From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Thu Nov 30 23:56:17 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: iad@math.bas.bg X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_2); 1 Dec 2000 07:56:17 -0000 Received: (qmail 30328 invoked from network); 1 Dec 2000 07:56:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 1 Dec 2000 07:56:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta3 with SMTP; 1 Dec 2000 08:57:20 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp68.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.68]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id JAA05927 for ; Fri, 1 Dec 2000 09:58:12 +0200 Message-ID: <3A275924.94043705@math.bas.bg> Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 09:54:12 +0200 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] "common" words References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski Jorge Llambias wrote: > la aulun cusku di'e > >知音何處尋 > >Where to find an intimate friend > >pa se slabu bele zgike pe le pendo po'u le selsau pendo cu te facki vi ma > > The Lojban version seems to contain much more than the English > one. Can "intimate" by itself really mean "familiar with one's > music"? The problem is that the English version doesn't say what the Chinese says. The title is _zhi1 yin1 he2 chu4 xun2_ lit. `know sound what place seek', that is, `Where to look for a connoisseur of music'. > [...] I have a comment about the "where" in the title. I once thought > that this would be a place to use {makau} outside of an explicit > subclause. Alternatively, I would try {jaivi sisku lo jimpe bele zgike}. As for `There was ...', `One day ...' etc., I say forget about rendering their literal meaning, and focus on what they really mean -- which really isn't much. As in: > 有一個叫伯牙的人很會彈琴, > There was a man named Po-ya who knew to play the Ch'in very well. > puzu zasti fa pa nanmu noi se cmene zoi gy. Po-ya gy. po'u la bo,ias. > goi ko'a .i ko'a mutce kakne le nu zgizu'e la tcin. Recast the English as `A man named Po-ya knew to play ...' or even `Po-ya knew to play ...', and it still means pretty much the same. Btw, the Chinese describes Po-ya as _ren2_, not _nan2_, so {prenu} is more precise than {nanmu}. --Ivan