[tlhIngan Hol] Goat animal

[Michael Roney, Jr.]

On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Robyn Stewart <robyn at flyingstart.ca> wrote:
>
> At qep’a’, ghunchu’wi’ and I were reading aloud to each other from Green
Eggs, just translating on the fly.  When we got to the page with the goat,
we just left it at “goat”.  It’s an Earth creature.  It has a shape, an
odour, a set of behaviours, a history in literature and a whole raft of
connotations. Why would you want to substitute another animal that can’t
possibly be the same?
>

I hear people do this all the time when speaking non-English around me.

When I worked at an auto shop, I had customers that would interject English
auto part names into their non-English sentence.
Does their language have a term for that part of the car? Probably. But
it's technical jargon for mechanics, so they don't know it.

When I worked for a credit card company, people would leave the more
technical terms in English.

When I worked at Amazon, packages would be multi-lingual.
And unlike my other two examples, these translators had time to sit down
and think about things,
and they left things in English as well. Often they were computer or phone
terms.
USB was never translated, for example.


English also does this.
Qov's targh example, for example.
taco
déjà vu (personal hobby of mine is to ask people how to say this in their
language; a lot of people don't seem to know)


Since joining this list in 2002, I've noticed that a lot of Klingon
speakers don't like doing this.
They like using Klingon words for things.
To the point that there's an rule on the list not to transliterate things,
because we already know you're going to try.


Now, if I'm talking about an earth cat, I don't see a problem with calling
it a {vIghro'}. The two are close enough IMO.
If someone calls their dog a {targh}, I roll my eyes, but know what they
mean.


I think the answer varies based on the project.
Reading a book aloud and translating on the fly for fun, I'd leave it as
"goat".
Translating the book for publication, I'd substitute a known Klingon
animal, and inform the illustrator of the substitution.
In that book, it's not important that we have a goat.

Even in The Three Billy Goats Gruff, I'm pretty sure we could change the
animal and keep the story.

If, for some reason, keeping the goat as a goat is important, leave it as
"goat".


That said, I am guilty of wanting Klingon names for Terran animals.
My 7yo son is obsessed with bunnies, and there was really no known Klingon
animal to use instead.
And he's been asking what the Klingon word for "bunny" is for several years
now.
So I did vote in the poll this Spring/Summer for the "animals" category.
Because, to my son, it is very important that we're talking about bunnies.
We can't just substitute in another animal.
The same thing with my 9yo daughter and owls. But in her case, we had {lIr}.


~naHQun
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