From rlpowell@csclub.uwaterloo.ca Fri May 19 13:21:57 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 11910 invoked from network); 19 May 2000 20:21:57 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 19 May 2000 20:21:57 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca) (129.97.134.11) by mta3 with SMTP; 19 May 2000 20:21:57 -0000 Received: from calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA17821 for ; Fri, 19 May 2000 16:21:41 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <200005192021.QAA17821@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> To: "lojban@onelist.com" Subject: Re: [lojban] Help with fiction In-Reply-To: Message from "LYlun.martins." of "Fri, 19 May 2000 16:42:33 -0300." <20000519164233.F4780@hackandroll.org> Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 16:21:40 -0400 X-eGroups-From: Robin Lee Powell From: Robin Lee Powell >A secret society calls themselves "Information Cabal". They >believe basically in "information wants to be free" and for >most of this century they collect and redistribute information, >while they cultivate computers, the hacker culture and the >Internet. > >This is a world very similar to our own, but with lots of >secret societies running stuff in the background - call it >conspiracy theory fiction if you wish :-) > >The Information Cabal believes in universal languages and some >of its members spend a good portion of the century researching >and pushing them. Until one of those languages was "ready", >they used English for all internal communications. > >Recently they decided lojban is the language they want, and >decided to switch to it. Consequently, they will change their >name to something in lojban. Fiction point: lojban is a _very_ bad language to use for obfuscation (bacuse of the audio-visual isomorphism and existence of machine parsers), and cabals usually want to keep things secret. >That's where I'm stuck :-) > >The closest bridi to "information" in this sense is {datni}, >but even then I'm not very sure about how to use. I would use 'se djuno', myself. >And how to express "cabal"? I can't find something that >abstractly refers to a group in this meaning - perhaps if there >was such a bridi, I could use "secret society" (secret group). >But {girzu} sounds different to me... > >{mipri girzu}? {sivni girzu}? I can think of two different ways to gandle thisg: cirza mipri girsu, noting that one gloss for 'cirza' is 'mysterious'. This is a fairly colloquial trans. Or we could go more literal: 1ca-bal \ke-'bal, -'ba^:l\ n [F cabale cabala, intrigue, cabal, fr. ML cabbala cabala, fr. LHeb qabba^-la^-h, lit., received (lore)] (1614) 1: a number of persons secretly united to bring about an overturn or usurpation esp. in public affairs 2: the artifices and intrigues of such a group syn see PLOT 2cabal vi ca-balled; ca-bal-ling (1680) :to unite in or form a cabal Trans: daspo jecta girzu -Robin -- http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest. ... stripped of our uniqueness as human beings by Darwin, exposed to our own inadequacies by Freud, ... Power -- "the ability to bring about our desires" -- is all that we have left. --- Michael Korda, _Power!_