tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 22 12:17:37 1999
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Re: German to Klingon
- From: [email protected] (Christiane Scharf)
- Subject: Re: German to Klingon
- Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 21:17:07 +0100
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [email protected] <[email protected]>
An: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Datum: Freitag, 22. Oktober 1999 06:29
Betreff: German to Klingon
>:I'm trying to teach Klingon to a mainly German-speaking person.
maj. mataHmeH maSachnIS.
>:Is there
>:anyone out there who could help me, or knows where to get (or has)
>:materials
>:that can help? I know some German, but I'm not exactly an expert.
>Thanks. By the way, I "translated" Jabberwocky into Klingon recently (I'm
>going to fine-tune it and release it for the mailing list), and I was going
>to translate it into German. It should come out interesting. Where can I
>get this German-Klingon dictionary?
ghuH Doq!
I will NOT recommend getting the German-Klingon dictionary ("Das offizielle
Wörterbuch - Klingonisch/Deutsch - Deutsch/Klingonisch", published by Heel)
if that person you're teaching knows at least SOME English.
That book contains more errors than everything else. Just to give you an
impression: {Hogh} is translated as "schwach" (obviously a misreading of
"week" as "weak"), {yIH} is translated as "Stamm" (they read "tribe" instead
of "tribble")... If you still need arguments to convince you of the bad
quality of DoW, check out http://www.online.de/home/levinius/klingon/dow.htm
for a complete list of all the errors.
Now you might say "Why not use DoW plus that error list to learn Klingon?"
The problem is that the translations given in TKD are usually limited to two
or three English words for one Klingon word (Just compare this with the
number of definitions you find in other dictionaries!). If you now
retranslate those English words into German, you'll often have trouble
finding words that exactly match the meaning of the English.
And if you try to translate something from German into Klingon, you'll
encounter similar problems. Above all you'll find out that many German words
have two or more completely different meanings in English. A few examples:
Does "Himmel" mean "heaven" or "sky"? Is "raten" "advise" or "guess"? When
you send a "message" to the "embassy", dann schickst Du eine "Botschaft" zur
"Botschaft". Etc...
My advice for you is to get the original Klingon Dictionary for your friend.
S/he then has all the original and exact translations of the words (even
those original translations often throw up questions, btw). I guess s/he
already knows some basic vocab in English so s/he won't have much trouble
starting out to learn Klingon. For the more advanced vocab and some
subtleties an English-German dictionary will be helpful.
If your friend begins learning Klingon this way, s/he will also improve
his/her English. Nice side effect, qar'a'?
And finally, whenever you have questions considering Klingon-German (and
vice versa) translations, qaQaHqang. (I guess I don't have to say I'm from
Germany. My strange English already says everything.)
HovqIj