Submitted for your approval...
Saul Epstein 
Mon, 6 Jul 1998 11:21:57 -0500

I've had it in the back of my head to compose some text to accompany
our translations of "Sev Trek" strips, and for various reasons now
seems like a good time to move on that. Here's what I have.

For a main page, with general information, and links to the individual
strips:

"Members of the Vulcan Academy Linguistics Department (Terran Office)
study Vulcan language in an ongoing attempt to describe it for the
benefit of Terrans who wish to learn Vulcan language, or who wish to
learn from Vulcan through its language. For more information, visit
the Vulcan Information Centre and the VALD Web Booklet."

The suggested destinations would be links, of course. Then on the page
with the first strip:

----------
Comments on Vulcan Translation

Here are some comments from VALD on how they translated this comic
strip into Vulcan. Click on the comic strip above to read the English
comic strip.

The English:
Gaudy: Is something bothering you, Barf?
Barf: I am untroubled. Why do you ask?
Gaudy: You have a furroughed brow.
Barf: All Klingoffs have those, you fool!

Paraphrase of the Vulcan:
Gaudy: Is something upsetting you, Barf?
Barf: I'm not upset. Why did you ask?
Gaudy: A planar sine-wave (imprecisely) describes
          your forehead.
Barf: As I am a Klingoff, note the implications, you
          fool!

Notes:
Vulcan provides five different levels for the kinds of distinction
represented by English "this/that." In his question, Gaudy uses a
level indicating "near but imperceptible" to refer to the unknown
cause of Barf's apparent upset.

<basro> is part of a family of words describing various shapes and
mathematical functions. When used without precise indications of
scale, orientation, etc., it conveys the idea of a rippled or ridged
surface.

Barf's final retort is an extremely abbreviated syllogism, something
to the effect that as all Klingoffs have furrowed brows all the time,
and the speaker is one himself, the furrows in his forehead have
nothing to do with his mood, and that conclusion should be obvious.
This is the Vulcan equivalent of "Duh!"

The transcription here is entirely lower-case for now, though for
slightly different reasons than in the case of Klingon. Rather than
employ upper-case letters to express special sound distinctions, VALD
has adapted some letters from the International Phonetic Alphabet
which have no upper-case counterparts. In the future, we will either
devise some upper-case forms for these, or switch to an actual Vulcan
script.
----------

Please reply here with any comments, and once we're happy with the
text I'll send it to John.

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