tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 02 17:18:10 1997

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RE: Buy me a drink



January 02, 1997 10:05 AM, jatlh HurghwI':

> >NO!!!  You cannot say that if the translation makes no sense, the Klingon 
is 
> >not right.  There are sometimes things which simply *cannot* be translated 
> >smoothly!  For example, trI'Qal's joke at qep'a' wejDIch: {<nock* *knock*.> 
 
> ><SaH 'Iv?>}, or my own recent one: {HuDDu' jojDaq ngech tu'lu'.}
> 
> It appears that these translate fine. "Who is present," and "In mountain's
> area between someone or something finds a valley."

You're missing the points of these.  In response to someone knocking, {SaH 
'Iv} means "Who is present?" but it also means "Who cares?"  You shout it with 
contempt at whoever is knocking annoyingly at your door.  In English, you 
cannot say both of these things at one time.

Do you see the difference between {HuDmey jojDaq ngech tu'lu'} and its 
counterpart above?  If you were talking about mountains, you'd say the one 
with {-mey}.  But I'm talking about a woman's breasts.  I'm playing with the 
association of mountains with valleys, which happens to also be the word for 
"woman's cleavage" in Klingon.  You *cannot* directly translate this joke into 
English, partly because English has no body-parts plural form, and partly 
because "cleavage" is not associated with the word "valley" in English.  Get 
it?  I mean, if it *were* easy to translate, do you think I'd have this much 
trouble explaining why it's funny?

> >What I think *you're* reading into this is that you seem to think that the 
> >payment will be given to the person who performs the action being paid for. 
 
> >This is untrue.  I could say {jItlhutlh jabwI'vaD 'e' yIDIl} "Pay the 
waiter 
> >for me to drink."
> 
> Shouldn't the <jabwI'vaD> come at the beginning?

No.  I'm not drinking to the benefit of the waiter, I'm paying for something 
to the benefit of the waiter.  He receives the result of {DIl}, not of 
{tlhutlh}.  {'e'} is the object of {yIDIl}, and the {-vaD} noun must come 
immediately before the object.

> Either way, I realized that you're right <bIlugh 'e' vItlhoj>, because you
> can say <bIjatlh 'e' yImev>, and that obviously refers to the action instead
> of the idea. I still don't like it, though; if it wasn't canon I would
> probably argue against that, too! {{;-)} Do you at least see where my unease
> comes from?

>From {jItlhutlh 'e' yIDIl}?  Of course.  It's a weird phrase, when translated 
into English.  And perhaps the meaning really isn't correctly associated, but 
I don't think so.  Unease from {bIjatlh 'e' yImev}?  No, I don't see.  {'e'} 
refers to the previous sentence.  That's what you stop: whatever the previous 
sentence is referring to.

-- 
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
Stardate 97007.6


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