tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 09 08:10:29 2003
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Re: literal translations - KLBC
- From: "Lawrence Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: literal translations - KLBC
- Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 06:05:37 -0700
>Example from this months HolQeD - " DorDI' jar mejpu'. Literally
>this sentance means When the month ended, he/she left " Now for
>purposes of me trying to get my parsing and grammar right,
>surely a literal translation would be closer to a more
>Elizabethan sounding " When ended the month, he/she left. "
If I can hazard a guess, I think the problem you're having here is an artifact of the Type-9 suffix. Your translation separates the syntactic marker from the verb, in a way that always makes me think of the prohibition against spliting infinitives. But that happens with Type-9 suffixes (e.g, substitute -pa', or -mo' for -DI' and your translation is apt to put "before" or "because" right where you're currently putting "when"); it's a quirk of English.
I don't know if that helps you any though.
Lawrence