tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 05 22:15:02 2001
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Re: tuQaHlaH'a' ?
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: tuQaHlaH'a' ?
- Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 01:14:40 EDT
In a message dated 01-05-05 11:59:20 EDT, you write:
<<
Ahhhh. Now, I see where this came from.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 12:28 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: tuQaHlaH'a' ?
>
>
> I'm trying (in TKD, KGT, and NWL) to find a way to convey the idea of
> "about", as in "You spoke to me about honor that day." My
> thesaurus was no
> help, as I could find neither about, regarding, in respect to, or
> anything
> vaguely similar.
>
> jajvetlh quv <about> jIHvaD bIja'pu'.
>
> Did I miss something?
Okay, I think the root of the problem here is the difference in specificity
common to English and Klingon. This is actually a very vague statement. We
can come up with a lot of reconstructions to try to build a Klingon
statement that remains as vague as this, but as you can tell by the
discussion, different people will have problems with each solution.
Another approach is to make some decisions about what you specifically mean
by this. If you do that, your job of translation will become easier.
jajvetlh choja'. quv DaDel.
jajvetlh maja'chuq. quv wIDel.
Hmmm. As for wild ideas, I could see justification for the often suggested
{quv wIDelchuq} by claiming that we are using a new twist on the prefix
trick by having {-chuq} point to the indirect object instead of the direct
object, while the prefix refers to the actual direct object, but the simple
truth is, that's not what Maltz has ever told us. The prefix trick only
works in specific instances he has described and this isn't one of them.
Hmmm. Could {Hoch latlhvaD} mean "for each other"? {latlh} is singular,
after all, and {Hoch X(singular)} does mean "Each X".
If so, {Hoch latlhvaD quv wIDel.}
jajvetlh choja'. quv luqel mu'lIj.
jajvetlh choja'taHvIS quv DabuSchu'taH.
jajvetlh maja'taHvIS quv WIbuSchu'taH.
jajvetlh muDuQchu' quv lubuSchu'bogh mu'lIj'e'.
The less tightly you hold yourself to the original English words and
grammar, the more your options grow to express your idea in Klingon,
sometimes with clarity and beauty of expression that the original English
words lacked.
> juDmoS
charghwI' 'utlh >>
Okay...in order to erase any ambiguity, the original text I was (now
understandably) having difficulty with translating is from the book,
"Kahless". A conversation between Kahless and Edronh:
"The day we me, Edronh - you remember it?"
The other man said he did. "As if it were yesterday".
"You spoke to me of honor that day - the honor a warrior may accord another
warrior whom he has come to respect. But there is another kind of honor, my
friend. It is the kind a man must seek in himself - a love of virtue he must
not abandon, no matter the consequences - or else admit to the world that he
is less than a man."
Stirring...insightful...and so quintessentially Klingon. I just had to try
translating it. I'm still trying to work out the details...it is much more
difficult than I had anticipated. And the ambiguity issue has created more
questions than answers...