tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 07 08:35:33 2011
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RE: Translating TEDTalks
ghItlhta' Qov:
> tlhIngan Hol qelqu'bogh TEDtalk DaqonrupDI' HIrI'.
tlhIngan Hol bopbogh TEDTalk'e' vIQoy neH jIH je. 'a SoQvam vIqonrupbe'. SoQvam qon tlhIngan Hol HaDwI' nIv 'e' vItul.
ghItlhta' ghunchu'wI':
> Don't do this unless you're already doing a "linear translation" and
> disregarding grammar entirely throughout a piece. It's worse than
> mock-translating {tlhIngan jIH} as "me Klingon" in the fashion of a
> Tarzan movie.
I largely agree with you, and you might notice that I stray further and further from glossing and towards translating as the text goes on.
However, the idea is that the text should be understandable without too much clarification in English, so I still didn't want to translate "too much". I find that many Klingon texts only make sense when you look at translations of them, and if that's the case with my text, then it needs to be changed.
ghItlhta' André:
> But as I understand it, those literal translations were just a aid for us,
> they don't go into the TED subtitles. I hope.
Absolutely: The third line was provided because I suspect that most (or at least many) of the people who read this mailing list are like me in that they mostly work in "pseudo-Klingon", which is to say that they construct sentences in their mind using Klingon grammar but with English placeholder verbs that they later fill in using a lexicon; the idea of the third line is to minimize the need to consult a lexicon, and was written solely for the purpose of discussing the English-Klingon translation, not as part of the translation itself.
I apologize if that was unclear; I guess when an e-mail keeps you up until late in the morning, that's when you most want to send it off right away and when you least should ;)