Re: Jokes in Vulcan
Saul Epstein 
Wed, 13 May 1998 09:32:13 -0500

Quotes from: MDriest <MDriest*compuserve,com>
Date: Tuesday, May 12, 1998 7:55 PM


>I feel strongly that Vulcan should make these distinction. I
>am not entirely sure if the aforementioned verbs should be
>quite different or only differ slightly, as is the case in
>Russian. In Russian, there often is a 'ground-verb' which can
>be fitted with a number of prefixes making the translation
>subtly different each time. IMO, this is a marvellous system.

It is quite nice. Russian shares it with the vast majority of
Indo-European languages, though in some languages the pre-fixes are
pre-positions, and in some they are both. English has a native system
of postpositions for this (hang up, hang down, hang over, hang in,
hang out, hang around) though we call the words prepositions; and a
borrowed system of prefixes as well (persist, insist, resist, desist,
consist, exist, subsist).

>Of course, with exact meanings to verbs like I described, the
>joke from Red Dwarf is quite impossible to translate.  Tough!
>But does this endanger the famous Vulcan irony?

Well, it would be impossible to translate it and preserve the
ambiguity that contributes to the original humor. But to discover that
a pod-by-which-to-escape had itself escaped actually highlights the
irony, doesn't it?

--
from Saul Epstein
locus*planetkc,com
www,jccc,net/~sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi
     suraketca'."
                                        -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at