Message-Id: <199602051731.TAA00475@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Mon, 5 Feb 1996 13:31:00 PST
Reply-To: Andrew Smith <adms@YCO.LEEDS.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Andrew Smith <adms@YCO.LEEDS.AC.UK>
Subject:      pe'a
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2177
Lines: 54

coi.

cu'u la .andruc.: What on earth is a 'brain fart' in English !!

cu'u la djan: A temporary and unaccountable error in belief, judgment, or
reasoning;
     e.g. the notion that "dir" is a reasonable command on a Unix system, or
that
     you have locked your door when in fact you have not.

Thanks very much for explaining this to me. It illustrates one of the main
problems with using pe'a to mark something as 'figurative'
The phrase 'besna kafke', even marked as figurative meant absolutely nothing
to me, as it is not used in English slang, or certainly at least not by me
and my acquaintances.

Consider the following examples:

1) pe'a to( carvi fa le mlatu joi gerku )toi
2) pe'a to( ca le jipci cu ponse le denci )toi
3) pe'a to( ca le slari ke cmalu crino guzme ke'e citsi )toi

I presume that the first example is understandable to English readers.

1) figurative (cats and dogs rain) = it's raining cats and dogs = it's
raining very hard.

But is this really an acceptable translation? What is a figurative 'cats and
dogs raining' to a non-English speaker. It is surely meaningless nonsense,
and should be translated as something like 'much rain' or even 'excessive
rain' in lojban.

The same problem occurs with 'brain cough'. We have, in earlier posts,
established that it is a bad tanru because it is not a real kafke. But, I
would argue, neither is it a metaphorical brain cough, UNLESS you have heard
that expression in American English. From Cowan's explanation above, it
sounds to me like 'a momentary lapse of reason', or an 'intelligence
interruption' or some such.

What about the other examples (2 and 3) above? I suspect that 2) is easy to
understand, if strange, but that 3) is very specific to one particular
culture x, and crucially, NOT UNDERSTANDABLE to many, if not all  non-x
speakers.

We should, therefore, be very careful when using pe'a to translate metaphors
from our mother tongues, to make sure that they are understandable by a
person from a different culture/language.
In my opinion, example 2) above is possibly OK, but that 1) and 3)  [and
besna kafke] should be avoided.

Any Comments?

co'o mi'e .andruc.
[adms@yco.leeds.ac.uk]