On 6/4/2018 10:26 AM, Daniel Dadap wrote:
The phrase “vengDaq jIboghpu'bogh” idly popped into my mind this morning and naturally it morphed into this. Please let me know about any unforgivable grammatical or lexical errors and I will do my best to correct them while preserving the flow of the song:
This is the old /ship in which I fled/ problem. The head noun of a relative clause MUST be either the subject or object of the clause. Without regard to meter or rhyme, /in the town where I was born/ would probably best be expressed as *boghpu'ghach vengwIj*/in my birth-town./
vengHomDaq jIboghpu'bogh, bIQ'a' lengbogh loD tu'lu'. maHvaD yInDaj lut nuja', Daq bIQ Dujmey Hoch qaSpu'.
I don't understand this line. I'd also note that a *bIQ Duj* is already used for a surface ship. I'm not sure how Klingons would refer to a submarine.
vaj bIQDaq jul mave'taH,
I think what you're going for is *vaj bIQDaq julDaq mave'*/So we travel on a mission in the water toward the sun./ The word *jul* needs some kind of reason for being there. I don't think you really want *-taH;* the line /So we sailed up to the sun / Till we found a sea of green/ isn't about the continuousness of the journey, going on before the time of this action and going on after the time of this action. It's just a statement of what the action was.
bIQ'a' SuD wISamDI' mamev.
I know you're concerned for meter and assonance, but this really needs to be *mamevpu',* and probably *wISampu'DI'.* You're talking about an action that is completed in the time in which the action happens.
'ej yu'egh bIngDaq maHtaH, bIQ qoD DujmajDaq maHegh…
Again, I recognize your poetic constraints, but in prose, and assuming we can use *bIQ qoD Duj* as /submarine,/ this would be simple as *'ej yu'egh bIngDaq bIQ qoD Duj SuD wIDab*/And we inhabit our *SuD* submarine beneath the waves./
bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH,
Let's just drop the *Hoch, *okay? English has a special phrase /we all/ which syntactically means exactly the same thing as /we,/ but it includes a connotation of completeness, like there's no one left who isn't counted. Klingon doesn't have this. There's no evidence that Klingon say *Hoch maH* or *maH Hoch* or anything else to mean this, and grammatical analysis of this phrase doesn't lead to English /we all./ Grammatically, I'd be more inclined to use *Hochmaj*/our allness/ as a third-person noun before those. But that sounds silly too, even if it has the virtue of making grammatical sense. Or use a *-chu'* to indicate completeness.
DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH. bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH, DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
An interesting strategy to spread out the concepts where the English original just repeats phrases.
naDev chaHtaH jupma' je,
Poetry again. In prose this would be better as *'ej tIjpu' juppu'ma'*/And our friends have boarded./ This definitely needs to be an *'ej,* not a *je.*
Sumqu' je latlhpu' tu'lu'.
You've got two main verbs in this sentence; it doesn't work. The *je* is a bit wrong too, since you're not repeating noun or verbs from one sentence to another. I'd just drop any /and/ or /also;/ the English doesn't use one. Maybe in prose it would be *jIlmaj chaH latlh law''e'.*
'ej vogh QoQ muchchoHlu'pu'…
The *vogh* is there for a syllable?
[ QoQ muchlu'taH ]
bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH, DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH. bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH, DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
[ tujqu'choH QuQ. ] [ nughoS jagh. ] [ chay' jura? ] [ batlh maHegh! ] [ cha yIghuS! ] [ So'wI' yIchu'Ha'! ]
chomonmoHpu'.
'ej ngeDtaHvIS yInmeymaj, Hoch 'utbogh Dochmey wIghaj.
*DIghaj*
SuDqu' chal, 'ej SuD bIQ je,
*SuDqu'* is green. I wouldn't use *je* here, since you're saying that one thing is *SuD* and the other is *SuDqu';* that's not an /also*.*//**/The song is making a contrast between two things by saying how they have different colors. In ordinary Klingon language, sky and sea have the same color, though they are different shades of that color. If you want to maintain the contrast, you have to talk about shades, in which case you definitely can't use *je.* I might change it up a bit and use *SuD chal 'ach SuDqu' bIQ*/The sky is *SuD* but the sea is very *SuD.*/
bIQ qoD DujmajDaq maHegh…
bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH, DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH. bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH, DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
(If the lyrics don’t make it obvious, sing this to the tune of “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles. The dialog taken from the beginning of “Conversational Klingon” is meant to take the place of the muffled speech heard before the final verse; if anybody ever ends up recording this, feel free to substitute other dialog, or cut out some lines to make it fit better, depending on the amount of time in the intervening measures between the chorus and verse.)
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name