Spanish to Latin-script Klingon: an ongoing action does not by itself say when
Separate Spanish tense from ongoing meaning
Spanish estoy, estaba and estaré locate a state differently in time. The RAE lists them as distinct conjugated forms of estar. When estar introduces an ongoing action, both time and the action’s presentation contribute to the message. A Klingon translation cannot assume that one ongoing-action suffix reproduces every distinction expressed by the Spanish auxiliary.
The Klingon Language Institute explains that jIqettaH presents running as ongoing but can refer to present, past or future time. The suffix -taH does not select one of those times. A Spanish source about what someone will be doing tomorrow therefore must not lose its future setting merely because the target correctly marks an ongoing action.
Progress toward a goal is an additional distinction
The same lesson distinguishes -lI’, which presents an ongoing action progressing toward a particular endpoint. Its example tera’ vIjaHlI’ describes being on the way to Earth with that endpoint in view. The lesson explicitly says that merely having a destination does not force this suffix; it is a choice to express progress toward an ending.
For Spanish readers, that means a destination and an ongoing construction need separate attention. A source saying that a person is traveling can leave the endpoint open. Another source may describe progress toward arrival. Choosing the more specific target suffix for every journey would introduce a goal-oriented presentation even when the Spanish writer simply reports continuing travel.
The two target suffixes are in the same grammatical suffix class and are not combined on one verb in the cited lesson. A translation should not try to preserve every possible nuance by stacking both. Determine which presentation the source intends, rather than treating two similar suffixes as cumulative synonyms for the Spanish gerund.
Location and destination are not interchangeable either
The KLI lesson contrasts yuQDaq jIleng, traveling on the planet, with examples where the planet is the destination. Its explanation distinguishes a place where an action happens from an endpoint selected by a motion verb. A Spanish source with en and a can encode this practical difference, and neither should disappear during the tense-and-aspect conversion.
This prevents an especially misleading combination: a future Spanish journey taking place on a planet should not become a present journey to that planet. The target can get the travel vocabulary right while changing both time and route. Checking the ongoing suffix alone would not reveal either error; the time setting and spatial relationship must also be compared.
The examples retain KLI Roman spelling, including meaningful capital letters and apostrophes. They illustrate a constructed language’s documented grammar, not a license to replace Spanish words one by one. A useful reading order is to establish when the action occurs, where it happens or goes, and whether it is presented as continuing toward a defined endpoint. Those decisions explain why the target may need a different structure even for a short Spanish travel update.
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