tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 07 16:17:28 1997

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Re: KLBC: AAF continued

cha'wIgh has been translating his country's national anthem
He is greatly frustrated by the repeated answer "learn to write good 
simple Klingon before you try to translate song or poetry."  In fact 
he is so frustrated that he is beginning to abuse list members. 

cha'wIgh, your translation attempts are above average for a 
newcomer to the language, but the task you have set yourself is too 
frustrating.  You're trying to learn to swim by swimming the English 
Channel, and demanding that we act as your lifeguards.  The BG is 
telling you he is willing to help, but that you have to swim laps in 
a pool first.

The problem is that translation is twice as hard as original thought, 
and translation of archaic, symbolic or poetic language at least 
twice as hard again. Believe me, I'm *supposed* to be doing a 
translation project (hi, Lawrence!) but it is so frustratingly 
difficult that I am writing kilobytes of Bemorian stories instead.
It is easier for me to write an entire "Qov you have to be nuts, 
that's not KLBC" episode of the Bemorian saga than it is for me to 
translate ten lines of jInmolqoqwIj.  

You're trying to do a four-step process.  Take:
 
> We've golden soil and wealth for toil 

First you have to figure out what this actually means. I mean really.
Do you have gold coloured dirt? Somewhat yellow dirt?  Actual gold 
flakes in your soil? Lands rich in precious metals? Extremely
fertile soil? Just a generally happy cast of wealth to your lands? A 
combination of most of the above? Are the golden soil and wealth both 
available in exchange for toil, or is the golden soil one thing and 
the wealth another? It does matter if you want to translate it, 
because the ambiguites don't fall in the same places in Klingon. It's 
a beautifully wrought phrase in the English.  It evokes so much. Step 
one is deciding what meaning is actually there.

Then you have to decide what meaning to translate.  You are going to 
have to abandon some meanings.  It hurts.  That's why my project is 
so neglected. How can you throw away part of the text you treasure?
You may be able to pick up some of the shades of meaning somewhere 
else.

Thirdly you have to actually translate.  This involves finding the 
right vocabular and the right grammar and totally rearranging the 
word order and even coming at some of the thoughts from a different 
angle.  We call it recasting.  For a beginner just finding matching 
vocabulary is a challenge.

And fourthly, you're translating poetry, you then have to take the 
Klingon prose and make it poetic.  We don't even know 
how to DO this. We can hypothesize, but when we do (and I speak from 
personal experience) half the people who read it go "huh?" and almost 
the entire other half shriek "You can't do that!"  In your case you 
want to preserve or replace some of the imagery, make it fit the 
meter of the song, and make it rhyme. 

Why don't you make translating the song your long term project, but 
in the short term, write some original sentences about your country, 
based on the song, and things you are proud of your country about.

AustraliaDaq bIvumchugh bImIpchoHlaH.
naDev baSmey qub tlhIllu'.
'IH puHmaj.

Eventually, when you can use the various tools of Klingon well, you 
might put your beginning sentences together into a Klingon version of 
the song. My country is bilingual and our national anthem has an 
official version in each language.  The meanings are almost 
completely divergent.  

- Solbe'lI'bogh Qov

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