From pycyn@aol.com Sat Apr 15 02:02:36 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 18024 invoked from network); 15 Apr 2000 09:02:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 15 Apr 2000 09:02:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo13.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.3) by mta2 with SMTP; 15 Apr 2000 09:02:36 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo13.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v25.3.) id h.8a.27c9a04 (3847) for ; Sat, 15 Apr 2000 05:02:32 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <8a.27c9a04.26298a28@aol.com> Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 05:02:32 EDT Subject: RECORD:translating/transcribing names (rev) To: lojban@onelist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows sub 33 X-eGroups-From: Pycyn@aol.com From: pycyn@aol.com RECORD:translating names "There are nine and ninety ways of writing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right" and the same applies, pretty much, to Lojban names, as Cowan points out. Except for the phonological exclusions (which wreak havoc with Sherlock Holmes fans and many French descendants), just about anything between {la}/{doi} and a pause will work. If a mass of verbiage is used to refer to or summon someone/thing, then slapping it into that frame makes it a legitmate name -- with the grammatical proviso that, if it is not interpretable as Lojban, it ends in a consonant. So, {la} really does mean something close to {la'e lu...li'u} with some language specfic constraints. The final consonant and the pause are needed for segmentation purposes but are not otherwise significant. Nor, in Lojban, is the choice of final consonant. But what to do in a particular case? Names -- in English, say -- fall into two classes: transparent and opaque (dare I use that word in a new context?) and transparent into two subgroups, applicable and not. Transparent names are names that have a meaning in the language, like "Smith" or "Brown" or "Johnson." Applicable names are ones where that meaning actually applies to the referent and is used for that referent because it applies (I won't insist on this second clause). In English, last names are often transparent, though not often applicable any more; first names are usually opaque -- in English, however transparent they may be in, say, Hebrew. This seems to be pretty generally the case in European languages; most other places I know about seem to have meaningful names throughout and even some drive toward applicablity (at least as a wish) for the part that is conventional (the individual name, as opposed to the inherited one). Nick names tend to be transparent and applicable (in a projected sense at least, maybe involving a wish or a long story: a baseball player was called "Alby" because albumin was found in his urine in a physical exam -- and this led to speculation about what he had been up to recently). All of this is leading up to a suggestion about what name to use for a person when moving into Lojban from the home language. In general, I think, opaque names come over simply in transliteration: my "John" is {djan}, not some translation of whatever "Jokhanon" means in Hebrew (though what to do in the case of John son of Zebedee, for whom all us Johns are ultimately named?). But applicable transparent names, particularly when they are going to actually be applied, should be translated. Thus, the family name Bear would be just {ber} in most cases, but the nickname Bear for a person whose stocky build, hirsuteness and what not was to the fore, would be {cribe}. And if the applicability was not to the fore, then {cribeC} or even {crib} Remember God introduces himself as la nu mi zaste when it comes time to make the point. Names taken from a particular language try to mimic that language as closely as possible in Lojban, but not at the cost of violating Lojban phonotactic rules (at least the medial ones). Thus, the capital of Russia should be something like Moskva, but fitting it to Lojban gives either Mozgvas or Moskuas, the former seeming natural to English speakers, the latter probably more natural to Russians -- and thus preferrred. Small children are allowed to make "errors," so that calling a mother ma or mama can be overlooked until the age when mam or mat or matma can be required. None of this is even chalked on stone, but it seems a reasonable approach to deal with the various that names play