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From: Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.hn.org>
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Subject: [lojban] Re: jordis
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 21:35:27 -0400
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On Wednesday 20 October 2004 20:48, jordi mas wrote:
> You see, as the typical translation-as-an-exercise
> that newbies seem to be expected to do here, I've been
> thinking about translating a few pages of a comic.
>
> The problem is, in comics sometimes sentences are
> split into baloons in such a way that reordering the
> word order into normal English order doesn't work.
>
> I mean, the original says something like
> " luminous beings / we are " which in the original
> language is an unmarked word order, split in two
> different frames. The second frame has a drawing
> of the "we". When translating into English I have to
> choose between reordering the sentence (sounding
> ridiculous) or losing sync with the drawings. When
> translating into Spanish no problem, a "we are"
> at the end is acceptable (well, barely).
>
> Can I use the {fa} {se} etc. just to
> put the words in the order I want with
> no special emphasis intended? Or would
> that trigger the "snarl reflex"?

My rule of thumb is at most one FA and one SE; any more is likely to contort 
the listener's mind. You could say {gusni jmive / fa mi}, which to me has the 
same feel as the English translation you gave. Or {gusni se jmive mi}, which 
reminds me of {se blanu le broda}, an order which is difficult to translate.

Another difficult-to-translate order is {broda x2}, which is more natural (to 
my ear) than {x2 se broda}, but {broda x2} when translated into English 
results in bad grammar, whereas {x2 se broda} corresponds to the passive. 
Then there's {broda x2 x3}, which *definitely* sounds better than {x2 se 
broda fi x3}, though the latter order is much more natural in English. An 
example is {srebandu mi lo derdembi} "I am allergic to peanuts". How would 
you add an x1 (say, {lo nu tance tsubi'o}) to that, and translate it? (I'm 
not allergic to peanuts, so I don't know what reaction one would have. I just 
made that one up.)

phma
-- 
li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci