tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 27 08:29:35 1998

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: English - thlIngan - german

From: valwI'na' Daq Mar <[email protected]>


>Greetings, from the Worlds Worst Correspondant!

Greetings, from what must therefore be the World's Second-Worst
Correspondant!

>> >jatlh SuStel Stardate 98182.6:
>> >
>> >> wa'logh neH jIjatlh jIH'e'!
>> >>
>> >> :)
>> >HIjaH. Hu' nembe' 'ej.
>>
>> Woah!  That made no sense at all.  "Go me.  Days-ago years-ago-woman
>and."
>> or "Go me.  A years-ago-woman gets up and."
>>
>----------------------KLIP----------------------------
>> Care to try again?
>>
>> SuStel
>> Stardate 98188.3
>>
>YES
>
>     No it did not make any sense.
>
>{HISlaH.  Hu' nemtaH je.}
>(Yes, I agree. Its been years, and not days.)
>
>There, does that make more sense?

A little more, but not much.

{HISlaH} (and {HIja'}) are responses to a yes/no question.  They do not mean
"I agree."  For that, you've got to use {jIQochbe'}.

People often expect {HISlaH}, {HIja'} and {ghobe'} to work exactly as
English "yes" and "no" work.  They do not.  "Yes" and "no" tend to be used
for lots of things.  Often they are used for exclamations.  (Think of Data
in Generations, after they destroyed the Klingon ship—he shouts "Yes!", but
yes to what?  Well, nothing really, he just shouts it.)  Sometimes they are
used for agreement.  ("I like this color."  "Yes.")

Klingon {HISlaH}, {HIja'}, and {ghobe'} are ONLY used to answer
"affirmative" or "negative" to a question.  Nothing else.

So, for the first part,

jIQochbe'.
I agree.

The second part present a problem, because I don't remember what we were
talking about.  "It's been years, not days."  What has been?

Let us suppose that we're talking about when you last spoke Klingon here.
Using timestamps {Hu'} and {ben}, we get,

ben naDev jIjatlh.  Hu' naDev jIjatlhbe'.
I spoke here years ago.  I did not speak here days ago.

When you used {nem} (which is the counterpart for {ben}), you tried to put a
verb suffix on it.  You cannot do this.  {nem} is a noun, as is {Hu'},
{leS}, and {ben}.  Actually, when used as timestamps, it's unlikely that
these nouns will take any suffixes at all!  None would make sense.

The bad part of this is you can't simply say "not days ago."  You've got to
repeat what it is you're talking about, and say you *didn't* do it at the
time in question.

(Note that timestamps usually come before the locative noun, if both occur
in the sentence.)

>Now...what were we talking about?

Beats me.

>     Qov wants us to memorize the vocabulary (over 3400 words, +500
>phrases currently listed in my database, from canon sources).

vaj Qu' Qatlh Data'nIS.

>I am
>trying, bits at a a time.

qaq mIwvam.

>One would think that Yes, and No were easy
>enough to remember. I have gotten {HIjaH} and {HISlaH} confused
>before. They pass through my Spellchecker. I haven't had the time to
>write a grammer checker for tlhIngan Hol, yet. The same for confusing
>{'ej} & {je}.

I had problems remembering the other conjunctions, until I found a trick
that helped.

I knew {'ej} joined sentences and {je} joined nouns.  Next, I noticed {qoj}
and {joq}.  Both {qoj} and {'ej} end in {j}, and both join sentences.
Therefore the reverse, {joq}, must join nouns.  Finally, {pagh} I knew best
from {taH pagh taHbe'} "To be or not to be," in Star Trek VI, and that meant
it joined sentences, thus {ghap}, the reverse, must join nouns.

>HIvqa veqlargh!

HIvqa'bej.  You forgot the glottal stop at the end of the first word.

>     I was shooting from the hip. I know better than to shoot
>something off without a TKD nearby. Like now...
>{"nuqneH,  vISaH'a' nuqjatlh? "}{{:-|
>What, me worry? ((Lit: What do you want, did you ask that I should
>worry?))This is my normal tag line.
>
>    The origional quote is from Mad Magazines Alfred E. Neuman (yes, I
>know this dates me, but old fogies have to come from somewhere).

I'm no fogy and I'm perfectly aware of where the line comes from.  Then
again, it was my *father* who read the magazine, not me . . .

>     I went over this with Qov, but she came up with something
>altogether too far from the source,

That's because the line is not possible in Klingon without extensive
rewriting.  See below.

>SuStel: Would {nuq, vISaH'a'?} be a better, and more literal
>translation?. I'll ask you, because you were my origional BG, and I
>should have had this out with you then.

I think we did, but you didn't like my response, either.  :)

{nuq} is a question word.  It's asking "what?"  It wants you to name a
thing.  But that isn't what the Newman line means.  He asks "What?" in a way
which isn't asking for a thing.  My dictionary doesn't give this usage.
It's a sort of lead-in to the actual question.  "What, do you really think
I'm a Klingon?"  In this sentence, the answer is yes or no, not an answer to
"what?"  See?  "What?" is not really asking anything of itself here, it just
leads in to the real question.  It seems to say, "Get ready, I'm going to
ask you a question, and I'm going to phrase it as if I already knew the
answer."

Klingon {nuq} doesn't do this.  It's only used to substitute in for a
subject or object, and to ask a question about that thing.  {Doq nuq} "What
is red?" asks about the thing that is red.  The answer is the thing.

So, you see why {nuq} doesn't work to start off this line?  It does not
correspond to the sense of the English.

Unfortunately for purposes of this translation, "What" in this sense doesn't
*have* a Klingon translation.

Let's look at the second part.  "Me worry?"  This is not a complete sentence
in English.  Sentence fragments are even harder to translate into other
languages than complete sentences.  We must determine exactly what this
fragment means.

We don't have a word for "worry."  You've tried to use {SaH} "care about."
I suppose this could work in the AE Newman context you described above.  I'm
not sure that "You think I care about it?" is really the right sentiment
though.

We have {rejmorgh} "worrywort."  This is closer, but it still doesn't have
the right sense.

How about {mubItmoH} "It makes me nervous."  That seems to mean what we
want.

Okay, then, what's Alfred asking?  "You think it makes me nervous?"  You'll
need a Sentence As Object for this one:

mubItmoH 'e' DaQub'a'?

If I were to use a Klingon equivalent of "What, me worry?" I'd probably use
this.  For good measure, I might consider adding the mild invective {va} or
possibly {wejpuH} "charming (ironic)" to mirror (but not translate) the
"What" part.

va, mubItmoH 'e' DaQub'a'?
@^&%, you think it worries me?

wejpuH, mubItmoH 'e' DaQub'a'?
Oh charming, you think it worries me?

mubItmoH 'e' DaQub'a'?
You think it worries me?

>     When I have a good translation of my own words (per many BG's
>requests), and not someone elses writings, I WILL send "KLBC" in my
>Subject line. The request for songs looks promising. THAT will be
>taxing!

Indeed it will.  Before you try songs or poetry, work out ordinary
conversation first.  If you can't say things like "Come with me to dinner"
and "Turn off the engine before it overheats," you can't even begin to write
things like, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune."

>valwI'na' Qor'etlh' Yas
>"Wizard of Washington, Officer Korrect"
>{"nuqneH,  vISaH'a' nuqjatlh? "}{{:-)/*/

Now you might consider changing this.  "What do you want, do I care what did
you say?" doesn't make much sense, right?  :)

SuStel
Stardate 98234.8

Back to archive top level