tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 30 21:34:25 1997

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Re: Translation of English Past and Present Perfect Tenses in Klingon

I am aware that mIHayl seems awarer that <-pu'> is not Klingon past tense.
But since many beginners are confused about it, I stress it here.

ghItlh mIHayl:

>On this list I have seen this idea expressed many times, namely that �pu�
>should only be translated by an English perfect tense, not an English past
>tense, and that an English past tense should not have �pu� but should be
>figured out from context. This, however, does not seem to agree with the
>usage in all of Marc Okrand�s published books on Klingon.

Well, MO has said that <-pu'> was originally going to be a past tense
marker. That is why all the examples exist. MO does state that <-pu'> "is
often translated by the English present perfect". Again, just as <-lu'> is
not passive voice, <-pu'> is not perfect tense, nor is it past tense. It
indicates the action is completed. That it translates often as perfect
cannot be ignored, but it *is* "action-completed". It is NOT tense, it is an
aspect. It gives a time stamp respective to the verb's context.

Surely <wa'Hu' cha'logh jIghItlhpu'> is not past tense, perfect or
otherwise. It means that tomorrow, my writing twice will have occurred.
Tense is needed in English, but is absent from Klingon. IMO, beginners tend
to 'equate' the translation and the Klingon speaker's intent. When I wrote
the above Klingon, I didn't think of tense. No Klingon speaker would. My
preferred translation is in fact "Tomorrow, I will have written twice", but
that's not how I thought when I wrote it. I thought "oO<wa'Hu' cha'logh
jIghItlhpu'> ". I wrote <wa'Hu' cha'logh jIghItlhpu'> .

Put another way - when a Spanish speaker asks "Como se llama?", her mind
does not think "What's your name?" - she thinks "Como se llama?".
(Literally, How do you call yourself?") The intention is similar to "What's
your name?", but it's really not equivalent. It's a translation. The
translation is not the thought expressed, just a (hopefully)
not-too-badly-mangled version of it. If I mean <SuvwI' maH>, I do not say
"We are warriors."

So, if I say <wa'leS jISop> do you propose we translate that as "Yesterday,
I eat"? That is nonsense; we must use a past tense here in English. This is
an example where we must use past tense to represent an unmarked Klingon
verb. This does not equate to Klingon past tense, obviously. What if I say
<wa'leS jISoppu'>? How does the meaning change? Does it? I say it does - we
now translate this to "Yesterday I had eaten". Otherwise, the <-pu'> has no
place here. Perhaps an argument can be made that <-pu'> is nonsense here. I
know of no reason to think that, however.

Every example you give with <-pu'> has the action of the verb occur before
the time context of the sentence. That is correct usage of <-pu'>. 'Present
perfect' is often a convenient translation, but <-pu'> isn't Klingon present
perfect.

Another point to remember is that TKD is a primer, not a definitive,
exhaustive presentation of Klingon grammar. Lack of explicit mention of
'past tense translation OK w/o <-pu'>' is not proof that it is forbidden.

>There is thus not a single example of a verb without �pu� or �ta�
translated
>as an English past tense, and there are at least 30 examples of �pu�
>translated with the English simple past.

And they all are compliant with the all-too-brief <-pu'> rule on page 41.

>It seems clear to me that Marc Okrand intended that although the Klingon
>verb uses aspect rather than tense, for all practical purposes, the �pu�
>and �ta� aspect markers can in nearly every case be translated into English
>as either a simple past or present perfect, as his own translation clearly
>show. And conversely, when translating an English past tense into Klingon,
>the �pu� or �ta� aspect marker should be used. There is no justification in
>the published books on Klingon for translating an English past tense into
>Klingon without using �pu� or �ta�.

I see your point, but there is little logic in the assumption
that -<pu'>-less verbs cannot be 'past' events. In fact you give an example
<yaS qIppu� �e� vIlegh> where the translation has <legh> become "saw" - past
tense. In fact, we can't put <-pu'> on <legh> here because it is a SAO
construction. So there is a canonic usage. Plus my example earlier shows how
past, or other, tense might be implied from a time stamp. Voragh is our
canon guru - he could surely find other examples. But the bottom line for me
is that TDK is descriptive, not proscriptive. Absence of canon in TDK is not
proof in itself that <-pu'> is always needed to present a past occurrence.

DaH QInlIj vIlaDpu'. tugh QInvam DalaDpu', 'ach jIghItlhtaHvIS, wej DalaD.

This post is a bit tangental due to my being tired - I apologize. Perhaps
someone can make sense of it.

Qermaq Doy'

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