[tlhIngan Hol] why we shouldn't do transcriptions

Lieven L. Litaer levinius at gmx.de
Thu Feb 27 02:46:12 PST 2020


Am 27.02.2020 um 11:31 schrieb Felix Malmenbeck:
> I use transcription for a number of reasons:

AS I wrote before, I agree with any opinion on this, but I stick to mine.

> * So that my texts could be read either in romanization or in pIqaD.

That of course makes sense in most cases.

> * So as not to break the flow of the language in speech

That's true. I also do that when I have foreign words in a Klingon text,
  read them with a Klingon accent (I did in the Netflix commercial,
saying netvlItlh - but I never wrote that down)

> If Nick Nicholas hadn't transcribed names in his translation of the Gospel of Mark, he'd have had to either fill the text with Ancient Greek names like Πέτρος and Ἰησοῦς Χριστός (which would make it difficult for most of us to read, and give rather a disjointed impression), or to use Roman script (which I'd argue misrepresents the source material).

That's a point I would mostly contradict. A transliteration would have
made sense, if the target language were written in pIqaD only. But as it
was decided to write in the "latin/roman transcription", the decision of
what writing system to use was set. And that's why - even today - I
still follow the suggestion/convention) of the mailing list FAQ that was
written in its beginnings 1995, to simply include English words into a
Klingon text.

During the Bible project, they should have followed that rule, or at
least have made a convention for the project, because today, as multiple
people are working on their own, there are multiple transliterations for
the names, which are not consistent, so absolutely not useful. Reading
{DaHjaj Jesus vIghom} is a lot easier to read than finding out that
jeSuwa', 'IHrIStoS and je'SuS are the same people.

In my opinion.

> New learners make incorrect assumptions all the time,

That's true, I agree. What bothers me most is that we now have a non
canon word in this episode of Family Guy that could have been avoided.

But maybe that's just how languages evolve :-)


--
Lieven L. Litaer
aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
http://www.klingonisch.de
http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/FamilyGuy



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