[Tlhingan-hol] A moment of clarity

[qunnoQ HoD]

A moment of clarity

I just realized something,which i would like to share with the rest of the
list,since i believe it will be of benefit to beginners,such as myself.
This concerns something,which is well known to experienced
klingonists,still it remains something that newcomers may find hard to
digest. At least i was finding hard to digest myself,until the following
happened.

earlier today i was wondering how to translate in klingon king leonidas'
response to the persian messenger,who asked him to surrender his arms ; i
was wondering how to translate in klingon the "come and get them" which i
believe more or less almost everyone has heard of.

but as i was trying to figure out how to say this phrase in
klingon,something didn't feel right.. It was not that I couldn't figure out
the klingon translation. It was that I couldn't convey in klingon the
"feeling" of this phrase. No matter what i did,it just didn't *feel* right.

but then it hit me ! and the realization which followed,made things clearer
in a most spectacular way. It was as if i was trying to find my way in a
dark room,until suddenly the lights went on and everything became clearer.

but first let me write some details,which are essential to this post.

the actual phrase that king Leonidas spoke to the persian messenger,is
"molon lave" in ancient greek. Every greek person,even one who doesn't know
ancient greek,who will hear the "molon lave" will *feel* that this is as
defiant a phrase,as it could be possibly be. In fact,many times myself i
have wondered about the look on the persian's messenger face when he heard
it. let alone the look on the xerxes face..

but if one tries to translate this phrase in the greek people speak
today,the "molon lave" will degrade to a mere "come and get them" which in
no way does it retain even the slightest defiance/aggression as the
original phrase did.

..and the even bigger problem is,that even if someone tried to find all
kinds of workarounds/linguistic fixes then again,there is no way that
modern greek could convey the outstanding (and that's an understatement)
feeling of the original phrase.

thinking all this,i asked myself..

does the fact that modern greek fail to express the feeling of "molon
lave",mean that modern greek are deficient ? and if i cannot translate in
current greek such a simple phrase,then why should i demand that klingon
would be in a position of expressing this phrase's feeling ?

finally i realized,that one cannot expect any given language to be able to
translate and express everything,and in the exact same way that any other
language has to say. things don't work that way.

anything written originally in a language (real or constructed) has its
beauty expressed in exactly that original language. any possible inability
to convey the same beauty in another language is not a sign of "deficiency"
; it is rather a natural consequence of the simple fact that languages are
meant to be diverse. they are meant to be different,the same way that
individual people are always different compared to each other.

maybe this is the reason why chancellor gorkon's words,will always echo in
our minds "..you have not experienced shakespeare,until you have read him
in the original klingon.."

be that as it may..

SpartanS,nuHmeyraj tIchagh !
ghochol 'ej bIH tISuq !

cpt qunnoQ
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20151111/ab786f33/attachment.html>