Dogri to Klingon in Latin script: a respectful you is not automatically a plural prefix
Count the people addressed before selecting the prefix
Sawhney’s Dogri description includes t̪uss as a respectful singular form as well as a plural second-person form. That overlap is useful in Dogri, but it creates a specific decision when translating into Klingon. A respectful message to one person must not become a message addressed to several people simply because the source uses the same pronoun shape for both.
The Klingon Language Institute distinguishes bI- for a singular you with no object from Su- for a plural you with no object. These prefixes identify the participants; they are not presented as a respectful-versus-familiar pair. Determine how many people the Dogri speaker addresses from the situation, not from an automatic equation between t̪uss and a plural target form.
Adding an object changes the prefix decision
Dogri’s separate oblique pronouns help distinguish an addressed person from someone affected by an action. Klingon can encode subject and object together in one prefix. The KLI gives qa- for I acting on singular you, Sa- for I acting on plural you, and cho- for singular you acting on me. A translator must therefore recover the direction of the relationship before choosing the beginning of the verb.
A Dogri message containing a polite second-person expression and a first-person reference might describe something the speaker does for the addressee or something the addressee does to the speaker. Those situations cannot share a prefix merely because both mention the same two people. First-person versus second-person reference, agency and actual addressee number all matter.
The KLI also distinguishes wI- from DI- when we acts on a singular versus plural third-person object. This is another reason not to infer the full prefix from the source subject alone. A Dogri plural speaker group still leaves a target decision about how many people or things receive the action.
An optional noun plural is not permission to change the event’s participants
KLI teaching notes explain that noun plural suffixes can be omitted when surrounding grammar establishes plurality. They illustrate puq and puqpu' for child and children. A Dogri plural noun may consequently correspond to a Klingon form without an overt plural suffix; that does not establish that the translator reduced several children to one.
For this pair, compare the noun with the verb’s participant information before judging number preservation. Conversely, a plural suffix does not repair a prefix chosen for the wrong relationship. The suffix tells something about the noun, while the prefix relates subject and object. They contribute different pieces of the meaning.
Latin letters carry linguistic distinctions
The KLI identifies Marc Okrand’s Roman orthography as the official writing system. Its displayed prefixes use distinctions such as bI-, Su- and DI-. Preserve those spellings rather than treating the capital letters as ordinary sentence capitalization that can be normalized freely.
A Dogri source may visually emphasize a word through its position or presentation, but the target’s internal letter shapes are part of how the Klingon form is written. Changing them for visual consistency can damage the very prefix that preserves who is speaking, who is addressed and who receives the action. This makes participant analysis and careful Roman spelling complementary parts of the translation.
Language references