tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 08 03:07:27 2000
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Re: Teaching Klingon
I have been feeling that many of the people who have learned Klingon the longest
have the native language English and that this factor has affected how we have
been learning Klingon. I truly welcome persons whose mother tongue is not
English. There are some very revealing messages from these people about
interpretations of the words listed in TKD, etc. People around the world may
see meanings differently, and do. Over the past 38 years I have been deeply
involved in language and language arts, I have learned to appreciate a deductive
approach to language learning. This means using the language; this means not
translating but thinking in the target language. Obviously we do not get to
practice with native Klingons.
In conclusion, we are doing quite well. I still feel the course of Klingon
language development has been steered by English speakers, and this has indeed
affected the language.
peHruS
Michael Kaplan wrote:
> > 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