tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 27 09:34:06 2007

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Re: Topic (was: Re: Dilbert Comic in Klingon for February 9, 2007

Doq ([email protected]) 

"I have served you for the past year" is not past tense. It is present perfect. Klingon has the perfective, so it can definitely say, "I have served you.": {qatoy'ta'} or {qatoypu'} depending on degree of intentionality. The problem has nothing to do with tense. Time stamps can replace tense without a problem.
The problem is in attempting to express a time stamp and duration at the same time. When I say "the past year", I am doing just that.

Forgive me for being frustrated with all the distractions as people point to problems that don't exist, missing the ones that do.

Your suggestion below, unfortunately, is still overly ambiguous:

>Kang is a general who is considering promoting Kor to the rank of commander. 
>Kor is an ensign. They are conversing on the bridge.
>
>qeng: qor, qaStaHvIS 'ar DIS chotoytaH?
>qor: qaStaHvIS wa' DIS qatoytaH, ra'wI'.
>qeng: qaSpu'DI' wa' latlh DIS, batlh bItoytaHqu'chugh, qanummoHbej.

qeng may be asking how long qor is committed to service. He may be starting that service or half-way through it, or near the end of it. The quesion, as asked, sounds like it is referring to his commitment, given {-taH} instead of {-ta'}. There is no time stamp. There is only an unanchored duration.

I apologise for sounding like I'm saying, "You do it first." I already went first with {wa'ben'e' qatoy'taH} and you (plural) didn't like it, so I asked for a better suggestion. I'm not trying to be a contrarian here. I very honestly don't like your suggestion. I trust that you honestly don't like mine. It doesn't mean I don't like you or you don't like me. We just don't think that our ideas on how to express this work very well. If we can't agree on a mutually acceptable way to communicate this idea, then we aren't communicating.

I'm sincerely hoping that somebody can come up with one that makes us all happy. So far, I'm stumped. I tried. I failed. You tried. You failed. Where do we go from here?

I'll try again. I don't much like this, but it sounds like the best we can do is make it two sentences:

wa'ben qatoychoH. qatoy'taH.

Maybe we can shorten it to:

wa'ben qatoychoHtaH.

No. That's still ambiguous, given the single time stamp. I guess it should be:

wa'ben qatoy'choH. DaH qatoy'taH.

That's been done, but I was hoping for something more concise. "I will serve you for the next year," becomes:

DaH qatoy'choH. wa'nem qatoyta'.

I guess we need to provide a boundary for each end of the time commitment with time stamp words and avoid duration words.

If anyone has a better suggestion, I'm all ears.

Doq

-----Original Message-----
>From: QeS 'utlh <[email protected]>
>Sent: Feb 27, 2007 8:31 AM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: Topic (was: Re: Dilbert Comic in Klingon for February 9, 2007
>
>ghItlhpu' 'ISqu', ja':
>>    {qaStaHvIS wa' DIS qatoy'taH} or
>>    {qatoy'taH qaStaHvIS wa' DIS}
>
>jang Doq, ja':
>>That doesn't mean "I have served you for the past year." It means "I  am 
>>serving you for a year." Maybe last year. Maybe next year. Maybe  we're in 
>>the middle of the year. Maybe it happened a decade ago.  Maybe it will 
>>happen a decade from now. I repeat the requested  translation: "I have 
>>served you for the past year."
>
>I agree with ghunchu'wI'. You're asking for an overly specific translation 
>of a tense-form in a language that simply isn't built to express tense. You 
>might as well ask a Russian-speaker for "I ate the apple" as opposed to "I 
>ate an apple"; because Russian lacks articles, any result that makes the 
>same semantic distinction will be awkward, forced, and unnatural in Russian, 
>or will require some sort of context (if it's even possible at all). All 
>languages enhance meaning by means of contextual cues, and asking for a 
>phrase in isolation that has the meaning you require may not be possible 
>without those contextual clues. The syllable "la" in Ubykh has six distinct 
>noun meanings: "army", "hare", "intestines", "deception", "painting" and 
>"passing of time". If you're given the word "la" in isolation, how can you 
>reasonably expect to translate it accurately?
>
>ja'taH:
>>So, show a conversation where that kind of shared knowledge or  context 
>>would apply. Show a concrete example instead of a vague,  abstract 
>>suggestion.
>
>Kang is a general who is considering promoting Kor to the rank of commander. 
>Kor is an ensign. They are conversing on the bridge.
>
>qeng: qor, qaStaHvIS 'ar DIS chotoytaH?
>qor: qaStaHvIS wa' DIS qatoytaH, ra'wI'.
>qeng: qaSpu'DI' wa' latlh DIS, batlh bItoytaHqu'chugh, qanummoHbej.
>
>You could have come up with a similar scenario yourself. Please don't 
>respond to suggestions by making challenges of "you do it first, I don't 
>believe you". It's not fruitful.
>
>ja'taH 'ISqu':
>>   wa'ben qatoy'choH 'ej qaStaHvIS wa' DIS qatoy'taH.
>
>jangtaH Doq:
>>That's the kind of awkward work-around I was trying to avoid.
>
>"I began serving you a year ago and for one year I continue to serve you." I 
>see no problem. Remember that Klingon often splits up what would be a single 
>English sentence into two sentences. And the lack of a Klingon equivalent 
>for the English preposition "for" (which really means "during" here, which 
>is usually translated as {qaStaHvIS}) is only to be expected, since Klingon 
>doesn't have the range of prepositions that English does anyway.
>
>>If it really is the best that any expert here can manage, I guess it's what
>>we are stuck with.
>
>"Stuck with" is a poor choice of words. I have no problem with 'ISqu''s 
>suggestion, and don't find it awkward at all.
>
>>Someone should point this out to Okrand. I doubt  he'd be satisfied with it 
>>once it came to his notice.
>
>Really? I quote from an interview with Okrand about translating the Skybox 
>cards into Klingon:
>
>"What I find myself doing a lot, especially with these Skybox things... The 
>English is these long, long complicated sentences, and I said, 'no way,' I'd 
>take this long sentence and split it up into two or three. So they went and 
>counted the periods, and said 'wait a minute, we gave you two sentences, 
>you're giving us back six, what's going on here?'" (HolQeD 4.2, pages 5-6)
>
>Apparently Okrand has no problem with using two main clauses where English 
>would only use one.  I'd say that 'ISqu''s suggestion not only fits with all 
>the canon we have, but also fits with the way that Okrand himself may have 
>done it.
>
>QeS 'utlh
>tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute
>
>
>not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
>(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
>     - Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh
>
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