[tlhIngan Hol] ordering and scope of adverbials relative to timestamps

[nIqolay Q]

On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 6:26 PM Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:

>
> In other words, I’m trying to explain to you why this phrase is
> particularly difficult to translate.
>

The reason this phrase is particularly difficult to translate is because
Maltz hasn't provided a word or idiom for referring to "almost a period of
time". There are, after all, plenty of phrases that would be utterly taboo
for a Klingon to utter that we can translate easily: *tera'nganpu' SuvvIp
qeylIS. *The opening to TKW points out that aphorisms aren't always
universal within their culture, and might be contradicted in other contexts
by another belief or aphorism. I don't see why this same logic wouldn't
apply to a remark Worf makes in the context of Klingon punctuality.

It makes sense that a Klingon would try to avoid being approximate when
telling you that a meeting is at such-and-such a time, because that
connotes indecisiveness or an inability to control one's schedule. But
there's no such indecisiveness when talking about something being "almost
thirty years ago" or "approximately five meters". They're not leaving off
the however-many decimal places because they can't make up their mind.
They're leaving them off because the order of magnitude of the thing in
question is what's important to the conversation, not the exact dimensions.

As for the original topic, one idea might be to use a phrase like *wa'
tlhoS naQbogh ben** One almost-complete year ago.* I'm not sure of the best
way to use that construction for other "almost" measurements.
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