Spanish to Klingon pIqaD: decide whether se means themselves or each other
A Spanish plural se can conceal two different relationships
A Spanish sentence about children seeing themselves can describe each child looking at their own reflection. A similar construction can describe the children seeing one another instead. The RAE distinguishes reflexive and reciprocal uses of se, so its presence alone cannot decide which relationship a Klingon translation should express. The distinction must be resolved before changing scripts.
The Klingon Language Institute illustrates legh’egh puqpu’ for children seeing themselves and leghchuq puqpu’ for children seeing each other. The action and participants are similar, but the suffix changes the relationship among them. The first allows each child to be both viewer and the person viewed; the second involves children viewing other children.
The group being plural does not automatically imply reciprocity
The KLI lesson also gives legh’egh torgh for Torg seeing himself. It explains that the reflexive suffix can apply to one subject or to plural subjects, whereas the reciprocal suffix requires a plural subject. A Spanish plural verb therefore does not by itself tell the translator to choose the reciprocal form. Several people can each act on themselves.
This matters when a Spanish source describes a group looking in a mirror. The presence of several children is compatible with self-directed seeing, not proof that they are looking at one another. Conversely, a sentence describing mutual observation should not become a set of separate mirror-like actions just because the source uses the same short pronoun.
Spanish can make the intended reading clearer with additional wording identifying oneself or one another. Preserve that information instead of treating it as an unnecessary repetition of se. In this pair, it can determine which of two different target suffixes expresses the source event. Removing the clarification before translation can remove the evidence needed for that choice.
Some instances of se have neither meaning
The RAE explains that se can replace le or les before lo, la and their plurals. In that construction, it does not automatically indicate an action directed at the subject or shared reciprocally. A Spanish message about buying something for somebody else should not acquire a self-directed Klingon suffix merely because se occurs beside the object pronoun.
The same entry also discusses pronominal verbs and impersonal or reflexive-passive constructions. These show why a universal se-to-one-suffix rule would fail. First decide what se does in the actual Spanish clause, then determine whether the documented reflexive or reciprocal distinction is relevant at all.
This page concerns the pIqaD target, but the examples above retain the attested Roman spelling used by KLI. Its writing overview distinguishes Okrand’s Roman orthography from the mapped character set used by members for pIqaD writing. A visual script conversion is separate from selecting the right grammatical relationship.
The useful comparison is therefore about participants before symbols: one person acting on themself, several people each acting on themselves, or several people acting on one another. Spanish can compress those relationships into a short construction with se. Klingon’s documented suffix distinction makes resolving them an essential part of the translation rather than a final formatting choice.
Language references