tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 14 13:29:09 2007

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Re: Better a live Sparrow...

Doq ([email protected])



Un-Klingon sentiment?

tlhIngan jIH. jaghwI' vIHIvmeH Heghpu'bogh Qa' vIrurlaH pagh  
yIntaHbogh Qa'Hom vIrurlaH. jIwIvnISchugh, Qa'Hom qaq law' Qa' qaq puS.

Doq

On Mar 14, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Steven Boozer wrote:

>
> "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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