From sv@vilain.net Mon Apr 28 08:51:56 2003
Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Mon, 28 Apr 2003 08:51:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from 203-79-64-211.adsl.paradise.net.nz ([203.79.64.211] helo=themachine.vilain.net)
	by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.12)
	id 19AAv5-0007X6-00
	for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Mon, 28 Apr 2003 08:51:55 -0700
Received: from sv by themachine.vilain.net with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian))
	id 19AAv2-00065n-00
	for <lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org>; Tue, 29 Apr 2003 03:51:52 +1200
From: Sam Vilain <sam@vilain.net>
To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Spiritual texts?
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 04:51:51 +1300
User-Agent: KMail/1.4.3
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
  charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
Message-Id: <200304290351.51565.sam@vilain.net>
X-archive-position: 264
X-Approved-By: sam@vilain.net
X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0
Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org
Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org
X-original-sender: sam@vilain.net
Precedence: bulk
Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org
X-list: lojban-beginners

I see the effort at 
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/cvsweb/lojban/translations/drbible/

to translate the Bible.  Good luck.  I'll see you at the next apocalypse 
:-).

Winning over several hundred million english speaking christians might be 
worth the years it would take to translate the bible to lojban, but a more 
`profitable' endeavour might be to translate the 81 `chapters' (more like 
short poems) of the Tao Te Ching to win over a billion Chinese.  After 
all, if it is a truly graceful language, then it should be able to 
describe the way of all things gracefully too.

A free (GPLed) English translation of the Tao Te Ching is at:

  http://www.chinapage.com/gnl.html

There are some challenging terms to translate; perhaps someone has already 
had some thoughts on these:

  yin - translates to any yin concept; empty, without, soft, female, black
  yang - full, with, hard, male, white
  tao - often translated as (the) `way' (tadji ?  Plain dadjo?)
  pu'u - the block of uncarved wood (c.f. Child-like mind)
  ch'i - life force

Chinese certainly has some interesting huffman coding in their language.

Here is chapter 1:

The Way (Tao) that can be experienced is not (the) true (Tao);
The world that can be constructed is not true.
The Way (Tao) manifests all that happens and may happen (to infinity);
The world represents all that exists and may exist.

To experience without intention is to sense the world;
To experience with intention is to anticipate the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.

Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way (Tao),
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.


I don't know if anyone's heard of Perl golf.  In Standard golf, you play a 
game with a stick knocking a little white ball around in as few strokes as 
possible.  Of course, we all know that.  In Perl golf, you play to write a 
program that performs a functional description in as few keystrokes as 
possible.

So, in lojban golf - you try to express as much of the message as 
semantically possible, in as few words as possible, using as few 
grammatical constructs as possible.

Fore!
-- 
Sam Vilain, sam@vilain.net

  Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.
THOMAS CARLYLE