tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 23 07:43:16 1999

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Re: KLBC: summer's in, school's out

At 12:25 AM 6/23/99 -0500, ghunchu'wI' wrote:
>ja' "Nelson Lamoureux" <[email protected]>
>>So, I used the -Hom to clearly indicate that the students I was talking
>>about were still rather young.
>
>If you want to indicate clearly that the students are young, calling
>them {ghojwI' Qup} is probably better than using the {-Hom} suffix.
>
[...]
>
>>Is there anything that keeps us from doing the following translation:
>>
>>1- ghojwI'Hom --> elementary or highschool student (ecolier in french)
>>
>>2- ghojwI' --> student (eleve)
>>
>>3- ghojwI''a' --> college or university student (etudiant in french)
>
>There is something that keeps *me* from using these words this way.
>The distinguising feature between a "student" and a "greater" or a
>"lesser" one is not obvious.  I myself would tend to think of a
>{ghojwI''a'} as referring to a graduate student, and {ghojwI'Hom}
>seems to suggest something like sitting in on a class without taking
>the tests.
>
>>Even though these notions do not exist in klingon society, the language
>>itself gives us tools that can help in the translation of different
>>realities across different culture.
>
>Using the augmentive/diminutive suffixes works best when there is an
>established "reference meaning" for the root noun.  In this particular
>case, there is a mismatch for the word "student" between cultures.  In
>the culture I am part of, a student can be anyone who takes classes,
>whether at the kindergarten or postgraduate level.
>

I agree.  In fact, since we have no indication that the Klingon educational
system is anything like terran systems, we should probably not even try
to translate the concepts.  I'd write them as {*high school* ghojwI'}
and {*graduate school* ghojwI'}.

-- ter'eS

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