On 10/25/2016 1:52 PM, Christa Hansberry wrote:
My friend who writes short stories has a character in one of her stories who has the super-power (they all have super-powers!) of being able to speak and understand any language in the universe. So in demonstration of this ability he says a line in German, and one in Welsh, followed by the declaration "vay' Hol qej vay' Hol!" which baffled me ("anyone's language is grouchy anyone's language"??), so I scrolled down to the footnote to see what she meant, and it said "any language, means any language."
So I tried to figure out what the correct way to say that would be, but I can't figure it out, and I can't correct her Klingon if I don't have a better solution myself. How would you translate this sentence?
The *qej* obviously comes from /be grouchy, mean,/ even though that's the wrong kind of /mean./ Your friend got this out of the Bing Translator (try it!). *vay' Hol* means /someone's language;/ I'm not sure whether *vay'* can be used to mean /any <thing>./ Better to reword the idea completely. Any problem with /every language?/ *Hoch Hol vIjatlhlaHbej 'ej vIyajlaHbej* /I can definitely speak and understand every language/ Another possibility, though I'm not sure whether it's grammatically acceptable: *Hochna' Hol vIjatlhlaH 'ej vIyajlaH */I can speak and understand definitely-every language/ Both of these sentences put forward the "yes, what I'm saying is really true" idea of the original in a way different than English. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name