Monday, June 25, 2012

toDta' - Delivered


     
pa'  ghaH  ghobe'  joH  toDpu'  Sum the  qevmey  vo' an army.  A  HoS  loD  ghaH  ghobe'  toDta'  Sum  Dun  HoS.

There is no king saved by the multitude of an army.  A mighty man is not delivered by great strength.   Psalm 33:16




What more proof do you need to see that the Bible is not a Klingon book?

These words from Psalm 33 go a long way toward making itc clear that the Scriptures do not reflect traditional Klingon ideas regarding strength and power.  Add in David’s victory over Goliath - rejecting the King’s armor and sword for his mere slingshot.  Or  the Hebrew’s victory over Jericho with nothing but marching and trumpets.  Or Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” of which he said

vaj jIH tlhap pleasure Daq weaknesses, Daq injuries, Daq necessities, Daq persecutions, Daq distresses, vaD Christ's chIch. vaD ghorgh jIH 'oH weak, vaj 'oH jIH HoS

Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.  2Cor 12:10

Together these underline a basic rather non-Klingon theme:  Our security, our victory can’t be found in a simple application of power, of HoS - we have to trust God.

And this is the proof that the Bible is not a human book either.

For, just as Klingons do, humans try to succeed on their own.  We strive for independance, for security.  But when we feel that in our hearts from the Bible we hear

Therefore
I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.  2Cor 12:10

Paul has it right.  The Bible has it right.  However gifted we are with strength, however accomplished we are in life - those gifts, those accomplishments are gifts from God.  Not treasured power that comes from us - but gifts that God extends to us, so we can help those in need.

Rejoice, give thanks, and when we are weak remember

pa'  ghaH  ghobe'  joH  toDpu'  Sum the  qevmey  vo' an army.
  A  HoS  loD  ghaH  ghobe'  toDta'  Sum  Dun  HoS.
There is no king saved by the multitude of an army.
  A mighty man is not delivered by great strength.   Psalm 33:16


When we are weak we can remember - when we are weak,  then, he is HoS - he is stronger still - strong enough to bring us through.

6 comments:

El Payaso Malo said...

I think your presentation of the subject matter is pretty good. I have been reading these for a while, now. However, your usage of Klingon is awful. For example:

{pa' ghaH ghobe' joH toDpu' Sum the qevmey vo' an army. A HoS loD ghaH ghobe' toDta' Sum Dun HoS.}

ACTUALLY MEANS SOMETHING CLOSER TO:

"[an army] propels crowds [the] she is nearby he saved a lord negative she is a room. He is strong she is great it is nearby she saved negative he is a man she is strong [A]."

A more accurate translation of

"There is no king saved by the multitude of an army. A mighty man is not delivered by great strength."

WOULD BE:

{pagh ta''e' toDpu' mangghom. loD HoS'e' toDbe' HoSqu'ghach.}

Why don't you put any effort into your translations? There actually IS a word for "god" in Klingon: {Qun}. I wish that your translator had a disclaimer on it. I would be happy to aid you in your translations for your blog entries. It hurts me to see the language used like this; with no thought to grammar or syntax. Again, the actual content of the blog is well writted and well presented, but please don't do this to the Klingon language. It will never grow if it isn't respected.

Joel said...

Thank you for your comments - I appreciate the feedback and kind words about my content.

Please note that my translator assistant does include a disclaimer (http://mrklingo.freeshell.org/aol/jpklingon/uta/theory.html#wrong), and I have noted multiple times that the KLV is a relexification. You're quite right regarding "Qun" as a word for a deity - and the KLV uses it for "gods" (Qunpu'). At the time I began working on the UTA the term was unknown, and joH'a' was being used for the LORD - I've kept that for now (though I have discussed the term Qun in the blog, http://klingonword.blogspot.com/2009/03/whats-in-name-gods-name-that-is.html.)

I don't deny (and have discussed many times) the deficencies of the KLV - I encourage you to work on your own version - the work is very rewarding! And please understand, I always direct individual requests to proper translation methods and resources.

El Payaso Malo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
El Payaso Malo said...

I see. I was sure there was a disclaimer somewhere, I just didn't notice the note about lack of grammticality NEXT to the translator itself until now. Was that there before or just recently added? Personally, I'd follow the conventions of other languages and just use {joH} or {jaw} for "Lord" and use {Qun} for "God" and "god" and "gods." In this case, I don't see a major reason to use the noun suffix {-'a'} to make "joH" more special. It just seems to be trying to make up for the fact that Klingon is unicase, but even then German seems to be doing okay with it (since Germans capitalize ALL nouns, they can't even differentiate between Gott and Gott or Herr and Herr). That's just a personal point for me, though. It works okay; there's not really a problem with it. I would really recommend using {Qun} like other languages use their equivalents (like Dios, Gott, Allah [which of course is just the Arabic word for "god;" as even Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews call their God "Allah"], Dieu, Dio, Deus... etc.). This would actually allow you to translate things such as "God is LORD," instead of having something come out as "the Great Lord is the Great Lord." My biggest question though is can you actually use Klingon for effective communication? Your translator doesn't produce viable Klingon at all (as we both know; for some reason {vo'} is used to translate "of," a meaning it can almost never have no matter how you squint at it), so why do you use your novelty translator for these specific translations instead of actually translating it? Even the Klingon translation of this blog's title ({mu''a'vo' mu'}) is ungrammatical. If I were to communicate to you in Klingon ({lalDanlIj DaquvmoH 'ach chIch vaj Hol Dawemlaw'}), would you be able to respond with decent grammar? Basically, I'm curious if you can actually use the language. If you can, then using the translator at all for this blog seems kind of silly when you could just translate the verses directly into coherent thoughts instead of having your translator give you a mishmash of gibberish to use that can't even use words in the proper context (like {Dun}, which means "great," as in "wonderful;" yet the translator used it to translate "great" as in "remarkable in degree, magnitude or effect"). If you can't, why not go ahead and learn and then use the language properly? Because really, if there's no effort to actually use the language in any proper way, then it might at as well just all be monolingual, since the alien-looking words don't really serve much purpose other than a flimsy setup. If the verses are translated properly, however, then you would have an excellent mix of linguistic endeavors and theological musings. Since this blog seems to be a look at Christian scripture through a "lens" of the Klingon language, the point is undermined when what might as well be random syllables are used instead of the Klingon language itself. As it is, the entire blog itself is excellent except the usage of any and all Klingon words (in one blog post, you suggested {lugh}, which means "be correct," to translate "upright," when {quvwI'} ["honorable ones"] fit the context much better, since the context indicated more about ethics or morality rather than being the opposite of inaccurate; even the word {chong} ["be vertical;" but also has the slang meaning of "be profound; be excellent; be a clear thinker"] would probably have been better). Am I making sense? I'm trying to be constructive and complimentary and not seem condescending. batlh bIqon 'ach bImughlaw' 'e' DanIDchugh bIluj.

Joel said...

The disclaimer has always been there.

I'm sorry you feel I violate the language - this experiment is intended at best to present a pidgin language that might arise in the space between Human and Klingon cultures - not proper thlIngan Hol. As always, I direct people interested in proper Klingon to the Klingon Language Institute (http://www.kli.org), of which I am a card carrying member.

No doubt, there is no end to the number of things that could be done better here, but the time and attention I can devote to this are limited (which explains the multiple "reruns" of prior posts), so don't expect anything to change soon - but I do thank you for your thoughtful suggestions.

jIluj'a'? ghobe'!

The experimental "translator assistant" has been a nice tool for me to experiment with C, Visual Basic, Java, Javascript, perl and more - don't over look my porting to Java of a dictionary and proper tlhIngan parsing tool. I've learned to build OSIS formatted scriptures, and built tools to parse them. And I've managed to podcast using my work.

jIQap!

El Payaso Malo said...

I understand better. A pidgin is something interesting, but it doesn't appear to be obviously stated that that was the intent. The primary reason that convinced me to finally say something was the fact that people who don't know the language see it as legitimate translations (see an article at http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/10/us-klingons-idUSTRE6891EZ20100910 for an example), and this is likely because they don't see the disclaimer on the page. I looked for it for five minutes and still managed to miss it until you pointed it out. The page has in big letters above it "UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR" and underneath it off to the side in small print it says "Important:..." It reminds me of this old skit from Saturday Night Live: http://www.hulu.com/watch/10335 I've even seen {yIn Daq joH'a' tuq reH} from your blog used as if it was seriously supposed to be real Klingon instead of {reH joH qachDaq yIyIn}. I request that you try to fix this because the amount of people that look at your site as if it is 100% real Klingon is hard to believe (and, of course, the information denying it IS on the page; apparently the majority of people are too lazy or unobservant to notice the little letters out of the way) and I consistantly see it reported as the most accurate and reliable Klingon translator available despite your disclaimer admitting that it is neither accurate nor reliable. I think it's cool, though, that you use it as a programming excersize. Even though I can do way more advanced stuff, nostalgia keeps me returning to BASIC and I fiddle around with it when I have time (there's even a Klingon programming language called var'aq: http://www.reocities.com/connorbd/varaq/index.html ). I thank you for the time you have taken to respond. I appreciate it. tugh mughwI'lIj DarachmeH poH nI' DaSuqjaj. bInguqbe'law'mo' jIbel. chaq ghunpu'ghachlIj DawaHDI' bIDo'. Hochlogh ngay' ghaj tlhIngan Hol 'e' vItultaH 'ej not tuHmoHlu'.