From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:46:00 2010 Reply-To: "Steven M. Belknap" Sender: Lojban list Date: Tue Dec 12 23:31:31 1995 From: "Steven M. Belknap" Subject: metaphor translation To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 12 23:31:31 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: mi cusku dihe >> .i ti dargu la bebylan > la dn cusku dihe >.i ti ba'e tadji la bebylan. .ini'ibo noda litru ra .iji'a malgli > .i la krys cu tadji ku ba'e dargu la bebylan "Road to Babylon" is a literary reference type metaphor, which assumes that the speaker and listener have a common biblical referent. Babylon was an actual city, and actual roads led to it. is more general than and is more general than . seems like the best fit when translating the idea of a "road"; for example would not be right, because it does not carry the sense of "road-route". Using as you propose obscures the metaphor. I would think a legitimate means of translating a metaphor would be to form an image in the listener's mind of the concrete meaning of the metaphor, then let the listener go through the "Aha!" response, as he/she remembers the city of Babylon, and the story about the fragmentation of language, and then sees the analogy to Chris's proposal. (My wife is a native Cuban and we have found that this approach seems to work for English-Spanish translation of many literary reference type metaphors, but of course gives weirdness with other types of metaphors.) I tried to find a cmavo or a gismu for "metaphor" but came up empty. Is there a way I can say the concrete meaning of my metaphor flagging it as a metaphor so as to induce the "aha!"? Is there a way to distinguish which type of metaphor is being used? cohomihe la stivn Steven M. Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria email: sbelknap@uic.edu Voice: 309/671-3403 Fax: 309/671-8413