From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jan 16 17:31:23 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:31:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1H6ze6-0005zn-P7 for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:31:23 -0800 Received: from elasmtp-dupuy.atl.sa.earthlink.net ([209.86.89.62]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1H6ze2-0005zc-6B for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:31:22 -0800 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=mindspring.com; b=WLITD/l9s7xDjbfssTbNfdeFvRFlm3RMcKcsf5zO3xF6oLjF+gRB2wBgaWh2XD4c; h=Received:Mime-Version:In-Reply-To:References:Content-Type:Message-Id:Content-Transfer-Encoding:From:Subject:Date:To:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; Received: from [68.165.174.86] (helo=[10.0.1.3]) by elasmtp-dupuy.atl.sa.earthlink.net with asmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1H6ze0-0003wa-Sq for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:31:17 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <8A2E2AB9-C4C8-470B-9B81-CA43F4515285@mindspring.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Cortesi Subject: [lojban-beginners] Lojban as Barsoomian: Intro Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:31:42 -0800 To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-ELNK-Trace: c82619e33d1ea3219c7f779228e2f6aeda0071232e20db4d820ccfcc5b6fd2330125524d6d114720350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c X-Originating-IP: 68.165.174.86 X-Spam-Score: -0.9 X-Spam-Score-Int: -8 X-Spam-Bar: / A Princess of Mars: Lojban as Barsoomian Introduction X-archive-position: 3888 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: dcortesi@mindspring.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners A year ago, I undertook to write a screenplay, purely as a personal project, with no expectation the result produced; just a way to stretch my writing skills and to learn about this very specialized and demanding type of composition. Rather than composing an original story, I chose to dramatize the famous fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, "A Princess of Mars". I knew the book well, and all Burroughs's books are in the public domain. At the time various studios were rumored to be producing a film, but such speculation has since died (see the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Princess_of_Mars). Writing a screenplay proved challenging but I have nearly completed it, and I am pleased that the result is of near-professional quality. I will eventually "publish" it on my own website for the world to read. (Any notion of it ever being produced is as unrealistic as expecting to win the PowerBall lottery.) One phase of the screenplay is not complete. In the first 20 minutes there are about 70 lines of dialog spoken by Barsoomians (Martian natives) before our hero John Carter has learned to speak that language. After we have seen him learning Barsoomian, all the characters can speak English. Before that, it would be laughable for characters to say, in English, things that Carter can't understand. The Martians have to speak their native tongue. Subtitles (called "supers" in the business, for "superimposed") will be shown to translate their speech for the audience. (n.b. conventional advice to would-be screenwriters is to avoid supers. However, LOTR and Mel Gibson's recent movies have used them with great success, and most reality-TV shows use supers when dialog recorded live is muffled. Hence supers are more respectable today.) What language is Barsoomian? At first I was going to try to cobble up some jargon based on the scanty nouns that Burroughs invented, with syntax of my own. But this proved to be very difficult. It seems a much better idea to use a real language that will sound "alien" to almost all viewers: to use, in fact, Lojban. Using a real language for Barsoomian has several practical virtues. If the director wants more or different lines, they can be prepared easily by any Lojban student, and will sound consistent with other dialog. And I think actors will find it much less stressful to speak very strange and foreign words if they know that those words are not arbitrary gibberish but "really mean" what they are supposed to mean. At the moment my screenplay contains only the supers, the English translation. I have begun translating those supers into dialog in Lojban. I'm sure I am making grammatical mistakes. More, I'm aiming at spoken dialog: Lojban as excited people would speak it; and Lojban that can be pronounced easily and confidently by an actor; as opposed to writing an essay or poem. I'm sure my translations could be livelier, more terse, and more expressive. I'm hoping to use this list to get help with the project. If nobody objects, I will post passages of dialog here, with questions, and hope for help from you-all. In order not to keep repeating this explanation, I'm putting it, and the translated lines as they are completed, on my personal website at http://www.tassos-oak.com/tempp/ barsoomian.html I will try to keep track of who contributes, so that in the {la'anaicai} event of it being produced, everyone can be properly credited. Thanks to all in advance. Reply to the list with comments about the above, or privately to dcortesi@mindspring.com if you prefer. Thanks again, Dave Cortesi Problem One: "Princess" Problem one is what to call the Princess in a vocative. At more than one point someone addresses her formally, {coi [Princess]}... My best shot so far is a simple tanru, noble type-of ruler type-of daughter nobli turni tixnu coi noltruti'u... I got all tangled up in whether she's a {nobli je turni} type of daughter or possibly a daughter OF a ruler {nobli tixnu pe la turni}. But any such complication makes the lujvo longer and less easy to rattle off in dialog. I'm unhappy that the tanru doesn't carry any of the connotations of the English word--the sense of unearned privilege; the high social value; the expectation of future power, etc. But hey, that's the translation game. Thanks, Dave Cortesi