[tlhIngan Hol] action based language

[Will Martin]

I think you are referring to official copies of The Klingon Dictionary. I own a copy of the Italian version and I’ve seen the Portuguese version and held it in my hand. I think I’ve seen the Spanish version as well.

Okrand was not involved in the making of any of the translations of TKD to other languages. The German version is notoriously bad, especially in the glosses, which very frequently stray by defining words by what Americans would likely consider to be the least likely, most restrictive stretch of a synonym.

I haven’t heard anyone criticize any of the other versions as severely as I’ve heard critiques of the German version. Germans apparently prefer the English version.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

> On Nov 9, 2020, at 5:34 PM, Russ Perry Jr <russperryjr at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> I have notes that there are also versions in Italian, Portuguese, and Czech, though I haven’t seen them myself.  But only English and German have the other (official) books.
> 
> Russ
> 
>> On Nov 9, 2020, at 4:25 PM, Steven Boozer <sboozer at uchicago.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> I wonder what Okrand's experience with non-English speakers has been.  TKD has only been translated into German AFAIK, or have there been other languages?
>> 
>> --
>> Voragh
>> 
>> ------------------------------Original Message------------------------------
>> From: Lieven L. Litaer
>> 
>>> Am 09.11.2020 um 21:13 schrieb Steven Boozer  [Voragh] :
>>> Lieven (aka our "Klingon Teacher from Germany"), have you noticed a 
>>> similar fixation on missing nouns by German-speaking newbies?
>> 
>> Yes, that's what I wrote in my initial message, where I said that many Terran languages have that problem.
>> 
>> As a side note, I was not focussing on verbs that can be used as nouns nouns, such as "drink" or "sleep". The obervation was a lot more that people tend to use "real" nouns which describe an action. Here are ome examples that we would be able to translate using verbs:
>> 
>> "What is the definition of xyz?"
>> --> "how is xyz defined"
>> 
>> "What is your preferation?"
>> --> What do your prefer?
>> 
>> "My intention is to..."
>> --> "I intend to..."
>> 
>> "This is my final decision."
>> --> I have decided.
>> 
>> "The Exploration of space..."
>> --> "to explore space..."
>> 
>> "The preparation of the food is complete"
>> --> "I have finished cooking"
>> 
>> And so one. I'm sure there are more cases like this, where we would recast this using a verb.
>> 
>> And then, suddenly, I just remembered a nice canon example:
>>  "My death sentence was commuted"
>>  {vImuHlu' net wuqHa'.} (ENT)
>> 
>> THERE! noun --> verb
>> (I'll check if I find more canon proof for this.)
>> 
>> --
>> Lieven L. Litaer
>> aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
>> _______________________________________________
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>> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
>> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
> 
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