Message-Id: <199608020045.UAA01823@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Thu, 1 Aug 1996 19:16:58 +0100
Reply-To: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>
Subject:      wind at your back
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
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>>>>"May circumstances always assist you like a tailwind assists a ship".
>>>
>>>Yes!!
>>>A compromise with the best of both worlds. A metaphor and a clear
>>>description of the meaning. The best yet, anyway, in my opinion.
>>
>>
>>No! This is a simile not a metaphor. Similes are easy to translate between
>>languages, as a simile explicitly links the essentially unlike things which
>>are to be compared. Metaphors are implicit. I would look askance at
>>translating metaphor as simile. They are different. Metaphor draws on the
>>shared culture, knowledge, or language of the speaker and listener more
>>than simile does.
>
>But Lojban assumes that there is NO shared culture or language shared between
> speaker and listener other than Lojban (I will not make statements about
>shared
>knowledge, except that the speaker has the obligation to cater to the
>listener's
>knowledge according to our language "ethic".)
>
>Simile, and metaphor , and other such terms are words used to describe
>features of certain natural languages.  Generically,  a simile IS a kind of
>metaphor - it just happens to be a kind which is more highly marked than
>others.  "Brain fart", vs. "as if his brain farted it" mean essentially the
>same thing.  Thus it is only stylistics that determine whether simile is
>acceptable as a translation for metaphor.  As I say in another post, I
>think it is preferred to almost any other method of translating metaphor.


I think I agree with you, although I would say it differently. In natural
languages, there is a continuous spectrum of analogy constructs, varying
from pure simile to pure metaphor. In a pure simile, everything is spelled
out, while in a pure metaphor, the reader or listener has to grasp the
implicit analogy that is being made between essentially unlike things.

Metaphor: "The pilot had a brain fart and jettisoned all the jet fuel, thus
crashing the F-14 Tomahawk"
Simile:    :  "Like a fart, loudly, unpredictably, and embarrassingly
emitting from a momentarily unreliable gastrointestinal tract during high
tea with the Queen of England, the pilot's brain mistook the fuel jettison
switch for the radio switch, thus crashing the F-14 Tomahawk."

Simile & metaphor are both English words. I agree that they do not apply to
lojban utterances in a straighforward fashion. But peha ought to change to
context to a presumably shared one external to lojban, no? Doubtless, tanru
can be used to express the same simile/metaphor distinction in lojban.

-Steven