[Tlhingan-hol] Dhammapada verse 1

[Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh]

 jatlhpu' Josh:
> nItHa'taHvIS tIq bIjatlhDI' qoj bIvangDI'
> bIbechbej
 
jIjangpu', jIjatlh:
> {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.

mujang De'vID, jatlh: 
> Ha ha ha.  Did you read the earlier comments about the translation?
> These were both my suggestions.

No, I missed the earlier ones. Good to know my instinct follows yours. :)

jIjatlhtaH:
> 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.

mujangtaH De'vID, jatlh:
> 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)".

The thing is that most of those similes depend on possessing a cultural
knowledge of a stereotypical feature of the thing being compared to, and
building new similes also assumes the reader can identify the salient
feature that's being compared. Here, it's not clear unless you already
know it. In what way is the suffering like the wheel following the ox?
Is it that the suffering is battered by constant travel? Is it that it
does not control its own course? Is it that it gets dragged through ox
poo all the time?

Let me put it another way. In Klingon similes, the linking feature is
usually overt and is expressed in the first clause: {puj; bIQ rur},
{HoSghaj; mupwI' rur}, {let; Separ rur}, etc. Water is considered weak.
Hammers are considered strong. {Separ} is considered hard. All obvious.

But if you apply the same logic to {bech; tangqa' tlha'bogh rutlh'e' rur},

then you get to the conclusion that wheels that follow oxen suffer. And

that's not what the Pali is saying.

taH:
> 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

In the three I gave above ({puj; bIQ rur}, {HoSghaj; mupwI' rur}, {let;
Separ rur}), the link is eminently obvious, though obviously culturally
bound.

QeS 'utlh