From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Nov 18 14:42:20 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 18 Nov 1992 19:22:08 -0500 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 2796; Wed, 18 Nov 92 19:18:57 EST Received: from UGA.BITNET by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) with BSMTP id 2723; Wed, 18 Nov 92 19:18:48 EST Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 14:42:20 GMT Reply-To: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Subject: Re: CAFE.INT: su'u xekri To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: My translation of part 1 of Nick's "su'u xekri" ("Black") 1. "That's right. And then he said 'Take heed of the mammals'" Uncertain chuckles among the listeners. Paul, god-like in a black sleeveless (hm, sexy!) undershirt, said "You mean, of the mammalian state." It is late at the bar, and the sky is supremely black, seen from the windowed building. (Note 1) Some customers leave. Lizbeth, not leaving, plays with Paul's wild black hair and grins uncomfortably, not liking the joke. Far away, a black chaos of terrible black holes, destroying and creating with fearful strength and violence. (Note 2). And right here, the same sort of thing going on. Liz (with smoky blue eyes) in a grey T-shirt that says "Love is being strongly attracted to people whether male or female" in black letters. And I (her hair is not wild) am even more grey. Grey are my shirt, my trousers, the jersey tied round my midriff. Somebody ? sings "Grey man, in grey clothes, riding a grey horse" (note 3). Actually they don't. Properly, GRUS are replaced by XEKR. That's "black" in the bar. Notes: 1. I can't really make sense of this sentence. I have assumed that "za'a" is a mistake for "ga'a", as "xekri" has no x2 place. But what is intended by "cevni carmi co xekri" I don't know. 2. "kalsa" wants a "ka" for its x2, so I'm not sure what to make of this. 3. I can't make anything of "ba'anaita'o" - (mark-nation) board I am impressed with this piece of writing, while at the same time, I am not at all sure that it works. It's full of untranslatable things, that I read and get something from, but I'm not certain it's what Nick means. A narrow translation would put in all sorts of things that don't quite make sense, and I've made sense of them in English by being impressionistic. Examples: ".ivusaibo" - the "sai" says there is an strong but unspecified emotion attached to the "vu" (far away). [It does not intensify the "vu" itself]. "notcre" for (message-bearing) t-shirt is meaningful only because we are familiar with them - cf my inability to understand "ba'anaita'o" which is probably just as clear a metaphor. What I do like very much is the use of a long tanru with interior linkargs to express a series of contemperaneous or sequential actions: .i la lizbet. [[[[[na'e go'i] ] se mlifanza] cisma] no'e zanru] le xajmi "Lizbet [[[[[not doing that-ly] -ly] mildly annoyed-ly] smilingly] neutrally approved] the joke" This rather nicely reflects the Japanese "-te" or the Mongolian "-ji", and I wanted it when doing my Dagur translation. kolin