[tlhIngan Hol] Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor

Aurélie Demonchaux demonchaux.aurelie at gmail.com
Sun Dec 3 11:37:10 PST 2017


I'd like to suggest also using {tlhorgh}, since according to the KGT:

To the Klingon palate, the best food tastes {tlhorgh} ("pungent," though
> some non-Klingons may prefer to translate the word as "rank" or "gamy")


So we could have:

{Qapla' tlhorghmoH lujpu'ghach'e'}
It is failure that makes success pungent/delicious.

Or, since verbs are generally preferred in Klingon:

{bIQappa' bIlujchugh, reH tlhorghqu' Qapla'}
If you fail before you succeed, success is always very pungent/delicious

What do you think ?


2017-12-03 4:57 GMT+01:00 nIqolay Q <niqolay0 at gmail.com>:

> ​​On Sat, Dec 2, 2017 at 9:14 PM, kechpaja <kechpaja at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> Given how Klingon seems to work, I've been trying to avoid both {-ghach}
>> and {-bogh} unless I decide that I really need them, since so many
>> things (especially proverbs of this sort) that in English use
>> nominalized verbs and relative clauses tend to skip them in Klingon.
>
>
> ​I could​ have sworn there was canon about how {-ghach} itself was a
> marked suffix that draws attention to itself (which is why I mentioned
> avoiding it), but it looks like using {-ghach} without suffixes is what's
> marked (http://klingonska.org/canon/1994-09-holqed-03-3-a.txt), and that
> {-ghach} itself seems to be fine. I thought I knew canon better than that.
> {Hu'tegh!} Anyway, sometimes using {-ghach} too much can suggest that you
> just got lazy and didn't try to think about your sentence, but there's
> nothing inherently wrong with it, especially if it's the best fit for your
> sentence.
>
> {-bogh} is wholly uncontroversial. A look through "The Klingon Way" shows
> plenty of relative clause
> ​s in proverbs.​
>
>
>> I'm
>> also trying to work around English-style phrasings such as "give
>> something a flavor".
>
>
> ​It's good to be aware of Englishisms in your translations, but I'm not
> sure "give something a flavor" is inherently too English-y. Flavor is a
> thing, and things can be given. It's a metaphorical sort of giving, maybe,
> but the whole expression is a metaphor. As an alternative to {nob},
> {ghajmoH} is pretty basic but serviceable. I also like De'vID's suggestion
> of {chel}.
>
>
>> Qapla' 'eymoHbogh ghevI' 'oH lujlu'ghach'e'.
>>
>
> ​This is fine; it's pretty much the first thing I thought of. (I went with
> {lujpu'ghach'e'} myself, but {-lu'} also makes sense.)
>
>
>> Or maybe this:
>>
>> Qapla' 'eymoHbogh ghevI' bIH Qaghmey'e'.
>>
>> I may end up going with the last one; {Qagh} is about as close as
>> Klingon has to a non-{-ghach} noun for "failure".
>>
>
> I wouldn't use {Qagh} "mistake" as a synonym for failure​. {pIqarD HoD}
> says it better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TCX90yALsI
> (That's a pretty Klingon sentiment too... a first attempt at a translation:
> {Qaghbe'chugh vay', vabDot lujlaH vay'. puj 'oHbe'. yIn 'oH.})
>
> ​You could get even shorter, depending on what parts of the original
> you're willing to drop and how much of the metaphor you want to leave
> implied:
> {Qapla' ghevI' 'oH lujpu'ghach'e'} "Failure is the sauce of success."​
> {Qapla' 'eymoH lujpu'ghach'e'} "Failure makes success delicious."
>
> ​{lujpu'ghach jablu'DI' je reH QaQqu' Qapla' nay'} "Success is a dish best
> served with failure." (This has very little to do with the original
> phrasing, but the food metaphor made me want to riff on the familiar
> Klingon proverb.)​
>
>
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