[tlhIngan Hol] tIq voqghach

Daniel Dadap daniel at dadap.net
Thu Jun 21 05:19:15 PDT 2018


> On Jun 21, 2018, at 00:46, Rhona Fenwick <qeslagh at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Too far? Hardly. I presume you're aware of the story behind the Klingon Hamlet. :P


What do you mean? Sure, perhaps the restoration of this classic work if Klingon literature wouldn’t have happened had we not been made aware of its existence by a one-off comment that cheng Sa' made over dinner, but I have faith of the heart that the truth about SeQpIr would have been revealed eventually.

> On Jun 20, 2018, at 22:39, Alan Anderson <qunchuy at alcaco.net> wrote:
> 
> Adverbials like {DaH} are not nouns and do not carry noun suffixes like {-'e'}.

Ah, of course. I was just trying to capture the “right now” emphasis from the English version, but it’s not actually important, and it actually works better metrically without it.

In any case, I realized after the fact that this translation combines two different verses. I was working from memory, and accidentally remembered pieces of the original Rod Stewart version rather than the version we know and love (or know and hate) from Enterprise. That line shouldn’t exist; maybe something like this should take its place:

'ej DaH tagha' chenchoH Hoch vInajpu'bogh

And now finally everything I have dreamed about is beginning to take form

> {voqghach} is as strange in Klingon as "trustness" is in English. It's usually better to use a verb as a verb instead of mangling it into the role of a noun. Here, consider {tIqwIj vIvoq}, or just {tIq vIvoq} when the meter wants fewer syllables.

I thought it would probably be awkward. I actually originally wrote “tIq vIvoqmo'” when I originally cranked out a translation without trying to make it fit the music, but then decided that this meant something more like “I’ve got faith in the heart”, i.e., the heart is something that I believe in. While this is a possible interpretation of “I’ve got faith of the heart”, the more immediate meaning that I get from that phrase is something along the lines of “the heart is the origin of my faith”.

I suppose another possibility could be “tIqwIjmo' jIvoqlaH” (because of my heart I can trust”, but the faith is also supposed to be the reason for things). Or “tIqwIjvo' jIvoqmo'” (because I trust from my heart). Or going back to the “faith in the heart” reading, “qaSlaH tIq vIvoqmo'” (it can happen because I trust the heart).

> I might quibble about some of the choices of vocabulary or phrasing, but I try not to get too deep into that sort of thing when someone is translating poetry.

I’d still be interested to hear the quibbles, if only to help my understanding of vocabulary nuance.


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