tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 25 09:12:27 1995
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Re: Name transliteration rules?
>Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 18:09:49 -0700
>From: "Chris Nielsen" <[email protected]>
>Hi all....
>I know that there was a discussion some time ago regarding rules or
>guidelines on translating names between English and Klingon.
>Can someone please repost or email me?
Names are strange puppies. One generally doesn't "translate" them from one
language to another. How would you "translate" 'Yassir Arafat' into
English? You don't; you just spell it with English letters. And "Yitzhak
Rabin" doesn't become "he-will-laugh"... It just gets transliterated.
If you're asking for transliteration guidelines, I think this is what
you're looking for:
Klingon syllables always start with a *single* consonant. ' (the
apostrophe) counts as a consonant. Klingon syllables can end with no
consonant, with one consonant, or with the clusters "-y'", "-w'", or "-rgh"
(note that you can't have "-uw'" or "-ow'" or even "-uw" or "-ow" for that
matter, as TKD says on page 17 [though "uw" can occur *between* syllables,
as in the word "ghuwI'/my baby"]). These appear to be the only permissible
syllable-final consonant-clusters in Klingon, no others (so "-rt" and "-lS"
and whatnot are out). See TKD for stress, and note that syllables ending
in -' tend to get stress too, which can be used to move stress away from
its natural place.
~mark