tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 29 09:39:49 2011

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RE: Some things are best left untranslated.

Steven Boozer ([email protected]) 

SIv lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
> During my pedestrian commute, I pass a boxcar that someone has spray painted,
> "Tonight, the streets are ours!" It's got deixis written all over it.
> While I enjoy a translation challenge, this one quickly got too ugly.
> 
> We have no standard replacement word or phrase for "Tonight". As individuals,
> we might come up with {DaH ram} or {DaHjaj ram} or {ramvam}, but the fact
> remains, Maltz has never addressed the issue, to my imperfect memory. And
> when I think about it, I'm not sure what it really means in English. It depends on
> when it was written.
>
> If it was written during the daytime, then it means "the dark period of time that
> follows the current sunlit period of time". If it was written at the moment of sunset
> or later, it means, "From now until dawn".

Maltz may not have addressed the issue, but Okrand did back in 1997:

 ************************************************************************
From: "Marc Okrand" <...>
Newsgroups: msn.onstage.startrek.expert.okrand
Date:  29 Jun 1997 
Subject: Re: Tonight, this morning, etc.

Regarding "tonight" and so forth, I'd go along with your suggestion:

  DaHjaj ram "tonight" (literally "today night" or "today's night")
  DaHjaj po "this morning" (literally "today morning" or "today's morning")
  DaHjaj pov "this afternoon" (literally "today afternoon" or "today's afternoon")
  DaHjaj DungluQ "this noon" (literally "today noon" or "today's noon") 
  DaHjaj ramjep "this midnight" (literally "today midnight" or "today's midnight")
  DaHjaj pemjep "this midday" (literally "today midday" or "today's midday") 

(The phrases "this noon," "this midnight," and "this midday" are a little awkward in English -- we'd probably say "today at noon," "tonight at midnight," "today in the middle of the day" or something -- but in Klingon, they fall right into place.)

In Klingon, you could even say DaHjaj pem "today's daytime," which would probably be typically contrasted with DaHjaj ram "today's night" (or
"tonight").

wa'leS po "tomorrow morning," cha'leS po "the morning of the day after tomorrow" (literally "two-days-from-now morning"), and so on work quite
nicely.

Adding -vam "this" to most words designating fixed periods of time seems to be the only way to indicate "current."  Thus the current year or "this year" is DISvam (referring, of course, to a Klingon year, or DIS), the current month or "this month" is jarvam, and the current week or "this week" is Hoghvam.  There don't seem to be special words for "the current year" and so forth comparable to DaHjaj "the current day" or "today."  DaHjaj seems to be formed of the adverbial DaH "now" plus the noun jaj "day," a unique type of formation as far as I know.  It is perhaps by analogy to DISvam, jarvam, etc. -- all formed by simply adding a noun suffix to a noun - that Klingons also refer to the current day as jajvam "this day" (jaj "day, period from dawn to dawn").

Though they both can be translated "today," DaHjaj and jajvam are not quite interchangeable.  As the time element in a sentence, DaHjaj (and not jajvam) is used:

    DaHjaj romuluSngan vIHoHpu' "today I killed a Romulan"

As the subject of a sentence, on the other hand, jajvam is more typically found:

    nI' jajvam "this day is long"

though DaHjaj is not impossible:

    nI' DaHjaj "today is long"

DaHjaj also behaves as a noun (as opposed to an adverbial element) in such noun-noun constructions as DaHjaj gheD "today prey" or "today's prey," a term often heard in Klingon restaurants with a meaning comparable to "catch of the day."

Phrases such as jajvam po "this day morning" or "this morning" are not common, but they're not ungrammatical either.
************************************************************************

> And what streets are we talking about, anyway? The definite article suggests
> specific streets without specifying which ones. They didn't say, "Some streets are
> ours" or "All streets are ours". It just says "THE streets are ours".

Wouldn't "these streets" work:  {STREETmeyvam}?  It's definite but still as imprecise as "the streets";  i.e., not "some of these streets" or "all of these streets".
 
Or have I missed your point entirely?

--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons

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