Star Trek: Axanar

Yes, it is the same word.
There is nothing "natural" about calling our planet "Earth" in a sci-fi setting unless you happen to speak English as your first language. "Erde" would be a hell of a lot more "natural" to me in reference to that big blue marble.

Like the names of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Neptune, Uranus were used for the other planets, Terra "gave" hers to the Earth.

Why would aliens in a sci-fi setting prefer a certain modern language over an older and neutral name?

 

Well duh I guess because they're all speaking English maybe?

 

Funny you should ask. Before going to bed this morning, I sat down and tried to work out the proper translations and came to the conclusion they just made up their own words rather than refer to Okrand's work. Which, given the unusual grammar and structure, is probably okay when you're worried about bigger things.

Devour/Devourer:
You heard the English word differently than I did. I heard "devour" only, so translated based on that. Okrand's Klingon hasn't defined a specific word meaning "devour" (although it's possible for there to be one), so what you do is find one that's close and then modify it using prefixes and suffixes. The closest word in Klingon is "Sop" which means "eat" in English. Obviously, there's a different connotation between eat and devour; the latter being more aggressive and definitive. There's an emphatic suffix for Klingon verbs "-qu'" which verbally underscores the word which precedes it. So eat's Sop becomes devour as Sopqu'.

The er on devourer is probably best handled with the suffix "-wi'" which turns an action into a noun. Sopwi' means one who eats. Sopwi'qu' -- one who devours.

Strategy of Least Respect:
This caused me some trouble. I don't claim to be an expert on Klingon grammar, but the order is generally object-verb-subject, the opposite of English. "I feel good" in English is constructed as "Good feel I" in Klingon. But there's no real subject in "strategy of least respect", just an object "strategy" and a verb "respect".

Respect is "vuv" in Klingon, and there are a couple of adverbial words we can apply to show less respect. "loQ" means "slight" or "a little bit", and "not" means "never". Thus we get "loq vuv" or "not vuv" to mean little respect or no respect ... uh ... respectively.

The word "strategy" is the simple noun "Dup". I see no need to modify it here. It's not a big strategy, or a little strategy, so let's just stick with "Dup."

Putting the sentence together, we get "loq vuv Dup" or "not vuv Dup" to mean little or no respect strategy. Even better, let's put a conjunction in there to say "little or no respect" -- "loq not ghap vuv", although I'm not certain I can do that with adverbs like that. But if I can, the whole sentence "little or no respect strategy" is "loq not ghap vuv Dup".

 

@Psion. I have to agree that the words seem to be made up rather than actually using Mr Okrand's work. The closest thing I could come up with (to what Rameriz and Travis are saying and this is phonetically by the way): vucha'chu'vItu = Strategy of least respect (strategy), naQcha'wIS = devourer (tactic). Also, the "Strategy of least respect" could be further (or better) translated as the strategy of contempt or Stratagem of contempt or Method of contempt. This is just my two cents worth by the way.

 

Anyway, for the full feature, I hope that there will be actual battle scenes that will have the characters demonstrate what happened at the Battle of Axanar, which would be the highlight of the entire production.

 

No.

That's definitely untrue. Not all of us have issues with how fan productions have depicted the TOS era through a modern lens.

 

^^^ Agreed. They all have their positives and negatives but I have yet to see a fan film project so totally bereft of merit that it would have been better off not being made. It could also be argued that this project would likely never have existed without the others that came before it.

Unilaterally stating that everyone has problems with them would be patently false.

 

Good call.

 

I got to meet him a few years back, his hair was white and cut short, he was wearing a cowboy hat, and sunglasses, and I heard his voice before I saw him, and of course I knew right away who it was.

Bob O'Reilly on the other hand, I sat by him at a table, in a bar, for hours before I realized it was him.

 

That's the real-life explanation; though in Germany they are all speaking German, and in Italy they are all speaking Italian...

"Terra" is universal, neutral in all languages, which is why it makes sense that in a sci-fi setting the political entity that is our planet would be called by that name.

 

Interesting that they didn't use Sol. Though I guess they were being specific to the planets rather than their stars.

But yes, Terra tends to be a goto word for Earth by some alien races. One assumes that it is a majority term for those that would be viewing the documentary in-universe, so it was used by the likes of John Gill rather than Earth, which is used by at least part of the Human population for the third planet in that solar system.

 

I was reminded of Worf's "Sector 001... the Terran system" from "Best of Both Worlds"

"Terra" was used in the FASA Trek game, from which PtA draws inspiration. I'm guessing that's ultimately why. In one of their manuals (I forget which), they specify that "Terra" is used by non-natives whereas "Earth" is used by those born there.



Back to the film for a second, I loved that Tony Todd mentioned Robau as one of his three best captains. I was really hoping to see Faran Tahir pop up as a talking head!

Also, the new movie stardates were a big help in figuring out when everything took place.

 

But this is a pre-TOS production and in ST they called it Earth. So even in-universe it's wrong.

 

From Memory Beta

Or we could go by the Enterprise opening credits and all call it Erde.

 

Funny how aliens are all Latin scholars.

 

They thought it sounded better than calling the planet Dirt.

 

You know, as horrible as Transformers 2 was, that line cracks me up every time.

Personally, although it's fun to theorize about why aliens and humans alike keep mixing up Sol, Terra and Earth in so many sf-films, series and novels, in the end.... does it really matter, as long as the point comes acros? The point being, what planet they are talking about?

 

Larsaf III, if you'd ask someone from the Planet Arkon in the Perry Rhodan-Universe.

 

See, that makes it all completely clear.

 

Ohhhh shoooooot. That was an error on my part. Let me make my stance perfectly clear.

I DO NOT WANT TO TELL YOU HOW YOU SHOULD FEEL ABOUT THIS SUBJECT. If you're not offended by that moment in Axanar or don't think much of it at all, that's perfectly fine.

Due to my negligence I didn't catch that the sentence was missing the word "not" and it came out saying that you should feel offended. That is a completely wrong thing to say. If I have offended, I am sorry. I really don't want to tell anyone what to think.