tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 23 13:54:37 1998

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RE: DS9 Finale Kl;ingon

lab Voragh:

>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.

I was actually fairly impressed. Instead of just letters placed
randomly, we got whole words placed semi-randomly with a few affixes
thrown in. That is quite a step up.

>To get us started, "BAT'LH" and "BAT'LHQU" probably refer to {batlh}
>"honor", not {betleH} "bat'leth".  Dorn simply pronounced it like
>"bat-tuhl".  Words with /tlh/ always confuse actors.

The "BAT'LHQU" is probably {batlhqu'} - somebody went and found a verb
suffix and put it on an adverbial.

I also transcribed it last night, and my transcription matches yours
exactly. DS9 does not air in Phoenix until Sunday night at 9:00, which
is the LAST possible time during the week.

The captions were obviously taken from the script, which makes it a bit
easier. In general, Dorn's pronunciation (as I heard it) was pretty good
- much better than usual Klingon speech. Some notes:

NEH TAH KRONOS - both the {H}'s sounded like {H}'s. Kronos sounded quite
English and a bit out of place. I can't really blame him for that,
though - it was probably Kronos in the script.

HEGH BAT'LHQU HOCH NEJ MAH - The {Hegh} was OK - not great, but OK. I am
guessing that BAT'LHQU must be {batlhqu'}, which is illegal, but makes
some sense. The {-qu'} didn't come off very clearly, but the rest was
pronounced as {bat-l-H} - better than the "bottle" or worse we sometimes
get. The {Hoch nej maH} was fine.

YAY JE BAT'LH MANOB HEGH - The {yay} was perfect. The {je} was a bit
more like {jey}, but even some good speakers have trouble with terminal
{e}'s. The {batlh} was as above - not at all good, but better than
average. The {manob} sounded clearly like {maHnob}, which is odd. The
{Hegh} was OK.

Here's my guess at what they really meant (as close as possible to their
words):

taH Qo'noS neH
batlh Hegh DInej Hoch
taH Qo'noS neH
yay batlh je nunob Hegh


This is clearly not in any way good Klingon. If a beginner sent this to
the list, Qov would probably understand it and help the poor soul, but
it would take a LOT of explanation to clean it up. However, since the
writers did actually TRY to come up with something, I think it's worth
examining for anyone not in the "everything Paramount does these days is
crap" camp. 

pagh

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