tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Sep 29 11:00:46 1996
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Re: KLBC: B'Elanna
- From: [email protected] (HoD trI'Qal)
- Subject: Re: KLBC: B'Elanna
- Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 14:01:48 -0400
At 08:23 PM 9/7/96 -0700, Steven Boozer wrote:
I have to say, this was a rather impressive post, just because you managed
to send your off-topic comments about the name "B'Elanna" in Klingon! Wow!
I even understood most of it without the English, which is very good!
I do request that in the future, you put one sentence/part of a very long
sentence on a seperate line, as this makes it easier for me to point out any
correction or well-put-together structures in your post?
>From your comments about "submitting to the BG's knife" later in your post,
I gather you intend me to tear this apart, rather than send it to the KLBC
as example/conversation for the Beginners... well, here goes...
> chay' pongDaj Hevpu' *be'elanna'*?
I like this! I know that *I* would first ask "Where did B'Elanna get her
name?" and would be forced to recast, probably eventaully to something
similar to this. I don't know if that was what you were originally thinking
or not, but if you were, you avoided the "trap" very nicely! Thank you also
for flagging <be'elanna'> as a non-Klingon word!
>*Roma*ngan veS joH'a' lutlh ghaH *Bellona*'e'
Since your first sentence was really a compound sentence joined by <'ej>, I
took the liberty of breaking it up. I hope you don't mind...
Since you did not provide a "litteral" translation, I am going to do that as
well, more for the sake of any other students who might be reading this
thread than to correct you, as you did point out that you were summarizing,
rather than being exact.
"B'Elanna is the Roman's primitive goddess of war."
This is going to sound really odd, but... although the majourity of the list
probably accepts <joH'a'> for "god(dess)" because of the KBTP and it IS a
very logical translation, many of the other new students may not recognize
it, or figure it out. This was one of the few things I had to get from the
English to get your meaning--my first impression was that B'Elanna was some
sort of really great General!
>'ej *Mars* be'nal be'nI' ghap luqel *Roma*nganpu'.
"And the Romans consider the sister or the wife of Mars."
I saw pretty clearly that you were trying to say "And the Romans consider
her to be either the wife or the sister of Mars." Unfortunately, you have a
couple of mis-uses here. The first (which will also probably make some of
the others a bit clearer) is the mis-use of <qel>, which means "consider" as
in "to take into account". Here, you are trying to use "consider" to mean
"believe", which <qel> does not mean. A number of other verbs might convey
this concept a bit better: <jatlh> "to say", <Har> "to believe", <ja'> "to
report" or <Sov> "to know". I suspect there is an even better word out
there, but I can't think of it. I'm going to use <yaj>, actually, because
it makes the most sense without getting into possible word-conflicts with
(ancient) religious beliefs, and will demonsstrate rather clearly one of
your other errors (it's still not a very good word-choice, but better than
<qel>, I think--and that is just a personal preference; you do need to find
another verb, but which one would best convey the meaning is up to you...).
The sentence now becomes "And Romans understand (that she is) the wife or
the sister of Mars". I put in ()'s the words which you were able to drop
with "consider" in English that you cannot drop in Klingon. See, I can do
the same thing with "consider": "The Romans consider her to be the wife or
sister of Mars", but of course, in English, we would just shorten that down,
as you did... which lead to the disappearance of two rather important concepts:
1. The words "to be" show that you really have a second whole sentence
there: "She is the wife or the sister of Mars". While in English, we can
drop the extraneous "to be" and such, we cannot in Klingon. You have to
have this whole sentence there. But how do you put a whole second sentence
into a first one? Well, that leads me to the second point...
2. The word "that" in the English, combined with this second sentence in
the first mean you have a sentence-as-object(SAO) structure. Since you
showed in your next sentence that you seem to understand how SAO works, I am
just going to put the corrected sentence here, and if you don't understand,
you can ask, okay?
'ej *Mars* be'nal be'nI' ghap ghaH 'e' luyaj *Roma*nganpu'.
Unfortuantley, we are still not done yet. {{:(
In English, if we want to say "I will destroy either the Klingon or the
Romulan ship", we are really saying "I will destroy either the Ferengi ship
or the Romulan ship"--we are just making the word "ship" do double-duty.
Unfortunately, we can't do that in Klingon, either; you have to use the word
<Duj> for "ship" twice:
verengan Duj romuluSngan Duj ghap vIQaw'bej.
Likewise with your comment about being either the wife or sister of Mars:
'ej *Mars* be'nal *Mars* be'nI' ghap ghaH 'e' luyaj *Roma*nganpu'.
>(*Roma*ngan Hol veS 'oS <bellum>'e' net Sov.)
"It is known that "BELLUM" represents the war of Roman language".
I'm not going to say this is out-and-out wrong, but it would have been
clearer if you had put both words in <>'s, and then used **'s to flag
"bellum" as a non-Klingon word, to keep it consistent with what you were
doing befre.
The -'e' might be extraneous, but is not incorrect; it adds the emphasis to
"bellum".
>*Roma* veng HurDaq *Bellona* quvmoHmeH 'oHtaH chIrgh tIQ.
"In order that they honour Bellona in the outside of the city of Roma, an
ancient temple, it is [...?]"
You ALMOST have this... (but "almost" only counts in Horseshoes,
handgrenades, and tactical nuclear warfare... {{:) ) You have most of the
right pieces, but they aren't in the right places. Let's look at what your
"pieces" are.
You have "there is/was", "an ancient temple", "in order to worship Bellona",
and "outside the city". All of your pieces are translated right, except for
the first one, "there is/was". You tried to use the "to be" structure to
translate this, which doesn't work, because to use a pronoun this way, there
has to be and "object" to compare it *to*; that's why I have the [...?] in
the English I provided--"the ancient temple is.... what?" The "to be"
structure has a number of good uses, but this is not one of them. In fact,
there is a structure designed to convey just this purpose of "there is/are"!
Check out page 39 of the KD, about half-way down the page, in the
description of -lu'. You will find a paragraph starting "When used with
the verb <tu'>..."; make special note of the last part of that paragraph,
and the example right after it. <tu'lu'> translates to "there is/was", and
should be used in your sentence instead of <'oHtaH>.
Now, we get to put all the pieces together.
<tu'lu'> is actually the subject and the verb (-lu' being an indefinite
subject, but still a subject), so those will have to go at the end of the
sentence. "the ancient temple" is the object of this ("There is (someone
finds) an ancient temple), so it will go right before it:
chIrgh tIQ tu'lu'
Next, we have "in order to worship Belanna". This a bit tougher to place.
It HAS to go immediately before the noun or verb which it modifies. So...
what is the phrase "in order to worship Belanna" modifying? The verb "there
is"? No... the "outside of the city of Rome"? No... ah! The TEMPLE! The
temple for the purpose of worshipping Belanna! So, it has to go before
"ancient temple":
*Bellona* quvmoHmeH chIrgh tIQ tu'lu'
Finally, you have the "outside the city of Roma"... which has to go at the
head of the sentence:
*Roma* leng HurDaq *Bellona* quvmoHmeH chIrgh tIQ tu'lu'
Please notice that this isn't very different from what you had originally.
I hope my explainations for the differences why were adequate... you were
very close, but not quite there...
>pa' SutlhtaHvIS Duy'a' nov ghom yejquv qoj cheghtaHDI' charghta'bogh Sa'
>van je.
Oif. This is rather long and convoluted... let's see what I can make out of
it...
"While alien Ambassadors negotiate there the High Council meets and/or as
soon as a General which conquers returns they also salute them."
This is why I ask for punctuation. I am not even sure I have that
translation right, because I am not sure which nouns go with which
sentences. I suspect it would have helped you when you set it up, too, by
letting you see what already went with what.
Actually, what you have here is not that bad. The big problems you appear
to be having is because of the double-duty thing again in English; this
time, it is the clause "the High Council meets there" that is doing
double-duty. Fortunately, this time, you CAN do this in Klingon... however,
your <SutlhtaHvIS> phrase really makes it sound like the foreign ambassadors
are negotiating (most likely with each other!) in one room, while the High
Council just happens to be meeting in another, and there is no communication
between them! Let's re-phrase your original slightly here: "In order that
the High Council and foreign ambassadors negotiate with each other and in
order that the High Council salute generals who conquer, the High Council
meets there". My experience has been that -meH is perhaps one of the least
understood, and consequently, most IGNORED suffix available to many
beginning speakers. -meH is your *friend*; if you can re-cast something to
say "in order that/to", you can use -meH there; and it will be correct.
I'm actually not going to translate that last sentence for you. {{:) To be
perfectly honest, your basic grammar is very, very good; you are not
tripping over prefixes, or objects, or many of the other commone
beginner-errors. You have used several subordinate clauses correctly, shown
that you know how to put together a -meH structure and a
sentence-as-object--with <net>, no less! The problems which I am seeing for
you stem more from thinking in English, and then trying to squish it into
Klingon grammar, and I don't think you were doing even that all the time.
>From what I have seen, I think you will have a relatively easy time
translating that last sentence to Klingon the way I last gave you the English.
So let's see you do it. {{:)
> How did B'Elanna get her name?
>
>Bellona was the native Roman war goddess and was considered either the
>wife or sister of Mars. (The Latin word for war is, of course, *bellum*.)
>There was an ancient temple to Bellona outside the city of Rome, and the
>Senate would meet there when negotiating with foreign ambassadors or when
>greeting the return of victorious generals.
>
>yIqIm *trI'Qal* HoD!
murI' 'Iv?
toH! chorI' SoH!
jIqImtaH net Sov! {{:)
>This is not intended to be an exact translation, just a rendering. I
>chose the Latin name "Roma" over the English "Rome" because it is more
>pronounceable in Klingon (in spite of the nasty {romuluSngan}
>connotations).
Actually, I have no problem saying either *rom*ngan or *roma*ngan. Thanks
for the note, though... I would have had a fun time trying to decipher what
"Roma" was. {{:)
>The last sentence particularly gave me trouble, but I tried
>something a little complicated here and wanted your opinion.
It actaully was not that bad. With the English (paraphrase or not!) I could
very clearly see what you were attempting to do. I'd like to recommend
three "tricks" to you, that might help you (and any other beginners who
actually followed all fo this!) to avoid some of the pitfalls you stumbled
over in thos post:
1. Find a set of English words that are a fair "literal" translation of
Klingon phrases, and then, when you sit down to translate something, try to
re-cast your thought into these pieces. If you are a skilled enough
linguist to be able to just drop things together in Klingon, more power to
you, but when I was learning, this was the only way I could remember when to
use which parts. For example, I think of -choH as "begin/start to <verb>".
It's not REALLY the concept being expressed, but it is very, very close, and
as long as I also bear in mind the differences between my English and the
real meaning of -choH, I am fine. Another example: I think of -meH as "in
order that ...". I have yet to encounter a time when this translation
failed me (which is not to say I won't, but it has worked this far...). You
don't really need to do this with simple things like -be', -qu', -chugh,
etc., just the concepts which are more complicated. It may or may not help
you hammer down when to use which construction.
2. Hand-in-hand with #1, and even more important is to simply RECAST what
you think a bit more before you translate it. Alsmot all of your problems
in this post stemmed not from confusion over the rules of grammar, but
because the English you were thinking before you translated was dropping
words, or was not phrased in a form which would make things like when to use
a -meH very, very clear. Some people are so gifted with languages that they
can think the concept, and just drop it into structures of the language they
desire; if you can put yourself on that level, then GREAT! If not, then
re-casting (and the occasional judicious use of idea #1) and making sure
that you have included ALL the words (it does not hurt to be redundant in
the English, just before you translate!) will help prevent these kinds of
errors.
3. Before you send anything, let it sit for a day or two. After a few days
have gone by, go back, and without looking at the English you intended...
try to translate it back. Again, this will help you find a number of the
kinds of mistakes you made here, which is much preferable to me catching
'em. {{:)
>Although I've been monitoring this list for nearly three years, this is
>the first time I've submitted a tlhIngan Hol text of this length to the
>BG's knife (ghojmeH taj Dalo'a'?)
Um... *I* sure use a knife when I am learning... I cut the sentence up into
little peices I can recognize, translate the pieces, and then compare the
way they went together...
Perhaps you meant <bIghojmoHmeH>? (Yes, you still need that verb prefix there!)
Yes, I do slice up posts very carefully, but I like to think that you will
learn from your training scars. {{:)
And, just so you know, this was NOT a bad post! What you were trying to say
was by NO means simple, and you did a FANTASTIC job with it! Excellent,
excellent job!
>I was entering the English text into my
>annotated lexicon of Klingon terms and realized that I could probably
>render the paragraph into Hol. I wonder, does anybody else judge short
>texts and quotations in terms of their suitability for translation?
I plead the Fifth. {{:)
>>> tlhIngan Hol rIntaH. Warning: DIvI' Hol speculation ahead! <<
>>> Those offended by off-topic discussions may choose to move on <<
>>> to the next message now. <<
[snip]
Just so you know: no, I have nothing to add to THAT, either... I hope that
anyone who does responds off-list, as you requested.
>Voragh
>(who rather likes Klingon women's names beginning with "V" such as
>Valkris, Valeris, Vekma and Vixis)
--trI'Qal
(who rather likes Klingon women's names beginning with "tr" such as trI'Qal)
{{:)
---
HoD trI'Qal, tlhIngan wo' Duj lIy So' ra'wI'
Captain T'rkal, Commander IKV Hidden Comet (Klingon speaker and net junkie!)
HaghtaHbogh tlhIngan yIvoqQo'! toH... qatlh HaghtaH Qanqor HoD???
monlI'bogh tlhInganbe' yIvoqQo'! SoHvaD monlI' trI'Qal...