tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 26 11:30:56 1998

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Re: opera: travel thru

> > How do I say that, travelling through something?
> > space). {vegh} is only for something that is around you (a hole).

Will responded with:
 
> 1. When you travel though space, you never stop participating in
> space. You move along a path between where you've been and where
> you are going, but there is no moment during which you don't
> have a location. You don't skip space.
> 
> 2. Theoretical time travel involves ceasing to participate in
> one time and beginning to participate in another time. You don't
> really travel through time the way you travel through space
> because during all those moments between where you've been and
> where you are going, you do NOT have a time the way you have a
> space during space travel. You skip time.

While his first point is presumably self-evident, I have to take
exception with his second, both as a long time reader of Science Fiction
and more recently as an author (unashmed plug: look for "Case Study"
appearing soon in the magazine TERRA INCOGNITA, a time travel story).
Personally, using Will's arguments in his first point, I would make the
same claim for time travel, we're ALL time travelers, we're ALL moving
through time, progressing form moment to moment.

Of course what most people mean when the invoke the phrase "time travel"
is either moving in the opposite direction (i.e., traveling backward) or
skipping ahead. Theory A would view these as instances where you
eliminate the intervening span (either forward or back) and just "pop"
into the target time period. In which case, I'd argue you're not
"traveling, because indeed you're not passing throught he intervening
days or weeks or years or centuries. 

Theory B though says that if the device and/or metaphor you're using for
time travel involves somehow compressing the intervening span (c.f. the
technique used by H.G. Wells in THE TIME MACHINE), such that you
actually DO pass through that period, it simply appears to race by so
quickly that it's impeceptible, then you are indeed traversing or
traveling through time.

All that aside, to get back to the Klingon, I think you need to do just
what writers have always had to do when describing something that
doesn't exist yet. Work with the current language, such as it is, and
describe your phenomenon via metaphor and analogy. If in your opera you
talk about time as if it were a river, then use words like <chIj>, just
as we've done for space. If you describe time as a tunnel or a corridor,
then go ahead and use <vegh>. Will's suggestion of using <Sup> to convey
the notion of jumping from one time to another (invoking theory A above)
follows the same logic. And so on.

As to how a Klingon would likely describe time travel, I can't say. Will
seems more willing (no pun intended) to go out on this limb than I am.
My only response to that aspect would be that I'd expect any Klingon to
understand and even grudgingly acknowledge and comprehend whatever
metaphor you use, once it's made clear to him. He might not like it, but
that's more a question of aesthetics than grammar or cognition.

Lawrence

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