tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 05 11:30:59 2000
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Re: A little expression translated. (KLBC)
Paul:
> I was thinking about the expression 'What does not kill me, makes
> me stronger.' [....] My first try was {muHoSmoH muHoHbe'chugh},
> "If it does not kill me, it makes me stronger".
Of your three versions, I prefer this one for its conciseness - though I would
reverse the clauses:
muHoHbe'chugh muHoSmoH.
If you look through Okrand's writings - especially TKW - you'll notice that
{-chugh} clauses usually precede result clauses. (In fact, this is generally
true of *all* dependent clauses in Klingon. This seems to be the preferred
style even though TKD says that grammatically the clauses can come in any
order.) If you want to make it stronger, link them with {vaj}:
muHoHbe'chugh vaj muHoSmoH.
> Then it occurred to me that it could also be cast as {muHoSmoH
> muHoHbe'bogh} "That which does not kill me makes me stronger".
pagh:
: There is a little problem here. <muHoHbe'bogh> is what we often call a
: "headless relative" - a relative clause without an explicit head noun. This
: may be legal grammar, and the "he/she/it/they" implied by the verb prefix
: may be enough of a head noun, but it is questionable. It would be much more
It is questionable because the only example we have of a headless relative is a
single .wav sound file from KCD:
Dajatlhbogh vIyajbe'.
I find no match for what you have just said.
(lit. "I don't understand what you said.")
Some curious person was listening to all the sound files included on the CD
when s/he came upon this .wav file. Those who have a microphone installed in
their computer and are able to use the sound recognition software in the
language lab portion of KCD tell me that this particular file is never actually
heard however badly you mispronounce a word. Apparently the game makers - or
possibly Okrand, we're not certain - decided to use another response but
carelessly left the old sound file on the CD. Since this file is not actually
used in the game, some refuse to consider it canon and, therefore, refuse to
accept its odd grammar.
Personally, I don't see this as a problem. {-bogh} clearly refers to the word
or phrase mispronounced by the game player which triggered the response. Thus,
the "head" is supplied by the immediate context even though it's not explicitly
stated.
That being said, I don't think {muHoSmoH muHoHbe'bogh} really works for the
phrase in question since there is no clear antecedent - implied or otherwise.
It is, however, the best literal rendition of the English, if not the best
Klingon style. Note too that even in your second English version ("That which
does not kill me makes me stronger") you added "that" to provide an antecedent
to "which".
: understandable with a real noun, as in <muHoSmoH muHoHbe'bogh wanI'> - "A
: phenomenon which does not kill me makes me stronger".
In addition to {wanI'} "phenomenon, event, occurrence" you could use {ghu'}
"situation", {Doch} "thing" or (best of all IMHO) {vay'} "anybody, anything,
somebody, something":
muHoSmoH muHoHbe'bogh vay'.
For some reason I really like the sound of this, especially if you enunciate
your glottal stops (') clearly.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons