Assume that someone translating the bible transliterates.. The reader reads a transliteration, but because it's not a transliteration of a famous name/place, he can't understand what the translator talks about. How in the name of holy glorious hell, can then he able to understand ? What will he google ? The jay' transliteration ? Or would the translator expect him to open a non-klingon bible, go to *that* specific line trying to sort this out ? If someone reads "sidon", he *can* google "sidon" and find what and where it is. But its' transliteration ? Yeah, good luck with that. Try it, and tell me how it goes.. ~ mayqel qunen'oS

Yes, it should be up to the translator, and depend on the intention of the translation: Is the writer role-playing as a Klingon? Or pretending to be writing for an audience of Klingons? Is the text aimed at new readers or experienced ones? Is it actually being used to communicate, or is it being used as ornamentation? Is it important that the text can be transliterated into pIqaD? Is it important that the Terran words fit seamlessly into the written text? Is it important that the Terran words fit seamlessly into the spoken translation? In this sense, it isn't much different from writing in one's own first language; you use one style when writing for preschoolers, another when writing an e-mail to friends, still another when writing a scholarly article, and something different entirely when writing a post-modern rhyming parody of recapitulation theory.

That's true, I agree. What bothers me most is that we now have a non canon word in this episode of Family Guy that could have been avoided.

That's always going to happen, though; from "GARR'DACK!" on The Simpsons, to "Krish-krush!" on Frasier, not to mention the mountains of Paramount Hol we have from official Star Trek productions. I'm all for keeping close track of what is and what isn't canon, so that we have a common reference point to start from, but I don't think we should restrict our use of the language to suit people who clearly don't have much interest in learning it, anyway. "Canon is the beginning of wisdom; not the end." ~ Spock, ca. 2293 //loghaD ________________________________ From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces@lists.kli.org> on behalf of mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2020 14:21 To: tlhIngan Hol mailing list Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] why we shouldn't do transcriptions fse: Of course, don't get me wrong.. I respect each person's choice to transliterate; after all that's why there's that beautiful button, called "delete", right ? But I remember once, trying to read the previously mentioned gospel, only to end up nearly smashing my computer against the wall, unable to make sense of the transliterations.. tlh: 'ach, HIyajHa'Qo'.. DIvI' Hol ngutlhmey tam vay' neHchugh, vaj DIbDaj 'oH, 'ej vIvuv. 'ej meqvammo', leQvetlh 'IH tu'lu', "delete" leQ, qar'a' ? 'ach, gospel Dellu'pu'bogh vIlaDmeH pa'logh jInIDta', 'ej tugh tlhoS tlhoy'Daq De'wI'wIj vIvo'ta', tamtaHghachmey vIyajlaHbe'pu'mo'.. ~ mayqel qunen'oS

Hugh:

using the name “Peter” would have been > biased towards readers who speak languages where the name Πέτρος has been adapted to “Peter”.

The readers of klingon are by definition "biased" toward the use of latin alphabet, since noone can learn klingon, unless he *can* use the latin alphabet. 99,9% of people who learn klingon, know english. And 99,9% of people who know english, would immediately recognize and understand the name "peter". On the other hand, how many would immediately understand the transliteration of that name ? There is a *major* contradiction here.. On one hand someone learning klingon is being taught, that his sentences must be clear and easily understood.. On the other hand there is the opinion, that "ok, lets transliterate 100 names, and whoever gets it gets it..". Transliterate for me the word "saducees", and then tell me that there's a way for *anyone* reading the transliteration to understand. And I will repeat what I asked earlier in this thread, but *noone* replied: If one reads the word "saducees" and doesn't understand he can look it up. But where can he look up its' transliteration ? ~ hchvchvn

On Feb 27, 2020, at 13:30, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:

Transliterate for me the word "saducees", and then tell me that there's a way for *anyone* reading the transliteration to understand.

And I will repeat what I asked earlier in this thread, but *noone* replied:

If one reads the word "saducees" and doesn't understand he can look it up. But where can he look up its' transliteration ?

It’s a proper noun, i.e., a name that identifies a particular person, place, animal, thing, group, etc. It doesn’t matter what particular form it takes as long as it takes a consistent form. I didn’t know what “saducees” was out of context and had to look it up (it seems that a more common spelling is Sadducees”), as you say, but the “out of context” part is very important here. You don’t need to understand what a name means. You only need to recognize that it refers to someone or something specific, and the same someone or something specific throughout the text whenever it appears. Within the context of the text, it would be clear that “Sadducees”, or whatever they end up being called, are a group of people. Within that same text, we would know about who they are based on how they are described and how they behave. Even “Sadducees” is a transliteration from the Greek Σαδδουκαιος which in turn is a transliteration from the Hebrew צדוקים. Would you read an English bible where every time a proper name appeared it was in a different script? Yes, transliterating a name makes it harder to find more information about whoever or whatever that name belongs to beyond the context of wherever that name appears. If somebody transliterates a name like “Sadducees” for a Klingon translation of the Bible into something like {SaDyuSIS} if they’re working with the English version of the name, {SaDDuqayoS} if they’re working with the Greek version of the name, or {SaDDuqIm} if they’re working with the Hebrew version of the name, then they won’t be able to find text outside of that Klingon Bible translation where people talk about them in Klingon because hardly anybody talks about the Bible in Klingon compared to the number of people who talk about it in English, Greek, or Hebrew. But for the purposes of comprehension *within the text itself*, it doesn’t matter what they’re called as long as they’re called the same thing every time they are mentioned. Yes, for a beginner it would probably be difficult to recognize that it’s a name, and some time would likely be wasted in figuring that out, but for anybody with a reasonable grasp of grammar and vocabulary, everything surrounding the name and the oddness of the word in general should make it quite obvious what it is. The usefulness of being able to look up the word “Sadducees” only exists because there’s already a lot of existing discussion regarding that name in English. If somebody were translating a very new or more obscure text where a proper name occurs, and nobody on the internet has discussed a particular name from that text, searching for that name would be just as unhelpful regardless of whether or not it was translated. If I read the Bible in Spanish, find a proper name I’m not familiar with (for this example let’s use María, even though everybody would know this name), should I be upset that when I try to look up this name I don’t get any information from people discussing the English Bible?

On 2/27/2020 4:19 PM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:

Am 27.02.2020 um 21:19 schrieb Hugh Son puqloD:

...

But for the purposes of comprehension *within the text itself*, it doesn’t matter what they’re called as long as they’re called the same thing every time they are mentioned.

And here is another problem: How can it be controlled that a name is constantly transcribed the same way?

It doesn't have to be. As long as it's consistent within the text, it's fine. And if a transliteration becomes especially popular, it will become accepted as the standard transliteration — not necessarily "right," just "standard."

The bible translation project is a good example where the same names are currently indeed transcribed differently. I am not an expert of religion, so is {yeSuS} the same person as {yeSuwa}?

Yes. One is a transliteration of the name from Greek, the other a transliteration of the name from Hebrew. The Greek name is itself a transliteration and modification of the Hebrew name, which is itself a variant of an earlier name.

I they are not, why is the seceond part of their name {'IHrIStoS} in both cases? And if so, who is the person named {QIStuS}? Even within an obviously clear situation, it is not clear at all.

The name /Christ/ and its origins are more complicated, because the name was not meant to be a surname; it means /messiah./ As time went on, the name came to be viewed more as a surname or second name. So to translate the name /Jesus Christ,/ one has to decide whether one is going to translate /messiah/ or transliterate /Χριστός, משיח, //Christos,/ or /Christ./ There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to translations and names. You have to consider your audience and purpose. How, for instance, would you translate the name /Bilbo Baggins/ into Klingon? Well, one way would be to transliterate: *bIlbo be'ghInIS.* But wait! Tolkien left notes for translators of /The Lord of the Rings/ on how to deal with all sorts of names. /Baggins./ Intended to recall 'bag'—compare Bilbo's conversation with Smaug in /The Hobbit/—and meant to be associated (by hobbits) with /Bag End/ (that is, the end of a 'bag' or 'pudding bag' = cul-de-sac), the local name for Bilbo's house. (It was the local name for my aunt's farm in Worcestershire, which was at the end of a lane leading to it and no further). Compare also /Sackville-Baggins./ The translation should contain an element meaning 'sack, bag'. So a translator honoring Tolkien will probably call the character *bIlbo buq'InIS* or something like that, to put *buq* in there. Not something you'd necessarily think of without guidance. Then there's the village name /Bywater./ He says "Translate by sense." You wouldn't transliterate as *bay'water;* you'd call it *bIQDaq.* But a translator of the Bible doesn't have the author's notes on how to translate names. So one must come up with one's own style guide. It doesn't really matter what it is, so long as you're consistent. If there are accepted standards in translated literature, you'd be well served to do what they did, but it's not a requirement. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

On 2/27/2020 10:25 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:

SuStel:

...

 They do show why Klingon so desperately needs "spelling reform" that will never happen

What is spelling reform ? Do you mean, transliteration rules ?

I put the term in quotations because it's not exactly an accurate description. Spelling reform is when people try to get everyone to agree to spell words differently. For instance, Noah Webster famously caused a lot of American spellings to change from British spellings, including changing /flavour/ and /colour/ to /flavor/ and /color,/ and changing many instances of the suffix /-ise/ to /-ize./ The Klingon writing system we get from TKD isn't spelling, per se, but transcription of spoken Klingon. It's not meant to represent actual Klingon writing; it's just a one-for-one representation of the phonemes of Klingon. By "spelling reform," I mean that the fixed case of the transcription system makes it impossible to capitalize. If writing in the transcription system didn't involve letter cases, we could capitalize as we do in English, and so mark proper nouns. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

On 2/27/2020 4:49 PM, MorphemeAddict wrote:

Names can be marked in different ways. In Chinese and Japanese foreign names are sometimes underscored (especially in the Bible). In braille and the Shavian alphabet et al., there is a "capitalization dot" that precedes the name. Klingon could do the same.

They could. Without a central authority that can command a given style, and since Klingons wouldn't have any say in a Federation linguist's transcription system, authors must select their own styles. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name