[Tlhingan-hol] voDleH Sut chu' [original header was mangled]

[Felix Malmenbeck]

>I didn't mean to imply that I have special knowledge. I'm just being
>curmudgeonly, in that ben is a much older word than ret, so {ben
>law'} was in use in the 1980s but {DIS law' ret} seems like
>vocabulary I just learned yesterday. (DON'T tell me how old it is).
>Are you objecting to {ben law'} on some grounds? I'm baffled as to
>why you would allow {DIS law'} and not {ben law'}.

Well, I've never seen <ben> accompanied by any other modifier than a number, so I thought it might be special somehow. However, looking in TKD, I see that they are indeed listed simply as nouns, suggesting they should be modifiable in this way.

Very nice; I've been wanting to use expressions like ben law' and Hu' puS for some time, DaHjaj vaj* De' lI' vIghoj.

*Is <DaHjaj vaj> the right order? vaj DaHjaj FEELS better, but I think that's because I'm used to "thus" being used as a conjunction, not an adverb.

>What? When we have twenty useless bird words?

...one of which is a pun based on Poe's "The Raven"? Yes! ;)

>What is the English that makes you so intent to get across the
> feeling of them hiding in the crowd? Many people enter the city.
> Probably lots of them are up to no good. Two of them are going to con
> the voDleH.  I'm not saying 'elwI'pu'Daq can't be understood as
> among. I'm just telling you the ideas that I have to visit to get there.

Not really "hiding" in the crowd; more a sense that in the hustle and bustle of this prosperous city, it's easy for tricksters to slip in unnoticed (without really even trying).
That being said, if it requires an explanation in English, it's probably not an ideal expression :P

>Hey, have you seen one of my installments go out without a stupid
>typo?  I let your story there shame me a little. I should be doing
>cleaner work.

Sorry to say I haven't been keeping up; I plan to save them all to an e-reader and bring them with me the next time I take a long vacation :)

> So it should be {paghna'vaD vIt 'e' ngIl} ?
>
> "He dared to tell the truth regarding nothing at all."  Still escapes
> me.  Do we need {'e' ngIlbe'} instead?

I interpret <paghna'vaD vIt> as "tell the truth to nobody at all". I take it you regard the receiver of the truthtelling as the object rather than the beneficiary?

> Like if I say {chIch HoHbe'} to translate "She didn't kill him on
> purpose," when really it means "She deliberately did not kill him,"
> and I need {bong HoH} to be sure of transmitting my meaning.  I still
> make this error.

I'd like to agree with you, but there are some canonical sentences that make me wonder. For instance:

Hoch DaSopbe’chugh batlh bIHeghbe' - Eat everything or you will die without honor.

Like you, I'd expect batlh Heghbe' to mean "You non-die honorably" or "You honorably go on living", but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I seem to recall there were other examples, but that's the only one I can remember right now. If it IS the only one, perhaps one can put it aside.

> ghunchu'wI' hits me with sticks.

'oy'naQ lo'be'chugh not nenghep Dalop.

> {QI' much} would be a ... one of those things where the soldiers line
> up and the visiting general or queen walks by and says very nice,
> what's the English? I think it might also be "parade," but {QI' much}
> is definitely more like the ... are you old enough to remember May
> Day in the Soviet Union?

I had a similar thought, although in my head I was also imagining a general giving a PowerPoint presentation to the President.

> are you old enough to remember May
> Day in the Soviet Union?

tlhoS.

Oh, hey, I just realized that tlhoS is a pun!
#latetotheparty

> The bit I don't like is that it gears me up for the action of the
> sentence to be at the {much}, and then backs me up again. It's like
> if I'm at the airport and a plane is approaching from the east and he
> reports "I'm five miles west of [some point he's already past]." So
> you look west for him and then when he gets to the end of the
> sentence you have to turn around and look east.

My concerns are somewhat similar. It works for me grammatically, but it reads a bit weird. It may work in an academic text.

> I like that one! It pulls me into the story. I may be stealing it.

jIHvo' bInIDDI' choquvmoH!

> For a story like this I'd say read it, retell it without looking at
> the original, then add in anything essential to the story that you
> missed, or got in the wrong order.

Good point.
Actually, I regard this translation as a bit of a warm-up exercise for doing a more proper reinterpretation of the story.


> I challenge everyone who is sitting back pontificating on the exact
> uses of {-taH} to write a Klingon version of one of those, *without
> consulting an English or other language version*. Just write the
> story as you remember it, in Klingon.

muDuQ qaDvam.

> >tuQmoH is glossed as "put on (clothes)" not "dress someone" or "put
> >(clothes) on."
>
>I don't always trust glosses, but you may have a point.
>Interestingly, tuQHa'moH is glossed as "to undress", so perhaps it
>really is as De'vID suggests, and tuQmoH, like lo'laH, is a set
>expression, and one can say such things as <yopwaH
>vItuQmoHHa'qangbe' Qel> ("I'm unwilling to drop my pants, Doctor."

I'm still working on a personal canon project so I can be better
about such things.

> > I don't even get "the there nobility"  in English.
>Basically, the idea is that it's "the nobility pertaining to there",
>which is to say those that are present.

> Ah, as in the original was "The assembled nobles" or the like. Feel
> free to escape from words that make the Klingon more complicated and
> less clear.

Actually, I find the idea of writing things like <mulegh naDev 'avwI'> ("the guard here sees me") and <muDuQ pa' nagh beQ> ("the painting over there speaks to me") as being remarkably elegant, although admittedly it's hardly supported by canon and there are certainly other ways to do it (such as simply moving the naDev/pa' to the beginning of the phrase).

> bIcheghDI' jIQuch.
vaj yIQuch!