tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 28 09:58:08 1998
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Re: prepositional phrases
On Sat, 28 Nov 1998, Avraham Chapman wrote:
>As a learning exercise, I've been translating Doctor Seuss' 'The Cat and
>the Hat'. Unfortunately, he uses a lot of prepositional phrases and I
>don't know how to do them. Specifically, I'm looking for 'in the NOUN'
>where NOUN = any noun. I'm also looking for how to say, 'too much of
><something>'.
Your first example - "in the NOUN where NOUN" - is a variant of the
infamous "ship in which I fled" problem, which has been frequently and
inconclusively debated in this forum. You may have to split this into two
sentences. There is no law which says that one sentence in English cannot
become two (or more) sentences in Klingon, or vice versa.
The second - "too much of (something)" - is an illustration of the
noun-centeredness of English. Klingon tends to focus on verbs. One
solution is to use the Klingon verb corresponding to the English noun plus
{-qu'} "emphatic". For example, "too much power" becomes {HoSghajqu'} "too
powerful, too potent", "too much salt" becomes {na'qu'} "too salty, too
brackish", etc. Note that you will then have to recast the sentence
around the verb. Alas, this will not work for all nouns.
Indeed, there are no all-purpose, mechanical translation formulae for
these. They have to be handled on a case by case basis. This is where the
art of translation enters the picture. Post some examples for us to play
with on the list - complete sentences with necessary context please, not
just isolated phrases.
I've often wondered what a Klingon Seuss Qel would sound like.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons