tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 04 19:49:55 1999
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Re: KLBC: RE: KLBC:Eating.
(I hope pagh didn't plan to answer this soon. I was "in the neighborhood",
so to speak, and decided to give a quick response.)
ja' loD Doq:
>Okay, I got the first part, I'll say <Dochvam vIlo'>. Now, to clarify, is
>the second part, <Dochvetlh jIpe'meH (or whatever)>?
Close -- it would have to be {vIpe'meH}, since the verb has an object.
>Whenever I think of
>the phrase "in order to do Y to that", Y is a noun (such as "harm", or
>"insult", and not "book", or lamp").
In Klingon, the ideas of "do harm" and "give an insult" and many similar
English phrases are carried by specific verbs. Consider the verbs {QID}
"wound", {QIH} "damage", and {tIch} "insult".
> In this case, the phrase would
>translate as <DochvetlhvaD reghwI' jInob> (using <reghwI'> as a noun for
>"cut"): "I give a cut to that thing". Is that wrong?
It *is* wrong -- you need to say {vInob}, not {jInob}. Even after fixing
that minor error, it's still very convoluted. You're trying to translate
the phrase "give a cut to" in an extremely literal sense, when there's a
perfectly good verb "cut" that fits the meaning exactly.
>My translation is:
>
><DochvetlhvaD reghwI' jInob Dochvam vIlo'> "I use this thing to give a
>cut to that thing."
The {jInob} should be {vInobmeH} -- you lost the {-meH} idea somewhere
along the line.
>Maybe it's just more work for the same result.
It's a whole lot more work for a much less satisfying result. Why do you
want to avoid using the simple verb {pe'}? In many cases, where you find
yourself wanting to use the English words "give" and "do" and "have" more
than a couple of times in a whole page of text, you might want to rethink
the idea a bit and identify a more appropriate verb.
-- ghunchu'wI'