"Soj lunatlhchu' yIHmey."

Translation: The tribbles entirely consumed the food.

[kahless62003]

If they ate it, the food was {Sop}ed not {natlh}ed.

[DavidTrimb3]

bIlugh.

[butsuri]

They mean different things, but doesn't one imply the other?

[DavidTrimb3]

Possibly, not necessarily, but one translates meanings, not implications.

[butsuri]

This isn't (directly) a matter of translation, but of the applicability of a word to a particular imagined situation.

kahless62003 said "If they ate it, the food was {Sop}ed not {natlh}ed", but in fact if they ate it, while they definitely {Sop}ed it, they (almost certainly) {natlh}ed it too.

My point is that as far as I can see it's perfectly legitimate, semantically, to use {natlh} in reference to an act of eating. (Although it may not have been the best choice for a translation sentence teaching {natlh} because of the potential for confusion between different senses of "consume".)

[jdmcowan]

Right. With the use of Sop it's probably all gone (especially with tribbles), but they definitely ate it. With the use of natlh (again, especially with tribbles) they probably ate it, but it's definitely all gone.