tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 28 12:20:00 2001

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RE: Translation of songs into Klingon?



The Klingon word for "eagle" would be "eagle". Since eagles are native to
Earth, not Qo'noS, Klingons would have no reason to have a word for them.
There is, however, a Klingon bird of prey called a <toQ>, which may be
somewhat similar to an eagle, so that's probably the word a Klingon would
use to label an eagle, possibly with the suffix <-Hey> - "apparent" added.

A "golden" toQ would probably be a <toQ SuD> - "yellow/green/blue toQ". A
"royal" toQ might be called a <ta' toQ> or <voDleH toQ> - "Emperor's toQ". A
"stone" toQ would be a <nagh toQ>, and a toQ which lives on a cliff would be
a <DIS Dabbogh toQ> - "toQ which dwells on a cliff" or a <DIS toQ> - "cliff
toQ".

As for which one a Klingon would use, it's anybody's guess. It's probably
the choice whatever language  the Terran who meets the Klingon happens to
speak.

pagh

-----Original Message-----
From: Arne 'Timwi' Heizmann [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, 28 February, 2001 10:42
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Translation of songs into Klingon?



Hi, it's me again :)

Those of you who have looked at my homepage already will have noticed
that the song lyrics archive isn't the only page my homepage has to
offer.

http://www.lionking.org/~timwi/eagles.htm shows that I am a great fan of
eagles. On that page I have collected the translation for "Golden Eagle"
in as many languages as I could. Now obviously I don't expect this
specific word to be listed in TKD, but:

If you look at the list, you'll find that most languages call this
animal "Royal Eagle". Only in English and Greek it's called "Golden
Eagle", in German and Dutch it's "Stone Eagle", etc... what do you think
it would be called in Klingon?

If it was "Royal Eagle", what would that translate as?

If it was "Golden Eagle", what would it be?

Is there a way of saying "Eagle that lives on a cliff" that's not too
long? (This is what the Hungarian name means, and it's only two short
words.)

How much work would Klingon biologists put into researching this
animal's behaviour before actually naming it? :-)

Or is there actually a rule for this? I could imagine that Klingons
might follow a convention like taking the Latin taxonomic name (Aquila
Chrysaetos) and transliterating it. I wonder what that would look
like... Of course I'm aware of the fact that there are several
possibilities, but I'd like to see your views on this.

Thanks for any replies,
Timwi


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