Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 07:12:13 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 07:10:49 -0400 Message-Id: <199308151110.AA01053@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6217; Sun, 15 Aug 93 07:09:28 EDT Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@YALEVM) by YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 9327; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 07:08:59 -0400 Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1993 04:08:26 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: I have a dream - belated X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Sun Aug 15 00:08:26 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Colin Fine `(>) and John Cowan (>>) discussed Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" as translated by Bob McIvor on loglanist list, back in June. McIvor used the TLI equivalent of "ponse" and "senva". >>Of course, the whole notion that what MLK had was a {senva} is plain silly. >>He had a {pacna}, or maybe even a {terzukte}. A reasonable, if essentialist, >>translation might be: >> >> mi ckaji le nu pacna > >You mean 'pacna' . I partly agree with you. I think that revri/senva is >not adequate as a translation, but I think that it is an important part >of it. In fact I would translate the rhetoric something like > > seke pacna senva mi > >(The conversion serves partly rhetorically to front the selbri, and >partly to allow the pseudo anaphoric 'lego'i' in following sentences.). I agree with John that "pacna" is better than "senva". I agree also that "ponse" is wrong, in that there is no sense of ownership with regard to dreams that one wants to share. I think the underused word "steci" helps solve the problem. It conveys an especially, even extremely, close association, but has no implications of exclusiveness or ownership in either direction. Using wording to keep the English translation word order, I like: mi se steci pa se pacna To me is special/specific one hoped-for (thing) I have a dream. Reversing the word order eliminates the first "se", but makes the result less recognizable to those familiar with the original. pa se pacna steci mi One hoped-for thing is special/specific to me. But since the two places of steci are symmetric, this isn't really necessary - you just need avoid too literal an English translation. mi steci pa se pacna I am special/specific to one hoped-for (thing) which is identical in meaning to One hoped-for thing is special to me. lojbab