tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 26 15:16:46 2009

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Re: Klingon translation

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



Michael Everson wrote:
> On 26 Jun 2009, at 17:00, ghunchu'wI' 'utlh wrote:
>> SuStel already pointed out that you can't say {'e' ghoHtaHvIS}. It 
>> is a silly rule, and Marc Okrand himself has broken it on occasion,
>> but it is a rule nonetheless.
> 
> And the workaround? "You can't say that" OK. What can I say?

Say anything you want, so long as you don't break the rules. There is no
formula to convert an illegal {'e'/net <verb>taHvIS} into something
legal. Find some other way to say it.

In this case I'm not even going to try, because of the next objection:

>> Do we know that the object of {ghoH} is the topic of the argument? 
>> Do we even know that {ghoH} can have an object?
> 
> I cannot answer that question given the fact that the dictionary is 
> nothing more than a wordlist.

Welcome to the wonderful world of tlhIngan Hol!

In general, the most conservative route is to assume that the English
glosses for Klingon words have been chosen to indicate how they're used.
This isn't always true. (We eventually learned that {qIm} "pay
attention" can also be translated "pay attention to.") And it's often
unhelpful. (We didn't know what the correct subject of {Dub} "improve"
was—the improver or the improvee—until we saw it used in KGT.) But using
that as a rule of thumb will take care of most objections, and tends to
be the way Okrand works.

-- 
SuStel

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








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