While reading Captain Krankor's contribution in HolQeD Vol 6, Number 1, I wondered if there was any other way to solve the problem he raised.

Basically the issue was that the rule banning aspect suffixes after the 'e' in a sentence-as-object structure was making it impossible to translate a seemingly simple sentence:

The engineer attacked while I was watching the engineer fix the transporter ionizer unit.

(*) jolvoy' tI' jonwI' 'e' vIbejtaHvIS HIv jagh

The above translation would be perfect except for the fact that the -taH suffix is both forbidden (because it comes after the 'e') and required before -vIS.

So I thought of 2 possible solutions to try and work around it:

1/ the relative clause
jolvoy' tI'bogh jonwI''e' vIbejtaHvIS HIv jagh
(The enemy attacked while I was watching the engineer who was fixing the transporter ionizer unit)

Pros:
- grammatical

Cons:
- the focus of the "watching" is on the engineer rather than the whole action

2/ Nominalization and noun-noun construction
jonwI' jolvoy' tI'lI'ghach vIbejtaHvIS HIv jagh
(The enemy attacked while I was watching the engineer's fixing of the ionizer unit)

Pros:
- the focus of the "watching" is still on the entire action (the fixing of the unit by the engineer)

Cons:
- It may be heavy and unnatural to have a -ghach verb and a noun-noun construction with 3 nouns.

What do you think on this one? Do you have other ideas on how to translate this sentence?

ghItlhjaj

PS: (Apologies if this has already been discussed elsewhere, if so I could not find the thread)