On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 2:55 PM, Michael Roney, Jr. <nahqun@gmail.com> wrote:
Reading a book aloud and translating on the fly for fun, I'd leave it as "goat". Translating the book for publication, I'd substitute a known Klingon animal, and inform the illustrator of the substitution. In that book, it's not important that we have a goat.
For "Green Eggs and Ham", the important part is the rhyme with "boat". Were I to commit to a faithful poetic translation of the book, I might seriously consider substituting {qISa'ruj}. If I thought about it longer, I would probably change a lot in order to preserve the simple vocabulary and phrasing, rather than worry about the specific words used in the original. If you want to evoke an animal known to be nimblefooted on mountainsides and with a reputation for chewing on anything remotely plantlike, you could do a lot worse than calling it a {tera' qapra'} or {HIrquS} or even {bIlI'ghot}. If I had pick a Klingon name for a goat, my inclination would be to call it {lurSaS}. -- ghunchu'wI'