tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 14 12:56:22 2007

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Better a live Sparrow...

Steven Boozer ([email protected]) 

"Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle."
                          -- Edward FitzGerald

I saw this quotation is used as an epigram to Joseph P. Clancy's "The Odes 
and Epodes of Horace: A Modern English Verse Translation" (Chicago, 1960) 
and it immediately struck me as thoroughly translatable:

   yInbogh Qa'Hom qaq law' Qa' lughoDlu'bogh qaq puS.

However un-Klingon the sentiment itself, this actually works a bit better 
in Klingon with the the vicious {Qa'} vs. the insignificant {Qa'Hom}.

FYI, the quotation itself comes from a comment FitzGerald, an amateur 
Victorian Orientalist, made about his translation of "The Rubaiyyat of Omar 
Khayaam", which some called it a parody because of the extensive liberties 
he took with the original:

   A translation must live with a transfusion of one's own worse life if
   he can't retain the original's better.  Better a live sparrow than a
   stuffed eagle.




--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons

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