[Tlhingan-hol] Propellers and rotors

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' Anthony, jatlh:
> It should be remembered that the canon Klingon vocabulary that we have
> is much oriented towards space travel with Star Trek technology, because
> it is needed where there is speech in Klingon in Star Trek movies and
> episodes. For the technology pf craft that need propellers and rotors and
> rudders etc, likely the recourse would have to be "ask Okrand".

True. When translating "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", which is naturally very heavy in maritime vocabulary, I had to improvise in a few places; as Voragh has noted, where the English version of the Rime has "sail", I often rendered it {vo'wI'} "propeller".

With that said, there were only very few instances where I was hard up against it to translate an English mariner's term into Klingon, and spaceship vocabulary is surprisingly good at rendering this most of the time.

(poD vay')

taH:
> Compare the lack of ground transport vocabulary compelling much use on
> this group of {Duj} to mean "car" when writing about real-world matters; I
> once found {Duj tlha'wI'} for "trailer towed by car".

It's important to remember that Klingon definitions may not be as restrictive as English ones. We have {puH Duj} and {bIQ Duj} from TalkNow to describe cars and ships; but we know that Klingons have a strong naval history, and no doubt some form of ground transport would still be used on Kronos. For that reason I find it very difficult to believe that Maltz would not have known words to give us for "water-going ship" and "land vehicle" in the TalkNow vocabulary, and so I think {Duj} is probably not just the specific "spaceship", but more generally "vessel, vehicle" (with "ship", "car", "spaceship" as contextually limited alternatives).

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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