tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 05 06:04:09 2000
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Re: Teaching Klingon
> There's a
> history here of online sniping and attitudes which everyone is aware of
> (and peHruS has indeed acknowledged) which is all beside the point. Face
> it, some of us just manage to push the "buttons" on others of us, and
> sometimes even delight in doing so. But it's counter-productive. Let's try
> to remain true to our shared goals in this matter, to facilitate learning
> of Klingon.
I have one question about this posting (about which I have no argument
whatsoever).
The effort to localize rather than translate is to try to bring the cultural
component to the translation. This is best seen in cases where someone wants
to know "How would I say XXXXX in Klingon." The translator would tell you
how to say XXXXX, while the localizer would make sure to point out that no
Klingon would ever say such a thing. I do not have a good tlhIngan-Hol
example, but you can see a Klingonaase example in John Ford's book, The
Final Reflection:
"You must," Krenn said, in Federation because Klingonaase would never do,
"you must have loved her very much , to do that."
Could he have said it in Klingonaase? Sure. But would something have been
missing since the culture does not stand behind him? Yes. And a native
speaker, or a localizer, would know this and consider it important....
whereas a translator will dismiss the issue, or not notice it (at most they
would be frustrated by how hard it is to translate a particular love poem,
etc.).
Anyway, back to my point.... is there anyone who wonders about what impact
it has on the efforts to translate items to use a technique that is so
clearly and obviously foreign to the very (admittedly fictional) culture
into which the translation is being done?
In other words, does anyone worry about not being able to separate the very
un-Klingon process from the Klingon language?
Now I am not suggesting that Klingon methods would be better (they would
likely alienate many people!), I was just wondering if anyone was interested
in the idea that our culture may be contaminating the translation more than
we might want it to, due to the extreme efforts to act in a decidedly
"non-Klingon" way.
Michael