Boisterous Bajoran Buffoonery: badger disguised in costume crashes sci-fi convention
I’m a trifle nerdy, and that’s setting off my understatement-o-meter. But whether or not you are too, you’ve probably heard this quote before:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Your brain may even have read it in that special commanding captain’s voice. Then a massive wind up, and POW; we’re in warp. Daa, dadada, dadada BOM BOM, dadadada da daa daa daaaa dadada daaa, –
Ahem. lays down trumpet
Anyway, I’ve always remarked, as I’m sure many before me have, that the ending line is just so damn punchy.
To boldly go….
Some of you may remember certain school teachers of English language endlessly chastising you for splitting infinitives: this process of instead of keeping the “to” with its “go”, you split it with a word describing the action.
To ceaselessly battle.
To tirelessly study.
Many seem to consider it bad style. And often it can look clumsy. But I think there’s a place for it. It certainly feels at home in that Star Trek quote. And it’s that quote that fuelled me to ignore my English teacher! What if it were “to go boldly”?! Doesn’t that sound lame? Generally, the real way of getting around a split infinitive involves rephrasing completely. But that ain’t neither needed nor wanted here, buddy.
ANYWAY. Why did I bring this up? You’ve probably realised that in many languages, you simply cannot split the infinitive, because it is only one word!
Take Esperanto: infinitives are the i-forms of verbs:
danci, ami, iri, tedanci
to dance, to love, to go, to do the tea dance (makes tea rain from the sky)
I certainly can’t put “boldly” in the middle of iri.
So this got me thinking. How do we translate this? And is it as punchy? And is there anything we can do if it ain’t so punchy?
So the most naïve translation I can come up with for that bit is this:
iri aŭdace kien neniu iris antaŭe
(literally: to go boldly where no one has gone before)
Now, you gotta admit, that iri aŭdace — iris antaŭe combo really does give it a nice rhythm. BUT, it really does read like “to go boldly” to me; it makes sense, but the punchiness is gone. It’s like a normal utterance. The power of the lexical boldness is lost.
What are our options? Well, in Esperanto, given the slightly freer word-order, a common technique for applying emphasis is to bring the word requiring emphasis to the beginning of the phrase, if this is permitted:
aŭdace iri kien neniu iris antaŭe
(literally: boldly (to) go where no one has gone before)
Despite the unfortunate consequence that pronouncing “-ce” then “iri” is a little less pretty, this really does bring back some umph, don’t you think? You get right to main point in the first word – BOOM, not even having to say a pesky “to”! (The thing that stops this starting to translate like “boldly going where…”, is how the paragraph begins: “it’s continuing mission: to X, to Y, to Z.” i.e. not “Xing, Ying, Zing”.)
There is another tool on Esperanto’s belt of course, vortfarado (or: word-building).
aŭdaciri kien neniu antaŭe iris
(literally: boldy-go where no one before has gone)
Notice I change the order of “antaŭe” and “iris” to maintain the rhythm (aŭdaciri — antaŭe iris), purely poetic and unnecessary.
Now, what’s going on ‘ere then. Aŭdaciri? can I just go and do that? This is actually more than just just boldly going (as you may know if you’re familiar with this section of the PMEG). This is like a special kind of going, a kind of going that is by its very nature, daring and bold. Exploring the dangerous bits, inviting new trouble, poking your nose into the fresh-universe-snow. The going is defined by the daring.
Why? I’ll explain with the PMEG example. You can’t just go around sticking on adjectives and adverbs (a-words and e-words) to things and expect them to mean the same plain old thing:
dika
thick
fingro
finger
So we have:
dika fingro
thick finger
Buuut:
dikfingro
thumb
Get my drift? If you join those words together, you are saying that its very nature is highly influenced by the attached property; we’re not talking about just a slightly thicker finger here; this finger is something else, it’s set apart, and one of its defining apartnesses is its thickness compared to a normal finger.
We’re not just being bold while we go through the universe; we’re bloody well pioneering for our species, our whole movement through the universe is about audacity and facing the new, the strange, the tough, and the scary head-on. THAT is how we are going through the universe.
How’s that for punchy?
(Note: an acceptable translation for “boldly” might have been “kuraĝe”, with more connotations of courageousness. But that is like boldness against fear. When what I think we really want here, is boldness in the face of trials of our morality, understanding, strength, etc. I.e. not necessarily things that make us afraid, but things that make us confront our own darkness and thought, and struggle to find the right path. A pretty lofty goal, hence audacity, intrepidity).
2024 edit: the original post on the old blog had some neat thoughts in the comment section.
