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From: Pierre Abbat <phma@bezitopo.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [lojban] pronouns and translation software
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 00:19:52 -0500
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On Tuesday, December 09, 2014 00:20:02 Paul Rapoport wrote:
> I would translate that as {ko'a fi ko'e pu dunda}, "They gave it to them."
> in a slangish way. If I wanted to get the full meaning across formally, I
> might try {lo ninmu pu dunda fi lo drata ninmu}, "The woman gave (it) to
> the other woman.".

I agree with "ko'a fi ko'e pu dunda". The same sort of thing happens in 
translation among languages such as English, Spanish, and Finnish, which have 
different numbers of genders and in which (at least in English and Spanish) 
some forms of pronouns do not show distinctions that others do.

To be specific (and I don't know the declension of Finnish pronouns, just that 
they don't have gender):
in Spanish, "su" (possessive adjective) does not show number of the possessor, 
so it could be "his, her, its, your(formal)";
"le" and "les" (dative pronouns) don't show gender;
in English, "they" doesn't show gender;
"you" doesn't show number (except in Yorkish and EME).

Translation software, faced with such pronoun mismatches, is bound to make 
mistakes. I've seen a lot of them.

Pierre
-- 
sei do'anai mi'a djuno puze'e noroi nalselganse srera

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