[136] in tlhIngan-Hol
re: Help with translation
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 19:17:07 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: krankor@IMA.ISC.COM (Captain Krankor)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 92 16:37:25 -0500
Regarding: "A soft word and a sword gets more than a soft word alone"
Ryan Zerby attempts the translation as:
mu'Hom je 'etlh tlhetlh law' mu'Hom mob tlhetlh puS
Ok, well to start with, there is one outright error here: mu'Hom je 'etlh
When joining nouns with conjunctions, the conjunction goes *after* the
nouns. Thus, that phrase should be: mu'Hom 'etlh je
For the rest, I think I might have made some slightly different word
choices. And we also get into an interesting grammatic case that bears
investigation.
I think I would have chosen ta' for the verb instead of tlhetlh. I find
ta' to be one of those really all-around-useful verbs {{:-). Using mob
to indicate the aloneness is interesting, and technically correct, however
I think the more usual construction would be to use neH (See page 57 at
the top -- this is neH the adverbial, not neH the verb). Thus, my translation
would be:
mu'Hom 'etlh je ta' law' mu'Hom neH ta' puS
What is interesting here is we find ourself again facing the "adjectival" vs.
"non-adjectival" verb dilemma. Can we use a verb like ta' (or tlhetlh, for
that matter) in a law'/puS construction? Well, again, by my interpretation
of the issue (see my recent posting), the answer is "yes", because basically
any verb can express "a quality or condition". It turns out to be a fortuitous
interpretation, in this case, because, whereas with the adjective issue it's
not critical which way we decide (since we could always use the -bogh
construction if it were felt that the verbs should be distinguished), in this
case we'd really be up shit creek if we felt that you could only use
"adjectival" verbs in a law'/puS construction, because there is no other
alternative available. This, of course, was not the motivating reason in making
the interpretation, it is simply a serendipitous ramification of said
choice. {{:-)
From The Grammarian's Desk,
--Krankor
