tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 16 18:14:49 1995
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Big translation.
DaH pe'Ij!
As a grammatical project, I decided to attempt to translate Brujah's
Commandments from the Book of Nod. While most of you will probably have no
idea who Brujah is, what the Book of Nod is, and so forth, that shouldn't make
too much of a difference to the translating process.
Consider this to be words of wisdom from a great leader to all of
his followers. (Brujah is the accepted term used to refer to (but probably not
the real name of) a great vampire, and it is his 'clan' of younger vampires
which he is addressing).
(I apologise for this post's length, by the way, it just kept getting
bigger and bigger on me)
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In Terran:
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*** Brujah's Commandments: ***
Throw off the Elder's shackles of the mind, reach into thyself and see the
truth revealed.
The Truth, as truth is seen, will illuminate your soul and heal your wounds.
Know who you are, first, and be true to yourself.
You are my children, all, but I would sooner shatter you like flawed pottery
than have your weakness be that you are but a flawed copy out of my mold.
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In tlhIngan Hol (according to me at least):
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*** bIruSa ra'mey: ***
qup tIlobHa' 'ej tlhabchoH yabmeyraj 'e' yIchaw'.
peqel'egh 'ej vaj 'anglu' vIt 'e' yIlegh.
lIyajqu'choHmoH vIt 'ej lIrIQHa'choHmoH vIt.
reH tISov'egh 'ej reH tIvoq'egh.
puqpu'wI' tlhIH, 'ach tuDa neH bonIDchugh, Supuj 'ej vaj SaQaw 'e' SuraDlu'.
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Line-by-line Comments and excuses:
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*** bIruSa ra'mey: ***
* Note that the /j/ in the original 'Brujah' is soft as in jour, hence
/S/ rather than /j/.
* Okay, I confess. <ra'> is not a noun. However, given the context,
given the fact that it doesn't take too much of a stretch of the
imagination to see what noun the verb <ra'> might be if it was one, and
given the fact that it has a simple and clear noun suffix, I felt it was
okay. Alternately, I could have gone with <ra'qu'ghachmey>, but I agree
that I tend to use <ghach> too much and I'm trying to cut down.
Comments?
* One other way I thought of to say this was <chay' nura' bIruSa>: "How
Brujah commands us". But I'm very reluctant to use the question words as
pronouns unless I really -have- to (I'd rather use a verb as a noun,
for example :)
Of course another interpretation is 'How does Brujah command us?', but
this doesn't seem authoritorian enough.
lIyajqu'choHmoH vIt 'ej (The truth will cause you to
lIrIQHa'choHmoH vIt. Understand and it will cause you
to become un-injured.)
* I dropped the 'Truth, as truth is known', because I couldn't find a
non-clunky way to say it. Any suggestions?
* I decided to drop the 'illumination' thing altogether, since tlhIngans
don't seem to go in much for idioms, and turned it into 'understand',
with an emphatic <-qu'> to make it obvious that this was not some
trifling little matter that you will understand, but an extremely
important one.
puqpu'wI' tlhIH, 'ach tuDa neH 'e' (You are my children, but if you
bonIDchugh, Supuj 'ej vaj SaQaw 'e' merely attempt to emulate me,
SuraDlu'. you will be weak and so I will
be forced to destroy you.)
* This is the sentence that gave me the most trouble. I dropped the 'pottery',
again because tlhIngan isn't really big on idiom (except when insulting
someone :) I had no idea how to say 'prefer', in the sense of 'I prefer
X to Y'. All I could say is 'I prefer X', and it would just sound
pathetic (and un-tlhIngan) to say 'I would prefer that you didn't emulate
me'. Basically any suggestions on how to improve this would be appreciated.
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taghqIj
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F /()\ C ...CM is ATMA!
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GANTA