Return-Path: Message-Id: <9109051416.AA07921@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Thu Sep 5 13:55:16 1991 Reply-To: Lojban list Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: Translation X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann , Bob LeChevalier Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Thu Sep 5 13:55:16 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Oh, you all have been so nice, I might as well post the beginning of my latest translation. I actually have quite a bit more of it done (at least in draft form), but I'd like to see what kinds of corrections I get on this. Last time I did a translation ("By the rivers of Babylon"), I billed it as just a song, rather than pointing out that it is, in fact, a Psalm (#137, I believe). I'll not make that mistake this time. This piece is also from the Bible; just open to the very beginning: Genesis 1:1 et seq. ni'oni'o ca lemu'e krasi ku le cevni cu finti lo tsani .e lo terdi (newnew) during the-achievment-of: start, the god invent sky and earth Until about 1min ago, I started this with {ca le pamoi}, which is pretty silly. I think this is slightly better. Should I use {mu'e}? All throughout here, I refer to God as {le cevni}. Because the tetragrammaton is not used for the first chapter, I can avoid any {jegvo} problems. The Heb word used is "Elohim" which is a much more easily-translated word, meaning simply "god" (tho it is actually plural in form. The same word is used to refer to "other gods" in the Bible). Perhaps it would be better to use {la cevni}. I think it likely is. I'll leave it as it stands for now. I use {finti} (rather than {zbasu}) to imply "creation" rather than "construction", since {zbasu} implies raw materials which is not implied in the original verb. .i le terdi cu na'e seltarmi je kunti the earth (other-than formed)-and-empty There's no way I can make sense of the original description, "tohu vavohu", and rather than try to wade through commentaryies to try to come up with a tradition meaning, I copped out and used the standard KJV "formless and void", more or less. .ijebo ka manku vi ga'u le condi and quality-of: darkness near above the deep-thing I'm not sure about the {ka} here, a recurring problem throughout this translation. I use the observative form to indicate a sort of "there was..." feeling, and I think it works. I am less sure of my use of {le condi} for the Heb "t'hom", another of those nigh-untranslatables which abound in this chapter. Again, I went with the conventional meaning, sort of. I think {vi ga'u} indicates presence immediately above, which is what is said. .ije le cevni pruxi cu fulta ga'u loi djacu And the god-spirit float above the-mass-of water Pretty straightforward. I think {cevni pruxi} works for "spirit of god". I could probably have used {le pruxi be le cevni}, but I think the tanru suffices. {fulta} might not be the best word. The original verb appears only twice in the Pentateuch, and means something like "hover". I had played with stuff like {volzvati} ("fly-be at") and the like. .i le cevni cu bacru lu .e'o (ka?) gusni li'u And the god utter "(command!) [quality-of:] illumination" {bacru} doesn't imply a listener, which is what I want. Here's an interesting problem: Lojbanic culture interfering! See, I wanted a kind of third-person imperative, which is semantically (not grammatically) implied here. Obvious solution: look to UI for a word for command. Trouble is, the command cmavo, {.e'o}, has too long been used to *soften* commands, rather than make them. {.e'o} is command or request, depending on rank of the speaker, but we get {e'osai ko sarji la lojban.} drilled into us so much that we forget the command aspect. Peopl don't use the more requesting cmavo, {pe'u} where it belongs, with the result that {e'o} gets weakened. Should there be a {ka} before {gusni}, or not? .ijebo (ka?) gusni And [quality-of:] illumination straight observative. works. .i le cevni cu jinvi fi le (ka?) gusni fe loza'i xamgu The god opined about the [quality-of:] illumination that the-state-of: good [was-true] Heb has "saw", but we really want opinion here. I think I'm using it more or less right. I'm unsure about {loza'i} there, though. .i le cevni cu selfendri'a fi le (ka?) gusni ce le (ka?) manku The god be-divide-cause [(something)] into the [quality-of:] illumination unordered-set-with the [quality-of:] darkness Using {selfendri'a} as discussed in my last post. Hopefully it works. Hopefully people can understand the place structure. For dividing between light and darkness, I have a division of something elliptical into the two. I use {ce} for the conjunction. Would {ce'o} have been better? Or another conjunction? .i le cevni cu te cmene le gusni zo djedi The god named the illumination "day" straighforward. .ijebo le manku cu se cmene zo nicte ru And the dark was-named "night" by some-remote-sumti (i.e. {le cevni}) The various conversion shenanigans are to keep the word-order vaguely reflective of the original. Sorry, it's just my nature to try to translate literally, especially something that's had its words pored over so carefully. I am improving though. .i vanci .i cerni .i pamei djedi Evening. Morning. One day. I use "One day" instead of "the first day" because that's what it says. Subsequent days are given ordinal numbers, day 1 isn't. Go figure. I just changed it to {pamei} from {pa} because I think the latter isn't grammatical. There you have it. Day One. After you've kicked this around for a while and I can apply your criticisms to the rest, I'll give you the second day. Obquestion: I need a good ljvo or gismu for "swarm". I need the idea of a large crowd, large numbers. Otherwise I'll stay stuck on day 4. ~mark