Catalan to Klingon (pIqaD): preserve who causes the action before changing its script
A causative is more than another way of spelling an action
IEC describes Catalan fer plus an infinitive as a causative construction, including la fa ballar: someone causes her to dance. The person doing the causing differs from the person performing the embedded action. A target that reports only dancing loses that relationship.
KLI explains Klingon -moH as a causative suffix. Its poS versus poSmoH contrasts being open with causing something to be open. These reference forms are shown here in Latin transliteration so the grammatical contrast remains readable while checking a pIqaD translation. Changing the script does not remove the distinction between a state and the action that brings it about.
Teaching preserves both a learner and what is learned
KLI’s ghoj and ghojmoH distinguish learning and teaching. Its discussion shows that a causative based on a transitive verb can identify the original object, the original actor, or both through different constructions. One target object position cannot simply be assumed to represent every participant.
Imagine an original Catalan sentence in which a teacher causes a student to learn a particular song. The teacher, student, and song occupy different roles. A target expression meaning teach the song need not explicitly identify the student; one identifying the student may leave the material unstated. If the source explicitly names both, a translation should retain both relationships rather than silently remove whichever participant is inconvenient to fit into a short clause.
The Catalan clitic may be the actor of the embedded action
In IEC’s la fa ballar example, la refers to the person who dances. It does not mean that the causative’s subject dances her, nor that she causes somebody else to dance. The source clitic is interpreted within the causative construction.
This distinction matters when preparing a pIqaD sentence for a performance caption or game dialogue. An attractive line of target characters can still assign the dancing to the wrong person. Establish the causer and the dancer from the Catalan before examining script conversion. If a later clause says that the dancer makes someone else learn, resolve the new causative independently; the person who was previously caused to act can become the next clause’s causer.
pIqaD is a writing choice rather than a second causative system
KLI distinguishes Okrand’s Latin-based orthography from the character mapping used by its members for pIqaD. Its writing discussion describes a conventional left-to-right presentation, while also explaining the history and limits of the screen-derived character set.
The practical implication for this direction is that a pIqaD rendering must preserve the Klingon grammatical sequence selected from the Catalan. A missing causative element cannot be repaired by a decorative font, and a correctly displayed character sequence cannot establish that the causer was retained. Compare the grammatical reading in transliteration when necessary, then verify that the selected script represents that same sequence rather than a different sentence.
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