tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Oct 22 16:20:07 2000
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RE: KLBC: question about superlative/translation help
- From: "Stauffer, Tad E (staufte7)" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: KLBC: question about superlative/translation help
- Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2000 21:48:53 -0400
jatlh De'vID:
> How would I say,
>
> "I'm the best there is at what I do"?
>
> It's a line from the Wolverine comic book. It's hard to explain what
> Wolverine does, except that he's a superhero, and he does superhero
> stuff. It's also intentionally ambiguous... it's not clear just what
> it is that he does.
>
> I'm thinking of something like:
>
> {Qu'wIj vIta'meH jIH po' law' Hoch po' puS}
>
> Two questions:
>
> 1. Am I connecting the other stuff to the superlative part
> correctly? I'm not quite sure how to say "I'm the best at
> [something]" as opposed to just "I'm the best".
>
Well, other than what's mentioned in TKD, I think the only official word on
law'/puS superlatives is in KGT, and that just gives an alternate way to
phrase superlatives. In HolQeD, Captain Krankor has argued before that you
shouldn't mess around too much with the law'/puS construction, since it's
not standard grammar in the first place. So you probably shouldn't try to
modify this type of sentence too much.
As far as your example goes, {jIH po' law' Hoch po' puS} ("I'm the most
skilled") is fine, since it follows the <A Q law' B Q puS> formula on page
70 of TKD. If you were to say {Qu'wIj vIta'meH, jIH po' law' Hoch po' puS},
I would understand it as:
"In order to accomplish my task, I am the most skilled". You might also say
something such as {Qu'wIj vIta'DI', jIH po' law' Hoch po' puS} ("When I
accomplish my task, I am the most skilled").
> 2. I want to preserve the ambiguity about what Wolverine
> does. He doesn't say, and of course you read the comic book
> to find out. Is {Qu'wIj...} too specific? I want the "feel"
> of it to be "whatever it is that he does [which is unspecified]",
> rather than "a specific task".
>
Since you haven't actually described what the task is, {Qu'wIj} seems like
it is ambiguous enough to me. It can also be translated as "my duty" or "my
mission", so this might add an element of heroism, which would be
appropriate.
You could also say:
{jIta'meH, jIH po' law' Hoch po' puS}
which would mean:
"In order to accomplish (things in general), I am the most skilled"
Since the prefix {jI-} can indicate that the object is vague or unknown,
{jIta'meH} means that he accomplishes something, but we aren't specifying
what it is.
- taD