think you'll do much better if you really
understand what's going with these things next time you try to use these
constructions.

All that said, we also have a slight problem of idiom.  "To stand before"
in English is sometimes an idiom meaning "to oppose".  I think that's how
you're using it here.  We know very little about what idioms Klingon uses,
so we have to be conservative and say precisely what we mean.  Even if
Klingon does use idiom, there's no basis for supposing that its idioms
match those of English.  So translating idioms is a dangerous game, and
inventing your own is even worse, since anyone who hears you won't have a
clue what you were thinking.  You might try saying flat out "because many
warriors opposed him" or "fought him" or "tried to fight him" (maybe the
later ones, since I can't find a word for "oppose").

~mark

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