Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 16:29:16 -0400 From: SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name>
maj. pov qechvam. bIQapjaj! I was really proud that I recognized "maj" as the interjection for "Good!" without having to look it up! qatlho'.
Another thing I want is to start translating things into Klingon. Some help isn't bad, but even if I translate the whole thing on my own, I want to make sure I didn't (a) make a syntax error, (b) misuse affixes, or (c) misunderstand the meaning of a word.
I already have a particular pop song I'd like to translate in mind. Stay tuned!
Beginners always want to translate things, especially songs and poems, and this is probably one of the hardest things you can do.
Translating simple sentences and ideas is one thing. Translating poetry or lyrics that were chosen to be metaphorical, subtle, and pithy is quite another, and even expert Klingon speakers have trouble doing it well.
I won't tell you not to translate such things, but I strongly recommend you start on expressing yourself in Klingon rather than trying to translate the expressions of others.
A perspective I hadn't considered. I understand this, as I'm a songwriter myself (with a YouTube channel up at Savegraduation), and was recently invited to translate "I Want It That Way" by BSB into Kankonian (I'm translating some parts; my collaborator, who has his own conlang, is translating other parts). Not only am I a native English speaker, but I understand my own conlang well enough to reason that "You are my fire" would become *Ar as oul rivas* (You are the only blood), as blood is a metaphor used in Kankonian for things that are full of life and passion. My grasp on Kankonian's vocabulary is good enough to be able to think of *pivas* (girls) as a word that rhymes with *rivas*, so I could get the first two lines at: *Ar as oul rivas/Sem hales pivas* (You are the only blood/Among all girls). And so on. I've looked at some song translations on the Klingon Wiki, and I noticed most of them rhyme. So there's an unwritten convention in translating songs into Klingon to get them to fit both the meter and rhyme of the original lyrics?