tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 04 11:05:15 2001
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reH taHqu'taH leng'e' (was: reH taH leng 'ej taHtaH)
Jiri:
> > reH taH leng 'ej taHtaH (The road goes ever on and on)
Voragh:
> Poetic (scansion) reasons aside, this seems like overkill.
Okay :-)
> How about just {reH taHtaH leng'e'}, which also marks {leng} as the
> subject of the poem.
Good idea. Or perhaps {reH taHqu'taH leng'e'}, 6 syllables.
> > lojmItvetlhvo' taghpa' (Down from the door where it began)
> > DaH HopchoHpu' lengvam (Now far ahead the road has gone)
> > 'ej vIghoSlaHchugh vIghoSnIS (And I must follow it, if I can)
> {leng vIghoS}? See {He ghoS} below.
> > qam Doy'mo' vIthla'taH (Pursuing it with weary[1] feet)
> > He tIn muvbe'taHvIS (Until it meets some larger way)
> > pa'Daq qIH leng puS Qu' puS je (Where many paths and errands meet)
> > ghIq nuqDaq juH? jIjanglaHbe' (And whither then? I cannot say)
> Instead of using {leng} "trip, voyage, trek" for a road, many people on
> the list have used {He} "course, route" even though neither are really
> adequate for a physical road, for which we lack a word.
In the book, it's more of a journey or quest than a physical road, too;
even some element of fate. True, they do walk on roads and tracks, but also
through forest, dale and tunnel, down rivers and across trackless marches.
> {He} cannot be used in any metaphorical sense such as "The Klingon Way"
> or "Way of the Warrior", but I don't know whether he ruled out the
> mundane, physical sense as well.
Drats, I didn't want to use the same word for *all* of them... I'm tempted
to replace the {He} with {Daq}:
Daq potlh muvbe'taHvIS (Until it meets some larger way)
or
qep Daq muvbe'taHvIS (Until it meets some larger way)
Probably the latter...
> Using {He} also allows you to play with some known Klingon phrases: {He
> Qob} "dangerous route", {He ghoS} "follow a course", {He choH} "alter
> course", {He nab} "plot (a) course", {He qIm} "track (someone's) course".
Based on your comments above, {He} is far too literal to refer to Frodo's
journey, which involved many turns (if not outright twists)... Even {jey}
would be too literal for my taste.
> OTOH using {leng} does allow you to shift between the noun {leng} and the
> verb {leng}.
Didn't do that, though.
> > [1] is there a word for 'eager'? Or would I have to use the suffix
> > -qang?
> Not that I know of. In the right context, {-rup} "ready, prepared" would
> also work.
There's two versions of the poem, with just a single word-substitution,
perhaps even misremembered (Bilbo's was `eager', Frodo's `weary' - he was
the more reluctant traveller at the time he said it).
Perhaps {Quch} would do the trick.
Jiri
--
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jirib
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