Translations for a novel?

[danj]

I am a first-time novelist, and am writing a book in which one of the characters is a human who lives his life as if he was a Klingon warrior. I have translated using the Klingon Dictionary and Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, and am confident about most of the phrases I have used, but there are some I'm not sure about.

Could someone please check out my translations and offer corrections? I'm trying to say the English phrase in parentheses. Thanks.

“Cha’maH Huch,” (“Twenty bucks,”)
“ReH nej Do’ wejpuH juH ghag,” (“Always after me Lucky Charms,”)
“Hu’tegh SIS!” (“g'day't rain!”)
“QU’VATLH!” (“F**K!”)
“Wa’DIch Qu’.” (“Duty first.”)
‘tera’ngan tIgh’ (‘Earthling customs’)
“Vum, Ra’wI’? (“Work, Commander?”)
“ChoQaHpu’neS.” (“You, honored one, have helped me.”)


[Edit -- edited out foul language per Forum Regs. -=-Kesvirit]

[ter'eS]

Could someone please check out my translations and offer corrections? I'm trying to say the English phrase in parentheses. Thanks.

First, be careful about capitalization. Don't capitalize anything that isn't a capital in the dictionary, including the first word in a sentence.

Cha'maH Huch

Should be cha'maH. Huch just means 'money'. DeQ is a 'credit', and DarSeQ is defined as a 'monetary unit'.

“ReH nej Do’ wejpuH juH ghag,” (“Always after me Lucky Charms,”)

"Always seek luckily charming house ?"  I don't understand this, and I don't know what you are going for with the English. It's so completely idiomatic that it's going to have to be paraphrased in some way.

“Hu’tegh SIS!” (“g'day't rain!”)

"@#$%,  it's raining". OK

“QU’VATLH!” (“FUUUCK!”)

OK except for the capitalization.

“Wa’DIch Qu’.” (“Duty first.”)

Words with -DIch only refer to items in a sequence, not to the order of events. I'd suggest potlhqu' Qu' "Duty is most important" (potlh 'important'; -qu' 'very'; there is no superlative (-est) suffix, so this is as close was we can get).

‘tera’ngan tIgh’ (‘Earthling customs’)

Fine.

“Vum, Ra’wI’? (“Work, Commander?”)

Again, watch the capitals.  vum is listed only as a verb, so what it says right now is "he works".  You'll have to supply the proper verb prefix if that isn't what you want, eg. bI- 'you'. You'll also need to add the interrogative suffix -'a': bIvum'a', ra'wI'? "Are you working, Commander?".

“ChoQaHpu’neS.” (“You, honored one, have helped me.”)

The first letter is a lower-case c, otherwise fine. Also, -pu' refers to actions that are completed without conscious decision, so this means "you helped me accidently".  Use -ta' if the help was deliberately given.

Feel free to post the other phrases in your novel, maybe a few at a time, if there are lots. I'd be glad to review them.

[danj]

Thank you, teresh, for the quick reply. A clarification on the confusing phrase - he is insulting a man who he thinks looks like a leprechaun by saying the "Lucky Charms" leprechaun phrase - "Always after me Lucky Charms" - that is the one I was taking the wildest guess at. Any further help would be appreciated.

[ter'eS]

^^That has me stumped.  There are no leprechauns in Klingon mythology, and even if there were, I don't think the average Klingon would get your meaning from quoting a 20th century breakfast cereal commercial.  About all I can suggest is something more literal:

machqu'wI' SoH jay' which means more or less "You're a little f*cker"

mach 'be small'
-qu' 'very'
-wI' 'one who is' nominalizing suffix
SoH 'you'
jay' invective; turns the whole sentence into a curse

If the person is really trying to take something away from the speaker, you could use nIHwI' mach SoH jay' 'You're a f*cking little thief' (nIH 'to steal').

Sorry, that's all I can think of.

[danj]

teresh - Sorry to keep on this but the first translation of the lucky charms quote is closer to what I want. The novel is set in the present day and the "Klingon" is taunting a small man. Your first interpretation "Always seek luckily charming house" is close. How would I say that without "house"? (Always seek luckily charming) or something close to that?

Thanks again for your help.

[ter'eS]

teresh - Sorry to keep on this but the first translation of the lucky charms quote is closer to what I want. The novel is set in the present day and the "Klingon" is taunting a small man. Your first interpretation "Always seek luckily charming house" is close. How would I say that without "house"? (Always seek luckily charming) or something close to that?

Thanks again for your help.

Actually, it isn't all that close.

ReH nej Do’ wejpuH juH ghag

reH does mean 'always', and is correctly placed at the beginning of the phrase. nej means 'to seek', but it's object should come before it, not after, Do' can be an adjective meaing 'lucky' or an adverb meaning 'luckily', but it is in the wrong place in the sentence in either case. wejpuH 'charming' is not a noun or a verb, but an exclamation (of disgust, actually: you only call something 'charming' when it clearly isn't).  Since it isn't noun or verb, Do' can't modify it in any way. juH is 'house', but I don't know what it stands for from the original English, and ghag isn't a Klingon word.

If I wanted to render "Always after me Lucky Charms" as closely to the original as possible, I'd use

DochmeywIj Do' DanIH reH 'e' DanID. 'You are always attempting to steal my lucky objects."

Doch 'thing' (AFAIK there is no Klingon word for fetish objects that bring luck)
-mey plural
-wIj 'my'
Do' 'lucky' (the jury is out whether this word refers only to people who have luck, or can also refer to things that bring luck, but we'll take the liberal approach here and say it can)
Da- verb prefix: 'you(subj)-it/them(obj)'
nIH 'steal' (which I assume 'after' implies in the original)
reH 'always' (it goes here, before the following phrase, because the person in question is always trying, not always stealing)
'e' actually a pronoun, it has the effect of turning the phrase before it into the object of the following verb.
nID 'try'

You could shorten it a bit to reH DochmeywIj Do' DanIH, if 'after' means that the person always succeeds in getting the lucky things.

Of course, either option loses the feel of the original (especially the fake Irish 'me') and makes no actual reference to the name of the product or to the commercial the phrase comes from, so IMHO says nothing about cereals or the leprechauns who shill for them. It's a simple statement of fact.  Whether anyone could make the leap from the factual statement to the slogan from the commercial to the idea that this implies someone is small, is not for me to say.

Or, you can simply quote a non-Klingon term in a Klingon sentence: reH Lucky CharmswIj DanIH.  That might actually be the best, since languages do this sort of quoting all the time (eg. what's the English word for taco, or sushi?).

Another option that occurs to me is the word tu'HomI'raH, which is defined as a useless thing. You could add the diminutive suffix -Hom to it for emphasis on smallness: tu'HomI'raHHom SoH jay' 'You're a #$%^ tiny useless thing'.  If that approach appeals, there are other small things you could substitute for tu'HomI'raHHom:

ghilab ghew 'glob fly' - an especially annoying tiny insect
Qa'Hom 'titmouse'

I'm sorry to be such a stickler, but my opinion is, if you're going to use Klingon at all, it should be used correctly, otherwise what's the point, you could just type in gibberish and call it Klingon, and you did ask...

[qoSagh]

Not being a grammarian myself, I may be completely off base here, but...

wouldn't the pronoun 'e' go before reH and not after it? It seems to me that if 'e' makes everything before it the subject that reH (Always) would need to be next to nID (try) and not next to nIH (steal). Otherwise I think it would be translated ad you are trying to always steal my lucky charms, instead of the more correct you are always trying to steal my lucky charms.

Also, perhaps a good way of translating the word charm as opposed to any old object is to add the suffix that signifies endearment (which I forget right now, and seem to have misplaced my dictionary) to the word Doch (thing), which I would think could be thusly translated as favorite or nice things, which might be a bit closer to charms.

Either way, seeing this quote translated, is making me want to draw a Klingon Leprechaun and make a T-Shirt out of this.

[ter'eS]

The thing about reH and 'e' is not completely resolved.  Okrand never used 'e' with an adverb, but the concensus we reached on the KLI mailing list was that adverbs would precede 'e'.  The reasoning is that 'e' is a pronoun and the object of the following verb, and adverbs always precede objects.  So, reH 'e' DanID is a complete sentence meaning "You always try it", with "it" being some previously spoken sentence (as in STV (?), where Azetbur says 'e' neHbe' vavoy "Father wouldn't want that.").  Putting the previous sentence in the same phrase doesn't change the relationship of the parts of the following sentence. If reH were modifying the first verb, it would come at the very beginning of the sentence: reH X DanIH 'e' DanID "You are trying to always steal X".

A "charm" isn't something you hold dear, it's a fetish object, that's supposed to do some magical thing for the holder, eg. bring luck, if it's a lucky charm.  Dochoy just means 'darling/beloved thing'. Maybe your cereal is dear to you, but that could just as easily be referring to your knife, your betleH, your ship, etc.

[qoSagh]

Thank you for reminding me of -oy

my point exactly is that a charm, because it is a fetish thing is dear to it's owner, much in the way one's knife or one's ship is. Of course I was thinking of Lucky Charms in more of a mythical viewpoint than that of the actual cereal viewpoint.

Besides, the charms in question are not cereal. They are in fact the marshmallows. The cereal are the brown bits put in with the brightly colored hearts, moons, stars, clovers, horseshoes, pots of gold, rainbows and red balloons in order to mollify the parents.

[danj]

Thanks again. And I agree, teresh, that if I'm going to use Klingon, it should be a correct use of the language. I am going to go with "reH Lucky CharmswIj DanIH." Your logic makes sense since there is no Klingon equivalent.

I'll post again if I come up with any other brain teasers.