tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 17 13:04:08 1996
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Re: Re[2]: Words for "God"
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>Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 09:19:10 -0700
>From: [email protected] (Joel Peter Anderson)
>Yes. But it is understandable since the setup in the _Rightful_Heir_
>episode was clearly a religious crisis, more akin to the Christian
>belief in the second coming of Jesus. This "religious" notion of
>Kahless persists in Glen Proechel's materials where he uses Jesu
>Kahless to translate "Jesus Christ".
Ooog, interesting. I can't say I like it much, though.
> I can appreciate the reasons for
>doing that - and I can imagine a missionary to the Klingons might even
>do such a thing to catch the attention of his/her audience, but the
>title Messiah/Christ is probably better transliterated (as we
>typically do in English - meSI'aH? HrISt?), since we don't have a word
>for anoint - ngoHmoH?
Probably just ngoH; "ngoHmoH" would be making someone annoint/smear someone
else.
The business about a Klingon missionary is part of the difference in
outlook between Glen and the KBTP. Glen's translation is from the point of
view of a hypothetical missionary to Klingondom (from what I've seen of
it), trying to make it relate to Klingon concepts, and the KBTP is aiming
more for a translation that Klingon students in college might use when
they're studying alien cultures in the "Earth" session. Interestingly, the
KSRP is closer to Glen's view; considering the Shakespeare as something
culturally Klingon and not as something culturally Terran and translated.
Of course, using "ngoH" would run into the same problem early Christians
had. Referring to Jesus as "Christ" or "Messiah" worked great for teaching
Jews: they have a cultural association linking being annointed with being
royalty, the King of the House of David, returning to establish God's
Kingdom, etc etc. But when later on (after Paul) they started
concentrating on teaching gentiles more, that didn't really work. The
Greek's association of "annointed" brought to mind the oiled muscles of
athletes and probably would make them think more of pro wrestlers than
holiness. So there was more emphasis on Jesus as the "son of God"; a
concept which they were more familiar with (and which had little meaning to
the Jews).
So too, calling Jesus "the one who had oil smeared on him" in Klingon
(discounting the fact that we have no word for "oil")... "*yeSuS*
ngoHlu'bogh" (Jesus the be-smeared) might... actually work not too bad,
calling to mind a warrior smeared with the blood of enemies... which isn't
bad for getting a Klingon's attention and maybe fealty, but not quite the
usual image of Jesus. It also might just fall on its face, depending on
what cultural associations Klingons have with being smeared.
~mark
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