tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 26 04:58:17 2009

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Re: Klingon translation

David Trimboli ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

Michael Everson wrote:
> I am doing a short translation. The text is well-known, but is  
> syntactically complex in English. I have made a stab at the first  
> sentence; my rendering of it came to two separate sentences in Klingon.
> 
> How about if I give my translation here, without the original (which  
> is well-known, but let's forget that) and see if it makes sense.
> 
> Here it is:
> 
> ’Iv HoS law’ ’Iv HoS puS, ’e’ ghoHtaHvIS SuS bIr Hov je, ghoSpu’  
> lengwI’. wep tuj tuqtaH ghaH.
> 
> What do you make of it?

"While the cold wind and the star argue that who is stronger, the 
traveler has gone. He is [wearing] a hot jacket."

I don't recognize it. It's hard to advise if I don't know the concept 
you're trying to get across. I'll just point out some of the biggest 
errors without necessarily recommending a correction.

In the future, if you want the Beginners' Grammarian to correct your 
grammar, add "KLBC" to the subject. But since you didn't...

It looks like you're trying to use {'Iv} as a relative pronoun, but it 
doesn't work that way. Use /-bogh/ for that sort of thing. But here 
you're apparently trying to say "arguing about who is stronger." "About" 
prepositions in English are difficult to translate directly into 
Klingon; you usually have to split it up into a couple of pieces.

You can't put a Type 7 verb suffix on a verb with /'e'/ as its object 
(TKD p. 66), so you can't say {'e' <verb>taHvIS}.

{tuQ} "wear" has a capital {Q}.

-- 
SuStel

tlhIngan Hol MUSH
http://trimboli.name/mush

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