tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 03 11:45:12 1996
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Re: KLBC Indians (Re: toughie)
>Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 11:09:14 -0800
>From: [email protected]
>I thought about translating America, which is Germanic for on the heather,
>(Am=on)+(erica=heather), but I don't think you have a Klingon word for heather.
Always think two or six times before trying something like this. Imagine
you're reading a sentence and come across "On the heather, the average
family has 2.3 children." On the heather? On WHAT heather? How does that
affect how many children they have? Where is this heather-field? I've
been studying languages for a long time, and I must confess I never knew
that etymology for America (I thought it was Amerigo Vespucci's name;
wasn't he Italian and not Germanic?) I'm not proud of not knowing it, but
if I didn't know it, is it reasonable to expect your average reader to?
What do you gain from this fanciful translation aside from making the
sentence harder to understand? The whole point of language is to
facilitate communication. Translations like this would be
counterproductive.
~mark