tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 04 14:46:57 1996

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Re: newbie comments for Jarno and everyone

According to Matt Gomes:
> 
> ghItlh Guido#1:
> 
> [snip]
> : translation: a magnificence learning device. With one big concession:
...
> : It is not a beginner's friend. ...
> : --Guido
> 
> toH!  Isn't translation of what's in your mind and what you have to say the
> same a translating a piece of prose?

The main difference for me is that the when I am thinking the
original thought and deciding how I would say it in English, I
won't necessarily cast it nearly the same way as I would were I
expressing the same thought in Klingon. Reading my own English
words only reminds me of the original thought.

You know how someone says something and you paraphrase it back
to them and they say, "No, no, no! What I MEANT was..." and
they paraphrase it differently in order to get you closer to
their original thought? Well, when I'm translating someone
else's prose and I hit something ambiguous (as much text tends
to be), then I don't have the chance to ask the author exactly
which shade of meaning the author intended.

Basically, language is a rough approximation of original
thought. It functions well because the required tolerances for
the other person's understanding of my meaning are usually
amply handled by language. Common misunderstandings prove that
this is not always the case.

But when translating, if you just work from the words and not
the original thoughts, then you are widening the margin of
potential error. As a spacial analog, if the text is slightly
north of the thought and the translation is north of the
original text, then the result is much farther away from the
original thought. If the translation varies East or West, then
the meaning may vary in some new way, but it is still about as
close to the original thought as the original text. Sometimes
the translation may be South of the original text, matching the
original thought even better than the original, but when the
translator is not the original thinker, this is completely
dependent upon the translator's understanding of the original
text.

Unfortunately, people try to translate the WORDS of the
original text through some algorithm (hence all the interest in
translation programs) and they completely miss the point of
what translation REALLY NEEDS TO DO.

I see translation of someone else's text less as an exercise in
improving my linguistic skills than an exercise in proving that
I really understand the original text. It is true that it
forces me to express something I might otherwise have more
lazily backed away from because the effort to express that
particular thought in that particular language is greater than
in the original language (especially because of Klingon's
limited vocabulary), but it is my own tendency to drive myself
to the limits of Klingon expression without the prod of someone
else's text.

Face it. Klingon has less than 2,000 words. Depending on what
you call a word, English has roughly 50 times that many words.
Klingon compensates with all the affixes and grammatical
constructions, but it is especially sparce by comparison with
the raw volume of nouns in English (which is rather
noun-centric). If your approach is to try to translate someone
else's words (instead of their thoughts), then Klingon quickly
becomes a crippled language.

Meanwhile, for expressing original thoughts, it is a language
surprisingly complete given its small set of tools. Each tool
is versatile and if you learn to use them well, you can really
express an impressive variety of thoughts, and express some of
them even more naturally and accurately than they can be
expressed in English.

Provided, of course, that the listener understands the
language...

> The trouble I find with translating a piece of prose into tlhIngan Hol is
> the fact that there are missing words.  Especially nouns that I can't easily
> recast.

Yep.

> Being an instructional designer, I'd disagree with you that repetitive
> drilling is any kind of instruction.  What does that teach you?  And
> how effective is it?  

For some it is useful for the accumulation of the basic parts
of the language, like the verb prefixes. I, of course, never
did this, so I still have to look up all the plural
imperitives...

> There are a number of studies out there that show
> a highly effective way to learn is through EXPERIENCE.  Sit someone in
> a Klingon bar and they'll start to LEARN.  Or, on Earth, sit with some
> of the fluent people and just have a conversation (or listen in).  This
> is ACTIVE learning (as opposed to your repetitive drilling which is more
> passive).

This is exactly where qep'a' comes in. We hoped that the MUSH
(Multi-User-Shared-Hallucination, since someone asked a week or
so back) would provide the same sort of environment, but
generally, whenever I signed in and tried to speak Hol, someone
would show up and want to be social in English and accuse me of
being rude if I continued to speak Hol. So practicing
interactive Klingon on the MUSH didn't work for me.

But when you get to watch ~mark and Krankor in active
conversation at qep'a' wa'DIch, it was inspirational enough
that at qep'a' cha'DIch, literally EVERYBODY (18 people) spoke
SOME Klingon and many of us used it quite a bit. I made my
greatest advances in the swimming pool, since that was the one
place where everybody hung out without dictionaries and said
lots of stuff (told a lot of jokes) in Klingon.

I didn't have time to rework the word order or get the affixes
exactly right. Instead, I had to learn how to formulate the
fundamental meaning in my head in real time (well, a LITTLE
slowly). Now, I do it some in my head or while driving or
walking alone.

I'm keeping a journal in Klingon. jItaH'a'? ja' poH neH.

> Just my two cents...
> 
> -majIq

Hmmm. Must be at least 4 cents by now...

charghwI'
-- 

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