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

[Will Martin]

You keep saying what I can’t or shouldn’t say, suggesting that I am cramping everyone’s style, telling them what they cannot say in the language. 

You cramp my style telling me what I can’t say. 

I’m just trying to explain why I think this particular kind of vague time stamp is so hard to translate in a way that we can generally agree on, and suggest an alternative: Skip the effort at translating an analog English phrase into Klingon by embracing its apparently digital nature. 

If I’m so wrong, why is this simple phrase so hard to translate?

Sent from my iPhone. 
charghwI’ ‘utlh

> On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:25 PM, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> A relative clause as a time stamp?
> 
> Novel? Yes. And clever. I don’t know that it is disallowed, but I’m pretty sure it has no peer in canon. It boldly goes. I’ll give it that. 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone. 
> Will
> 
>> On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:08 PM, nIqolay Q <niqolay0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> 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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