tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 13 13:03:38 1997
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Re: Success
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Success
- Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 16:03:17 -0500 (EST)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (message fromMarc Ruehlaender on Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:39:28 -0800)
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>Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:39:28 -0800
>From: Marc Ruehlaender <[email protected]>
>
>sorry, forgot who wrote this:
>> >> lujghach nujvo' yaH Qapla'
>> >> Success is taken away from the mouth of failure.
>
>SuStel corrects this to:
>> >lujpu'ghach nujvo' yaH Qapla'.
>
>while ghunchu'wI' suggests:
>> lujbeHghachvo' yaH Qapla'.
>>
>> lujbeHghachvo' Qapla' jonlu'.
>
>Hoch vIyajchu'be'. 'e' DajatlhtaHvIS nuq DaHech?
><<malujlaw' 'ach maQap>> bIjatlh DaneH'a'?
>
>(maybe it is because my native language is not english, but this
>picture doesn't strike me as making much sense...
English is my native language, and while "snatching victory from the jaws
of defeat" is a nice accessible expression to me, I will agree with you
that not one of the proposals for translating it I've seen so far has been
really appealing. Moreover, it's translating an IDIOM. The whole line
rests on an image of defeat being a ravening monster and saving victory at
the last minute, hence active, powerful words like "snatch" and "jaws." If
Klingons have an expression for this at all (and I would imagine they do),
there's no reason to believe it would follow the metaphor so closely. Like
as not it'll be something really inaccessible like "winning from the brrx's
claw" where a brrx is some putative creature which is hard to escape from
once it catches you. But of course we can't do anything in terms of
inventing something like that, so that's neither here nor there.
We can still invent colorful images, though, and hope they work, like...
hmm...
"HeghlI'bogh yay toD" (he saved a dying victory. Hmm, maybe this would
imply that he won a Pyrrhic victory at much cost, in that once he saved the
victory it died on him. Maybe it would have to be "Heghlaw'lI'bogh...")
"jeylu'taHvIS chargh" or "lujtaHvIS Qap" ("when he was being defeated, he
conquered," or "while failing, he succeeded.")
I dunno, I'm none too pleased with these either. There are plenty of other
possible images out there...
~mark
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