tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 18 18:35:20 2000
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RE: KLBC -- How would you translate this?
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: KLBC -- How would you translate this?
- Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 19:37:02 -0700
Welcome to the list, Brian. My name is pagh, and I am the current Beginners'
Grammarian for the list. Since you put a KLBC in your subject line, I'm
responding with answers and corrections.
jatlh Brian:
> I'm in the process of teaching myself this language,
> and I've translated this as an exercise:
>
> Duj'a' HInob, Qob He'el jIHech
>
> How do you read this, please?
I read this as "Give me a warship; I intend to enter the path of danger", or
something similar, but with a few grammatical problems.
The first part - <Duj'a' HInob> - is quite good. You might want to be a bit
more specific about the ship, though. <Duj'a'> basically means "great ship;
something more than an ordinary ship". More specific suggestions include:
may'Duj - battleship
veSDuj - warship
Duj nIv - superior ship
The second part - <Qob He'el jIHech> - needs some work. I'm assuming <Qob
He'el> means "I enter the path of danger", but I'm not really sure. If not,
then let me know what you do mean. <Qob He> is fine for "the path of
danger", but the verb <'el> needs to be by itself and it needs a prefix. The
prefix should be <vI-> since the subject is obviously "I", and the object is
an "it" - "the path of danger". So this should be <Qob He vI'el>. Just for
completeness, I'll suggest you look at the verbs <ghoS> and <leng>, both of
which could be used here for similar meanings.
The last part - <jIHech> - also needs some work. Klingon has a special
grammar for this sort of thing, which we call "Sentence as Object" - often
abbreviated SAO around here. It's described pretty thoroughly in The Klingon
Dictionary, section 6.2.5. The way it works is that a special pronoun <'e'>
represents the idea from the previous sentence. <'e'> then gets used as the
object of the verb in the second sentence. So for your sentence, you would
say:
Qob He vI'el 'e' vIHech. - I intend to enter the path of danger.
This is literally something like "I will enter the path of danger. I intend
that.", but it almost always has to be smoothed out a bit when translated
into English.
Overall a nice first attempt. Keep trying, and let me know if I didn't quite
figure out what you meant.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian
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