• grue@lemmy.worldOP
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    19 days ago

    Yeah, the machine translators I’ve tried are absolutely terrible – I can’t find one that can round-trip some text without turning it into absolute gibberish.

    I’m only like halfway through unit 1 in Duolingo, but I did the translation myself and I think I did a better job (note: Klingon sentences are structured object-verb-subject):

    nuq = what

    jI- = indicates a command

    jalIh = to say, to speak

    -Qo’ = again

    thlIngan Hol = the Klingon language

    petaQ = well-known generic expletive (I didn’t try to find something that literally translated to “mother fucker”)

    Da- = can, able

    -‘a’ = indicates a question

    nuq jIjalIh = say “what” again!

    thlIngan Hol petaQ DajalIh’a’ = Klingon, motherfucker, do you speak it?!