[Tlhingan-hol] No Small Thing

[Felix Malmenbeck]

I'd advise against using a literal translation here; in the English sentence, the word "small" would appear to really mean "trivial", so a good word to use here would be {ram}.
There is the word {tu'HomIraH}, meaning something like "insignificant thing", but I believe this refers to actual, physical objects.

The phrase {ra'wI' batlh} is somewhat ambiguous, but I would interpret it as "the commander's honor", which is to say that it refers to one of the commader's virtues, rather than to respect given by the commander.

I'd advise looking at the context in which the sentence was given:

Picard speaks well of Worf, saying that "he has earned [his] admiration and [his] respect", and K'mpec responds (according to the script):

"The trust of a commanding officer is admirable... the council has noted it."

So, there are two important components that I see here:

1) K'mpec acknowledges that Picard respects Worf; he is not speaking of a hypothetical scenario, but of an actual fact.
2) He says that this fact is admirable.

So, I might go with something like:

Duvoq ra'wI'lI'. rambe' ngoDvam.
"Your commander trusts you. This fact is not insignificant."
In the context of the episode, I believe that Worf's right to address the council is being doubted, and K'mpec is addressing that.

Duvuv ra'wI'lI'. vaj bIrambe'.
"Your commander respects you. Therefore you are not insignificant."

A fairly general statement might be:

SuvwI' vuvchugh ra'wI'Daj, vISaHHa'Qo'.
"If a warrior is respected by his/her commander, I will not disregard him/her."

SuvwI' vuv ra'wI'Daj net SaHnIS.
"One must care that a warrior is respected by his/her commander."



-----Original Message-----
From: Gaerfindel [mailto:gaerfindel at hotmail.com] 
Sent: den 11 juni 2014 14:25
To: tlhingan-hol at kli.org
Subject: [Tlhingan-hol] No Small Thing

In the TNG Episode "Sins of the Father," Azetbur mentions that, "The respect of a commander is no small thing."  How would that be rendered in TlhIngan Hol?

{machbe' vaj ra'wI batlh.}?  Or perhaps {machbe' mang ra'wI' batlh} if we're talking about one trooper among many.

~quljIb

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