Privacy and Translating Sev Trek 2 Rob Zook Fri, 19 Jun 1998 11:25:32 -0500 At 07:18 PM 5/28/98 -0400, MDriest wrote: >>The first Vulcan translation of a Sev Trek comic strip has been >>completed and posted to the web. > >Hurray! (without emotion of course...) >NEXT! > >Gaudy: Beta, can I ask you a personal question? >Beta: Of course, Gaudy. >Gaudy: Are you IBM compatible? > >Maybe we could even invent a ritual thingy for the >personal question. We know how Vulcans think about privacy. This might be a good time to introduce something I've been playing with. All Terran languages I'm familiar with have words which Lojban calls "attitudinal indicators". I'm not sure if that is an actual linguistic term or not. Generally these words refer to the verbal expressionss of emotions, but in many languages they include ritual/meta-linguistic terms involving politeness or specialized communication words like aircraft pilots and radio operators use. For example, "Whee!" "Wow!", "Alas!", represent examples of emotional attitudinals, while "Roger", "Acknowledged", "Ready to Send" all represent meta-linguistic attitudinal indicators with a very specialized use in certain communications situations. I would expect vulcan to have something similar. The emotional type attitudinals no doubt have fallen out of use since Surak's time (except perhaps for use in meditations involving the learning of emotional control). But the others probably remain. Emotional attitudinals in English are generally limited in form to vowels, and "liquid" consonants (and some silibants). I wonder if all languages have these phonological limitations on how these words are formed or just English. There are a few exceptions to this rule like "Ack!". It might be more in keeping with vulcan's phonology to have more of the one's like "Ack!" than like "Wow", and "Aww". So here are a coulple we could us in translating the SevTrek 2 quotations, with attitudinals concerning vulcan privacy: Gaudy: Beta, can I ask you a personal question? Beta: Of course, Gaudy. Gaudy: Are you IBM compatible? Beta-'a qia gio Beta-[voc], [requesting permission] [privacy] qa th'-nidroi jidokh-ti ? I -ask question-[instrumentive?] "Beta, may I ask a question that may broach your privacy?" gaudi-'a jia -'ah* Guady-[voc] [permissive]-[affirmative] s -'nidroi you-ask "Guady, you may ask (with no guarentee I'll answer)" ih,bu,mu. qa s' -izgezu [IBM letter pronunciations] ? you-[compatable] "(are) you IBM compatable?" * as opposed to nijia - [permissive]-[negative] "may not" Since Vulcan has no "are" or "be", the question "are you?" appears malformed for Vulcan grammar. So I would pose an equivalent vulcan form of that kind of question as < qa you-[qualifier]. The issue of privacy is mentioned in the TOS books only a little, and not in the TV TOS at all. At least not as such, Spock and Sarek just display an incredible reluctance to discuss certain things but no specific rules are mentioned besides "we dont discuss that". From what I've picked up about privacy in the books, one makes a formal request to ask a personal question like the above, and the affirmative ritual answer is in English, "you may ask". Which give permission only to ask the question, and does not imply an answer will be forthcomming. This seems a fitting behavior for vulcans concerning privacy so I've always liked it. I think _Spock's World_ mentioned something about the rules of silence or some such thing, but even that book did not discuss Vulcan privacy in much detail. Rob Z. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another. -- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_