On 8/1/2017 8:01 AM, Lawrence M. Schoen wrote:
On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 7:49 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:
Idioms often don't translate between languages, and since Klingon is unrelated to any Earth language there's no chance that idioms in one are also idioms in the other (unless there's borrowing).
I understand your intention here but I think you're overstating the case. In part, because such an occurrence would be the very definition of "chance" but also because idioms emerge out of behavior and observation and Terrans and Klingons engage in quite a few parallel behaviors. Consider for a moment the many idioms we have for vomiting. This behavior is common ground and I would not be surprised to find a Klingon variant of "he tossed his cookies" that would be readily understandable as figurative language, without need to appeal to "borrowing."
Oh sure, Klingon will sometimes have idioms for things that English has idioms for. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Klingon had an idiom equivalent to English /he tossed his cookies,/ but I would be VERY surprised if that idiom were *chabDaj woD.* Let me amend my statement to say that idioms often don't translate LITERALLY between languages. You can translate an idiom by selecting an equivalent idiom in the target language, but not by translating the source idiom word for word. But if you don't have an equivalent idiom in the target language, then you have to find the literal meaning of the idiom and translate that. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name