tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 22 20:19:53 2002

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Re: Translation



I haven't seen anyone address this yet.

ja' "Gina Robertson" <[email protected]>:
>ok, i'm trying to translate I'm going into the hospital for surgury next week.
>
>its object-verb-subject...
>
>i think the object is surgury, the verb is going and the subject is
>hospital...

It looks like you need some basic instruction in grammar terminology.

VERB is easy -- it defines the action or quality.
SUBJECT is the thing performing the action.
OBJECT is the thing influenced by or acted on.

In your English sentence, the verb is "go".  You are the subject, and there
is no object.  The hospital is a destination, which usually becomes a
locative in Klingon.  However, depending on what Klingon verb is chosen,
the hospital could easily end up being the object in the translated
sentence.

The phrase "for surgery" describes the purpose of the action, and becomes
its own clause in a Klingon translation.  It is not the subject or object
of the main sentence.  (In this case, I would actually expect it to be a
verb.)

>so far i have Haq wIjjaH "Hospital."

Try it again, with a little more knowledge of what the parts of the
sentence are.

-- ghunchu'wI'


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