[Tlhingan-hol] Dhammapada verse 1

[De'vID jonpIn]

Josh:
> > wanI'mey nung tIq
> > che' tIq, chenmoH tIq

QeS 'utlh:
> I like your use of {tIq} here. Very Klingon. majQa'!

I like it also.  It also follows the Chinese/Japanese Ch'an/Zen
tradition, which uses the character <心> to express "heart, mind".

Josh:
> > nItHa'taHvIS tIq bIjatlhDI' qoj bIvangDI'
> > bIbechbej

QeS 'utlh:
> {X-chugh vaj Y} is more idiomatic, and here I think {-chugh} corresponds
> better to the original Pali enclitic /ce/. Also, I'm not sure you want to
> recast to {bIbechbej}. It has two problems.

Ha ha ha.  Did you read the earlier comments about the translation?
These were both my suggestions.  I think either {-chugh} or {-DI'}
will work for "ce".  Josh, you'll have to decide.

QeS 'utlh:
> First is that the Pali doesn't
> necessarily imply that *you* will suffer; the suffering that follows you
> might be your own, or it may be suffering of others, so I don't think that
> {bI-} is appropriate. Second is that using {bIbechbej}, instead of more
> literally translating /anveti/, breaks the link to the metaphor of the ox
> and wheel in the final line.

You're correct about {bI-}.  I'd suggested using the verb {bech}
because it feels more Klingon (at least to me) to express ideas using
verbs rather than nouns.  I can't think of any examples of the top of
my head, but I'm sure we've seen canon examples where sentences which
are heavily noun-centric in English are verb-centric in Klingon.
Saying "noun-B follows noun-A" (or {noun-A tlha' noun-B}) sounds off
to me, if A and B are concepts which can be expressed as verbal
phrases.  I think it's more Klingon to say {verb-A-DI' verb-B}.  But
that's just a stylistic preference.

Also, I don't think the link to the metaphor is broken, because of the
way we've seen {rur} work in Klingon.  For example: {qur; verengan
rur} means "he's as greedy as a Ferengi", not "he's greedy; he
resembles a Ferengi (in a general sense)".  Indeed, in every example
of {rur} I can think of at the moment, the link between the two things
being compared and the way in which they resemble one another is much
weaker in Klingon than in English (and, I expect, in Pali).

Josh:
> > tanqa' qam tlha'bogh ruth'e' rur bech

QeS 'utlh:
> Watch your spelling: {tangqa'}, {rutlh}. I think {bech} is only a verb,
> too, so it can't be the subject of {rur}. We also have the Klingon word
> {lem} "hoof", should you want to use it here - up to you, though.

There is, however, a noun {bep} "agony".  I don't know if it can be
used to translate dukkha in general, but it might work in many cases.

I'm not sure how many people can read both Pali and Chinese, but here
are two Chinese translations of this chapter (a more archaic, formal,
"King James English"-like version on the left, and a relatively
vernacular but still a bit poetic version on the right):
http://online-dhamma.net/nanda/Tipitaka/Sutta/Khuddaka/Dhammapada/DhP_Chap01.htm

<獸足> and <足蹄> both mean "hoof" rather than merely "foot", so
apparently people care about whether a foot belongs to a person or an
animal.  I guess Klingons do as well, since there's a word {lem} in
addition to {qam}.  {lem} is a good suggestion.

p.s. You have never experienced the sermons of the Buddha until you've
heard them preached in the original Cantonese.

--
De'vID