[2670] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: SaQumqa'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Jan 20 12:11:32 1994
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM>
From: Mark Reed <Mark.Reed@cad.gatech.edu>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM>
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 1994 12:01:45 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <9401201539.AA00890@uva.pcmail.Virginia.EDU> from "Will Martin" at
Jan 20, 94 10:39:08 am
\
\
\On Jan 19, 2:29pm, dls9@aol.com wrote:
\> Subject: Re: SaQumqa'
\...
\> So, my revised quote turns out:
\>
\> {nIjeytaHjaj jaghlI' puj'e' je} "May your weak enemies (topic) also defeat
\> you."
\...
\> Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
\>
\ OOOooooooooooooooooh! *I* get it. I was confused by the conjunction. It
\made me expect two nouns. I thought you were trying to say, "May your enemies
\and your weakness defeat you." TKD does list {je} as "also", though it is
\more commonly used as "and" joining two nouns.
"also" is not a separate translation of 'je' but part of the same one;
it means that you might read "jawwI' bangwI' je" as either "my lord and my
love" or "my lord, also my love". I'm not a pabpo', but it seems pretty clear
that it cannot be used as an adverb, which is the sense of the above
sentence.
"May your weak enemies also defeat you" is a goody, but I'm not sure how
to approach it in tlhIngan Hol. The "also" is easily replaced by something
else, but all of the "something else"s I can think of still have no
analogue in Klingon. I tried "May your enemies defeat you despite their
weakness", but the closest I could get to "despite" was the sense of "'ach".
So that came out something like this:
jaghpu'lI' pujjaj 'ach nIjeytaHjaj May your enemies be weak; even so, may
they defeat you.
Not at all the same feeling, although the insult definitely survives the
translation...
(I like the use of -taH here, by the way. Nice touch, Guido.)
-marqoS
