From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Jan 20 01:22:43 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:22:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1H8CQs-00036l-9g for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:22:42 -0800 Received: from web57906.mail.re3.yahoo.com ([68.142.236.99]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1H8CQm-00036V-Hz for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:22:41 -0800 Received: (qmail 89797 invoked by uid 60001); 20 Jan 2007 09:22:29 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Message-ID; b=bZsecO8hW/O0+G4Tofig6esOjgALI2Ld7Lr6q7VRcyL7xzewjNkD+GTY/6FW/45K1VtxRoru6Z3v3IXiqU3ZsYVANxhdNKlfbkKBotXB1oS1CXGDl5275XBt0VaWoqZ0aG/KpHHXncUR83Q/oArppiwtBW8/J03CcymzLotgRkc=; X-YMail-OSG: VatRIF0VM1mxO9sQWFZiZ0LDPScSVXBwh3OmcFhif6mUBvGTqaa12pR6IpvSCb7EhZCXsOHsaqkFZ3kvS3Ws5k54s600wEUsoTKQU0L.epJfdoyIMBKM Received: from [140.228.127.155] by web57906.mail.re3.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:22:29 PST Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:22:29 -0800 (PST) From: Nick Bornak Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: A beautiful metaphor To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <1189A858F8918F43BE3F9C7603C73FB4021D41AD@0456-its-exmp01.us.saic.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: <774647.86751.qm@web57906.mail.re3.yahoo.com> X-Spam-Score: 1.5 X-Spam-Score-Int: 15 X-Spam-Bar: + X-archive-position: 3936 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: n.bornak@yahoo.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners So it's true that the things that are translated tend not to forward the further development of the language. But here is a particularly elegant metaphor for the importance of philosophy. Enclosed is William Wallace's translation of the original German, which I also include. .ipaunai xu lo djica be tu'a lo grute cu na citka lo rutrceraso .a lo perli .a lo vanjba ki'u lo du'u vo'i gu'e rutrceraso ja perli ja vanjba ginai grute .iku'i cafne spuda lo prijyske lo du'u du'e loi prijyske cu zasti jenai drani .ida'inai loi prijyske na se cmima lo drani prijyske .ije'u lo rutrceraso cu grute "Would anyone, who wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes on the ground they were cherries, pears, or grapes, and not fruit? But when philosophy is in question, the excuse of many is that philosophies are so different, and none of them is the philosophy -- that is each is only a philosophy. Such a plea is assumed to justify any amount of contempt for philosophy. And yet cherries too are fruit." "...wie wenn z. B. einer, der Obst verlangte, Kirschen, Birnen, Trauben usf. ausschlüge, weil sie Kirschen, Birnen, Trauben, nicht aber Obst seien. In Ansehung der Philosophie aber läßt man es sich zu, die Verschmähung derselben damit zu rechtfertigen, weil es so verschiedene Philosophien gebe und jede nur eine Philosophie, nicht die Philosophie sei, - als ob nicht auch die Kirschen Obst wären." So, what do you think? I tried to stay much more true to the original than I had elsewhere, before. Unfortunately my German is poor. I'm particularly fond of gu'e ... ginai reinforcing the natural grouping of those tanru connectives, but I'm not sure it's permitted. I'm not sure {vo'i} works the way I want it to work. I'm not particularly happy with the use of {se cmima} to indicate that none of the current philosophies are the philosophy, but I got the feel from the text that no part of them is either, and replacing with a {no da}-type of sentence seems clunky when I try to do it. -- mu'o mi'e merus. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Cheap talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates. http://voice.yahoo.com