tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 17 09:33:31 2003
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Re: tay naH
In a message dated 9/17/2003 9:39:26 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
>
>
> The only problem I can find with all of these is that you are using the
> imperative in English, but your Klingon is declarative.
>
> Ex:
> > wa' baQ peb'ot tlhab DaSuq.
> > Acquire one fresh free peb'ot.
>
There's no reason to assume that sets of instructions
are imperative in Klingon. They are declarative sentences in Russian, for example.
When I translated some Klingon recipes a while back,
I used the declarative because it didn't seem right for a
text to be commanding a Klingon what to do - it seemed better
to just describe how one person performs the recipe, and
leave it to the reader to decide if they want to copy that
procedure. It seems more in character that way.
Since English recipes _do_ use the imperative, it is proper to
translate them as such; the translation doesn't have to be
slavishly literal.
-- ter'eS
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