[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: teywI'

[Will Martin]

It’s interesting that in English, the word “file” is derived from various sources relating to the concept of things that are lined up in order, like standing single-file in a line. This extended to organizing papers by attaching them to a string or wire, which extended to our current meaning of a computer file, or a file cabinet, or filing things on a computer or in a file cabinet.

Likely, the carpenter’s tool is called a file because the teeth on the file are lined up, unlike a similar tool, the rasp, which has teeth that aren’t in lines. The action of filing down your fingernails is a further extension of using a file to do it. It all goes back to things being organized in lines… and it gets extended further when we refer to an emory board as a fingernail file because of what we do with it, despite it having no teeth arranged in rows, and is technically more of a miniature rasp.

In Klingon, you start with the verb, to use a file (on fingernails or wood or metal, etc.), and you name the tool for the thing you use to smooth/scrape/erode/shape the material you are working on.

So, it would be a total blunder to look up “file” in an English/Klingon dictionary to talk about computer files or file cabinets, instead of using {ta} or {De’}, since Klingons may very well not have a word, or even a concept of a computer file.

Consider that there are a lot of ways to handle data on a computer. We use files in ways that are more complex than most people understand. The simplistic model is that the operating system of a computer is made of executable files, apps are also executable files, and the documents or other data that the apps use are data files. This is true, but more accurately, on a Mac, an app consists of a folder full of files. The folder presents itself as if it were a file, and normal interface tools do not allow you to see what is inside the folder, and with few exceptions, everything relating to the app is contained in the folder, so you can delete it and you have deleted the app in the normal sense of the word.

In Windows, an app consists of dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of files, some of which are in a folder named after the app. The Windows interface makes it easy to go into that folder and see everything there, and, perhaps delete or modify or replace things, or stuff extra things in there, if you like. The same app may also have files in the same folders as the operating system, maybe even replacing some of the original files in the operating system.

Even with these variations, we think of data files as something fundamentally different from an executable file, but the fact is, your word processor executes a lot of stuff every time it displays a file to your screen or prints the file. Then there are macros… which are technically part of a document, but exist solely to be executed.

Then there are files that contain settings… Data or executable?

There are some apps that store data in a single file, so that unlike a spreadsheet or a word processor, you don’t open the app and then load the file. The file just loads when you load the app. Think of the original Calendar app (though now you can subscribe to multiple calendars, which are stored on servers run by different corporations). You don’t think about your calendar file. You just open the app and there’s your calendar.

Maybe Klingon apps each have, like the original Calendar app, all the data all the time, always running in background so that nothing is loaded or unloaded. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t load all your memories. They are just there. Maybe Klingon computers are like that. There’s only one app. You just ask the app stuff or tell the app to do stuff and like a good extension of your brain, it just answers or does what you recommend.

Likely, in the Star Trek Universe, when you walk around a spaceship, all the duty stations have different interfaces to the same app. Each interface is adapted to the operator’s needs to handle functions all actuated by the same global app. They probably don’t have individual apps.

In that world, the phrase “computer file” might be meaningless.

Record? Yes. {ghotpu’ ta’mey}? Yes. {De’}? Yes.

They might put information on a dedicated storage medium, but just understand the devices as a way to get stuff from here to there without actually thinking of the stuff itself as a file. It’s data. Not a data file. Just data.

And file cabinet? I don’t think I’ve ever seen printed documents in any Star Trek episode, let alone any physical storage facility for paper documents.

So, asking for the Klingon word for “computer file” might be similar to asking the Klingon word for “Bananagrams” or “Twinkie”, or “boomerang”, or “antidisestablishmentarianism”, or “superfragalisticexpialidocious”.

The Klingon language doesn’t really exist in order for humans to communicate. It exists in order for Klingons to communicate. You can pretend to be a Klingon and communicate with someone else pretending to be a Klingon, and that’s what the language is, at its core, like American Sign Language is for Deaf Americans to communicate with each other, or for hearing Americans to communicate with Deaf Americans, but it’s not really commonly used for hearing Americans to communicate with each other, just as French is for French people, or for people talking to French people (or other nations that use the French language), but it’s not primarily for English speaking people to talk to each other.

Language is associated with the people who speak it. Language doesn’t exist primarily as something to be translated into and out of, so it’s okay if a word in one language has no equivalent in another, so translation is problematic if you absolutely, positively want to translate a word from English, to Klingon, and back again, even if the word has no meaning to Klingons.

This is an altogether inefficient message explaining that there is no Klingon word for “file” as we think of the word for anything other than the thing we use to file our nails or wood or metal, etc., or the process of using that tool. As a people, they may very well not have the concept of a computer file, because their computing technology might not use files, any more than your brain has files.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On May 22, 2024, at 10:00 AM, Klingon Word of the Day via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> 
> Klingon Word of the Day for Wednesday, May 22, 2024
> 
> Klingon word: teywI'
> Part of speech: noun
> Definition: file
> Source: KGT
> 
> 
> This Klingon Word of the Day is brought to you by qurgh (qurgh at kli.org).
> 
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