[183] in tlhIngan-Hol
To be or not to be.
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 19:19:23 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Mark E. Shoulson <shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 92 20:07:30 EST
I don't clearly recall what was said in the movie, but apparently the
consensus was that it was "taH pagh taHbe'".
I'm new here, maybe I shouldn't be doing this, but I just have to know what
the hell Okrand was thinking when he did that as a translation. Let's face
it. "taH pagh taHbe'" means something along the lines of "something
continues or else something does not continue" (where something iss
he/she/it/they). A rotten rendering of "to be or not to be".
Accepting for now that "taH" is a good verb to use, the English is written
using infinitives, the Klingon has finite verbs. That's ok, Klingon
doesn't really have non-finite forms (or very few). But the meaning is
still totally wrong. Hamlet isn't asking about whether or not something is
continuing, he's asking whether or not *he* should "be". So maybe
something like "jItaH pagh jItaHbe'". (OBTW, the fact that "pagh" was used
indicates that the noun form of "taH" (is there one?) isn't being used, of
course).
This is really not much better. It means "I continue or else I do not
continue". A tautology, surely. The trouble is that the "or" in the
English is neither an inclusive or nor an exclusive or, but rather a
connective question. English makes do with "or" for that; can we use
Klingon "pagh"? Or maybe "qoj", even though only one can be true? For
that matter, nowhere in the statement are we even informed that there's a
question! In English, these sorts of infinitive conjunctions with "or" are
known to be questioning, but Klingon has only finite forms, how do we
distinguish this from a statement? Maybe something like "jItaH'a' pagh
jItaHbe''a'?", using the questioning 'a' suffix. Or perhaps, losing the
questioning, we could use the new "-jaj", yielding "jItaHjaj pagh
jItaHbe'jaj". I think the one with -'a' looked better. I suppose, since
the rest of the soliloquy goes on about someone in general, maybe you can
get away without the "jI-" prefix, and leave it third-person, but I'm still
not happy about the use of "pagh" with no indication of a question.
On the other hand, Okrand said it, who am I to question? Besides, it's
poetry and normal rules often go out the window in poetry.
~mark
