tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 06 13:27:59 1999
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translating a book title
- From: Steven Boozer <[email protected]>
- Subject: translating a book title
- Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 15:27:06 -0500
As an exercise, I often try to translate the titles of books that cross my
desk into Klingon when the extant vocabulary permits. This one gave me
pause however:
Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield
I came up with a few variants, but all look pretty clumsy in light of how
a series of nouns in Klingon are linked with a single {je} at the end:
1. cham (tera') vatlh DIS poH cha'maH wa'DIch che'ron je
2. cham (tera') vatlh DIS poH cha'maH wa' che'ron je
3. (tera') vatlh DIS poH cha'maH wa'DIch che'ron cham je
4. (tera') vatlh DIS poH cha'maH wa' che'ron cham je
{tera'} can probably be safely omitted.
Considering how the entire title is composed of nothing but nouns in
sequence, this could be quite confusing to the Klingon reader. I'm also
undecided as to whether to use {wa'DIch}; "21st century" is not a time
stamp, but a noun phrase modifying "battlefield. Perhaps tagging {cham]
with {-'e'} since technology, not the battlefield, is the main subject of
the monograph? Punctuation might help.
I'm partial to no. 4, which can mean "The 21st Century, the Battlefield,
and Technology" which would have been a good English title too.
A Klingon author would no doubt have used a verb to render something on
the order of "How will Technology Affect the 21st Century Battlefield?"
Opinions?
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons
_____________________________________________________________________
Steven Boozer University of Chicago Library [email protected]