Here’s what I have in my notes:
'Iw bIQtIqvo'
toS SuvwI' yoH
puH QaDDaq paw
The fearless warrior
Climbs out of the blood
Onto dry land. [paq'raD, Canto 1, Stanza 4]
If “river of” wasn’t accidentally omitted from the English, the image may be there’s more blood than water in the River of Blood after this confrontation.
I don’t have a copy of paq’batlh, just various extracts. Can someone check the original (and the second edition). Thanks.
Voragh
P.S. I’m reminded of when Quark said to Grilka after defeating a rival for her affections (with Worf’s computer-aided assistance) in DS9 "Looking for par'Mach
in All the Wrong Places": “This is ridiculous! I’m surrounded by corpses, my shoes are dripping in blood—and you want me to feel romantic?!”
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From: Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol
The English translation omits the word “river”. Shouldn’t that be, “The brave warrior climbs out of the river of blood onto dry land.”? It seems to lose the sense of scale in terms of the horror to not mention that there’s enough blood
there to fill a river. I mean, if the Klingon were in a pool of blood up to his neck, one would expect him to be relatively comfortable, aside from being wet (“Do you mean we’re just supposed to SIT here?”), but he proves his fearlessness by actually swimming
across a river, presumably weighted down with weaponry and armor. THAT takes ENDURANCE.