tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 23 10:25:45 1998

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Re: DS9 Finale Kl;ingon

At 08:10 AM 6/23/98 -0700, Voragh wrote:

>True, but what was it supposed to be?  Before we argue further over the
>grammar (or lack thereof), let's see what the actual text was.  Last night I
>taped the rerun and transcribed the closed captions.  These are:
>
>     NEH TAH KRONOS.
>     HEGH BAT'LHQU HOCH NEJ MAH.
>     NEH TAH KRONOS.
>     YAY JE BAT'LH MANOB HEGH.
>
>Four separate lines.  This is apparently verse, though it wasn't identified
>as such in the story.  Is it an extract from a death chant?  Worf's favorite
>battle song?  A quotation from Kahless?  Dax's favorite historical epic?
>Worf didn't say and Sisko didn't ask him.
>
>Note that it is a *bit* better than the total gibberish the writers usually
>make up.  If you noticed, Michael Dorn seemed to be trying to carefully say
>the lines - at least, to get them right as they were in the script.  Someone
>obviously was trying to translate a bit of poetry using The Klingon
>Dictionary but used English syntax in places.  If {manob} means "we give",
>then s/he found the table of verb prefixes, but didn't understand how the
>subject-object prefixes work.  So, if we want to give this any more thought,
>I suggest we try to reconstruct the underlying English original and then
>re-translate it into correct tlhIngan Hol.
>

Just squinching up my eyes and taking a sort of impressionistic stab
at it, I come up with 


        Kronos alone endures
        We all seek honorable death
        Kronos alone endures
        Death gives us honor and victory

(I'm assuming that they got the O-V-S order basically right, that they are
understanding {neH} wrongly to mean "only, solely" and not just "merely")

So, re-translated (with no attempt at rhyme or meter):

        taHbej Qo'noS
        batlh maHegh wIneH
        taHbej Qo'noS
        yay batlh je nunob Hegh

Just a thought 8+)

-- ter'eS

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