tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 15 15:20:36 2001

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Re: Newbie: Question



Robert Bracey wrote:
: As UK people will know Comic Relief is starting soon and the slogan is
: 'Pants to Poverty'. I was trying to work out how to render this in Klingon
: and was wondering if someone might be able to help. This is how far I got:

What exactly does this mean?  Is this a clothing drive for the poor, or is this
some sort of English idiom?

: I can find no word for poverty, but chep is the verb for be prosperous so I
: thought chepbe'ghach could be used for poverty.

Not bad, but "prosper, be prosperous" doesn't necessarily imply financially. 
Okrand used {chep} to translate the Vulcan greeting "Live long and prosper!" in
two different venues (I particularly like the first one):

  yIn nI' yISIQ 'ej yIchep.

  yItaH 'ej yIcheptaH.

We also have the noun {mIp} "wealth, richness", used in the "Power Klingon"
audiotape:

  DojneS mIplIj.
  Your wealth is impressive, your honor.

and the homophonous verb {mIp} "be rich", so we could postulate *{mIpHa'} as
"be poor" and use *{mIpHa'ghach} as the derived noun "poverty", particularly if
you see poverty as having lost one's money; *{mIpbe'ghach} may be better for
not ever having had any one at all.

: There isn't a word for pants either. 

Not in _The Klingon Dictionary_ (TKD), but there's more vocabulary presented in
_Klingon for the Galactic Traveller_ (KGT) which I highly recommend.  The word
is {yopwaH} "pants, trousers": 

  "A skin belt (qogh) both held pants (yopwaH) in place and provided
   a place from which to hang weapons or weapon holders." (KGT p.58)



-- 
Voragh                       
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons


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