tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 07 20:04:26 1997
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Re: KLBC: AAF continued [yet again]
Robyn Stewart wrote:
> 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.
I apologise to those list members who I abused if there are any : I had
no idea I'd gone that far.
>
>
> 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.
Qov, I thank you for your compliment : I am unaccustommed to it and so
my appreciation is worth expressing.
>
>
> 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.
>
I do have "some" experience of translation. Your comments are
worthwhile. I am happy to be a bad example "pour encourager les autres"
if you'll pardon my French. I have noticed your kilobytes of stories and
wonder have many manage to wade through them all. Qermit's joke was
about the right length for my attention span.
> 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.
>
Points taken. I will do better in the future.
> 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
Thank you most sincerely for your comments. Would you be so kind as to
read my email entitled "What a good bloke SuStel is" as I think it goes
some way towards apologising for my childish behaviour.cha'wIgh
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