tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 16 08:07:05 2007
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RE: translation
Voragh:
> >> luvu'Ha'mo' nganpu' SaH,
> >> [...]
> >
> >Actually, I think that's about as close as we're going to get.
'ISqu':
>I have a problem with this line. To me {nganpu' SaH} doesn't mean
>"current inhabitants." It means "the inhabitants present,"
>i.e. "those inhabitants who are not absent, who are not away,
>missing or gone." I see the qualities of being current and being
>present as closely related but not exactly the same.
>The fact that someone happens to be present at a location at
>a given moment doesn't make this person one of the location's
>current inhabitants. He or she could be present at the location
>as a guest. Conversely, you do not stop being a "current inhabitant"
>of, say, an apartment each time you are not present there.
In 2007 this is a moot point. How many Terrans are currently off-world? <g>
>I may be wrong about it but I don't think the Klingon "authors"
>of the inscription want to voice the opinion that Earth has been
>mismanaged only the inhabitants who are present on its surface
>at the time when that opinion gets inscribed into a statue. Surely,
>they'd think that the responsibility for mismanaging the planet
>falls on the entire human race including those members of it who
>are no longer alive, hence who are not longer present. I believe
>my version, repeated below, gets the intended meaning across more
>precisely despite being longer and more complex:
>
> (yuQvam) luvu'Ha'mo' DaH luDabbogh nganpu'...
> ["Because the inhabitants who now inhabit it mismanage (this planet)...]
>
>Still, not being a native speaker of English I admit I could be wrong in my
>judgments of what English words actually mean.
Isn't "the inhabitants who NOW inhabit it" just another way of saying "only
the inhabitants who are present on its surface AT THE TIME WHEN THAT
OPINION GETS INSCRIBED"? I don't really see the difference; and if there
is one, it's certainly not one that would matter to the Empire. As we say
in English, it's a case of "six of one, half a dozen of the other".
At first I too quibbled over {SaH} and toyed with using {DaHjaj} "today"
for the idea of "current":
yuQvam luvu'Ha'mo' DaHjaj nganpu'
We have precedent for using {DaHjaj} to modify another non-time-related noun:
{DaHjaj} also behaves as a noun (as opposed to an adverbial element)
in such noun-noun constructions as {DaHjaj gheD} "today prey" or
"today's prey", a term often heard in Klingon restaurants with a
meaning comparable to "catch of the day". (st.klingon, June 1997)
In some restaurants, the menu ({HIDjolev}) is posted (seldom are
individual copies available), but in most, the patrons know the
regular fare and ask about specials, including the {DaHjaj gheD}
(literally, "today's prey"), a dish whose components depend on what
animals the restaurant's hunters were able to bring in." (KGT 100ff.)
But on further thought, I now think {SaH} "be present (not absent)" is
probably fine here. We have no examples of it or it's antonym {Dach} "be
absent" in canon and thus don't know how it's used in Klingon (as opposed
to English).
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons