tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 01 03:04:17 2009

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Re: "Authentic" Klingon materials

Rohan F ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' Chris, jatlh:
>There is lots of awesome stuff that has been translated into Klingon
(...)
>I'm wondering, though, if anyone has tried their hand at producing
>more "authentic," original compositions in Klingon that aren't
>translations of extant (human) literature?  I'm specifically thinking
>of opera and poetry, which we know are considered an art form by the
>Klingons.  Has anyone ever, say, made up a meter for Klingon and tried
>to write poetry in that meter about uber-Klingon themes?

I've used a meter that I found in Diane Duane and Peter Morwood's novel
"The Romulan Way"; it's from verses ostensibly in Vulcan, but I tried a
few verses using Klingon instead, and it seemed to work reasonably well.

If you're interested in trying it, the mode - which Duane and Morwood call
"steheht", a presumably Vulcan term - is blank verse with five lines of
four, six, five, five, and two syllables. They don't explicitly say this
in the novel, but they give two example verses (in English) that share
the same structure, so I presumed this was the general form for the mode.

An example in English (from their novel):

"Enthrone your pasts;
this done, fire and old blood
will find you again;
better hearts' breaking
than worlds'."

and a verse from a handful I composed in Klingon about Kahless, back when
I first tried this mode:

jIbDaj'e' chIp;
tlheghmeyvetlh tIq lo' 'ej
vaHbo'Daq tlhegh lan;
chen tlhIngan batlh 'etlh,
betleH.

(Translated:
"As for his hair, he cut it;
he used those long strands and
dipped the strands in lava;
the Klingon honour sword was formed,
the bat'leth.")

I'm no real poet, though, so it didn't go much further than that. But
feel free to give it a shot - I'm the first to say I'd love to see
more original writing in Klingon.

-----

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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