3

A user posted this comment. At the end of it, the comment reads:

Buhfik t' kunli tor du!

What does this mean? Rand al’Thor says it’s in Vulcan, but their translation seems uncertain.

Stormblessed
  • 11,359
  • 8
  • 62
  • 100
  • 1
    I miss the days when google translate included options for invented languages like Klingon and Quenya... :( FWIW, it says that it means "troubleshoot this morning" in Uzbek. :) Seems appropriate to me... – DavidW Mar 26 '19 at 19:00
  • There seems to be a dearth of Vulcan/English translators online. The one I could quickly find translates this as "perfect belonging to happy do you", which leaves me skeptical of its accuracy. – Xantec Mar 26 '19 at 19:19
  • I'll let it play out for a while, see if anyone hits the linguistic nail on it's head. Hint: What does Vulcan culture not permit.....;-) – Jiminy Cricket. Mar 26 '19 at 20:17
  • Vulcan word order is VSO (verb-subject-object). The verb to be (nam-tor) can be dropped when its meaning is clear from context. Unsure what word order this sentence is, though. – CarenRose Mar 26 '19 at 22:15
  • The -ik ending indicates an adjective (which "perfect" is anyway), which makes the dropped-"to be" make sense. Haven't figured out the posessive in the sentence. – CarenRose Mar 26 '19 at 22:42
  • I thought that Rand al’Thor was The Dragon Reborn, am I missing something? – Walkerbo Mar 27 '19 at 07:21
  • 1
    @Walkerbo That would be me, not the character :-) – Rand al'Thor Mar 27 '19 at 08:07
  • @Rand al’Thor ;) – Walkerbo Mar 27 '19 at 09:28

2 Answers2

3

According to this online Vulcan-English dictionary (whose canonicity I'm unsure of, but then who's saying a random SE comment would be using canonically correct Vulcan anyway):

  • buhfik = perfect
  • kunli = happy
  • tor = do, make
  • du = you

The last three words then seem to be quite clearly "make[s] you happy". Perhaps the whole thing is meant to be "perfection makes you happy"?

Maybe one of our Trekkies or constructed-language experts can do better ...

Rand al'Thor
  • 134,408
  • 65
  • 607
  • 854
  • I can use a couple of online translation tools (https://funtranslations.com/vulcan and https://lingojam.com/EnglishtoVulcanTranslator) to reproduce the output with the input string "perfect of happy makes you" which is basically a word-replacement based on this dictionary: https://www.starbase-10.de/vld/ According to it, "t'" is "of" or "belongs to." – DavidW Mar 26 '19 at 19:46
  • "perfect belonging to happy do you" reminds me of how Yoda in Star Wars would speak – SpacePhoenix Mar 26 '19 at 19:48
  • 2
    I suspect it's an idiomatic phrase, closest to "Practice makes perfect" – VBartilucci Mar 26 '19 at 20:34
  • @vbartilucci Rather something along the lines of "[Nothing short of]/[only] perfection should/will/can satisfy you", isn't it? – Philip Klöcking Mar 27 '19 at 10:03
2

What does “Buhfik t' kunli tor du!” mean in Vulcan?

The question: What does it mean?

There is a distinction here between that and: What was it intended to mean?

It's meaning:

It's garbled because of approximate translation issues, I reffer you to the next sentence.

What was it intended to mean?

I used this online translator to translate a short phrase.

Since the Vulcan language regards concepts of belief as irrational and not worthy of consideration, it denies the concepts of superstition - not only to the extent of them posessing any validity, but to the existence of words to describe them.

(This is entirely the opinion, related actions and recollections of the author of the original cited post and should not be construed as containing any cannonical weight whatsoever.)

The short phrase put in was "Best of luck to you."

Community
  • 1
Jiminy Cricket.
  • 7,680
  • 2
  • 32
  • 58