Re: Yes it *is* better in Klingon...

Hm. I'd heard that about Shakespeare, but never about Monty Python. :)

My personal best effort in that sphere was a correctly metrical and rhyming
translation of "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" into Klingon, but the
other members of the mailing list weren't impressed.  Ah well. :)

On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 10:45:56PM +0200, taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> ghIch qoD lam bI'wI' ("away-sweeper of the dirt of the inside of the
> nose") is just soo perfect.
For those unfamiliar with tlhIngan Hol, the interlinear is
pretty darn straightforward:

ghIch = nose (noun; of the body-part "gender")
qoD   = insides (noun, usually glossed as "area within")
lam   = dirt (noun)
bI'   = sweep away (verb)
-wI'  = agent suffix (verb nominalizer)

Adjacent nouns are automatically interpreted in a genitive relationship,
with the first noun in the genitive role, so the given gloss is pretty
literal; you can also recast it using 's to keep the order the same as
the Klingon:

        nose's insides' dirt's away-sweeper

It's definitely a nice *description*, but pretty clumsy as a gloss, don't you
think?  :)

-Marcos