tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 13 00:10:39 2005

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Re: translation help

QeS lagh ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' naHQun:
>tIQHa'* quvwI'pu'chaj yeSuS 'IHrIStoS**Daj lalDanchaj van bom***mey

I think you're using a whole bunch of possessive suffixes that are 
unnecessary. Quite literally, what you've written is "Their honoured ones, 
his Jesus Christ, their religion, hymns are recent". It doesn't make much 
sense.

First, remember that when stative verbs are adjectival, they come after the 
noun they modify: {quvwI'pu' tIQHa'} "recent honoured ones".

Second, the noun-noun construction can be expanded ad infinitum, and there's 
no real need for possessive suffixes, otherwise you'd say something like 
"John's his book's its page". You can have a noun-noun-noun construction if 
necessary, or a noun-noun-noun-noun construction... et cetera.

So {quvwI'pu' tIQHa' yeSuS 'IHrIStoS lalDan van bommey} "hymns of the 
religion of Jesus Christ of recent honoured ones".

>*if {tIQ} means "be ancient", then {tIQHa'} would be the closest
>thing to "recent" or "latter-day" that we have.

I'll agree with that. {-Ha'} is one of the few suffixes we have attested 
with stative verbs in adjectival position: for instance, KGT p. 150 gives 
the form {Duj ngaDHa'} "unstable ship". So {tIQHa'} "un-ancient" (or 
"recent") is probably OK.

>**yeSuS 'IHrIStoS is what was used in the translation of Mark,
>and has sense been used elsewhere as well, I may change it later on.

A loan from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English to Klingon... :) I'd still 
try to go back to the source with (yeSuwa') or something like that, but 
that's just my opinion, and there's obviously no Klingon word *{yeSuS} to be 
confused with. All that also applies to {'IHrIStoS}.

>***van bom actually translates as hymn (or anthem)
>which as far as I can tell is a whole lot easier than adding {quv}

Neither is "easier" than the other. Both involve just one more syllable. :P 
That being said, I think a Klingon would understand what you meant if you 
used {van bom}.

Savan,

QeS lagh
taghwI' pabpo' / Beginners' Grammarian


not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' qan je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
     - Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh

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