tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 04 14:21:19 2011

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Re: tato'eba' yImuv 'ej mu'tlheghmey tImugh!

Robyn Stewart ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

>@Robyn:
>Yeah, the "gh" sound is not so close to the /k/ in that syllable, so maybe
>{jungqo} would be closest (not {jong}, though; I doubt Klingon speakers
>would let their pronunciation be influenced by the pinyin spelling).

That would be a known and previously problematic 
Canadian/US "o" difference. My spelling was 
derived from listening to the clip several times, 
not looking at the transliteration. When I say 
poS and American will hear puS, even though I 
pronounce the o in poS the same way I pronounce 
the o in mosaic. Seeing as Okrand is American, 
I'd better go with American ears, though.

>I wouldn't make it trisyllabic, either.

Adding syllables is a pretty normal way for 
languages to cope with unusual blends in 
loanwords. Another is to eliminate the problematic sounds altogther.

>Anyways, that's not important now. The
>problem then is, most countries aren't monolingual, some even don't have one
>clear major language. Just think of India or Southern Africa.

I'm from a country like that, with two official 
languages and dozens of local languages. I chose 
my words with care. India's two major languages 
are English and Hindi and both say "India" 
identically as much as I can hear and a Klingon 
transcription could render. South Africa isn't so 
much a name as a description of part of a 
continent, so I'd do that one as 'avrIqa tIng 
chan (or better canon for south). If a country 
has neither an official nor a majority language 
and has a completely different version of its 
name in each of the contenders, then pick the one 
belonging to the best armed side.

>Hehe, I like the 中å?½Daq æ??æ??vo' idea. ;)

I like it too, except that you can see the problem right there with ASCII.

>By the way, there's yet another way: neither leave the name, nor
>transliterate it, but *translate* is as close as possible. China might be
>rendered as {botlh Sep} or {botlh wo'}, Japan as {Hovmung (Sep)} (still no
>real word for 'sun', dammit), Australia as {tIng chan (Sep)}, the
>Netherlands as {beQ (Sep)} and Holland as {Sor Hap yoS} etc. Sounds
>interesting, but difficult. I'll go the easier way of avoiding the
>translations.

I definitely like botlh wo'. It does introduce 
the genericity problem that there must be dozens 
of ethnic groups named "people" in their 
respective languages.  Nether means 'eS not beQ, 
which introduces another way to do it: simply 
describe the place anew without reference to any 
historical name. I wouldn't recommend that, 
because it's too difficult to do in any 
retranslatable way, but there are plenty of 
places that had names before some explorer hopped 
ashore and said, "I'll call this place ..."  Do 
Klingons strike you as the type to ask the locals 
what a place is called? And then there's the Côte 
d'Ivoire method where the country in question 
declares that that is their name and no one can 
mess with it. (I've always thought it silly when 
places like Ukraine, whose language doesn't HAVE 
articles, declare that we aren't supposed to use 
an article in front of their name).

I would say that if style requires 
transliteration, do what's right at the time, but 
if transliteration can be avoided leave it in the 
language of the source, or a latin script version 
of your native language if you're making it up as you go along.

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