From opoudjis@optushome.com.au Thu Oct 10 19:08:02 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: opoudjis@optushome.com.au X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_2_0); 11 Oct 2002 02:08:02 -0000 Received: (qmail 44439 invoked from network); 11 Oct 2002 02:08:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 11 Oct 2002 02:08:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO aquila.its.unimelb.EDU.AU) (128.250.20.111) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 11 Oct 2002 02:08:00 -0000 Received: from CONVERSION-DAEMON by SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (PMDF V5.2-29 #46888) id <01KNJDSUDHIO91AEGN@SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 12:07:58 +1000 Received: from [128.250.86.21] (porchermac.language.unimelb.edu.au [128.250.86.21]) by SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (PMDF V5.2-29 #46888) with ESMTP id <01KNJDSSEOQC972MNT@SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Fri, 11 Oct 2002 12:07:58 +1000 Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 12:05:22 +1000 Subject: Re: [Announcement] The Alice Translation Has Moved And Changed X-Sender: opoudjis@mail.optushome.com.au To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" From: Nick Nicholas X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=90350612 X-Yahoo-Profile: opoudjis X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 16624 For the record and all, I think Jorge taking control of the text and all is a good thing. I think I am likely to take huge issue with stuff he's done (I have already winced at a couple of things I saw in it last year), but it is for the good that, as And said, Jorge issues a text, it gets comments and feedback, and Jorge takes responsibility for the contents. And that he be allowed to propose oddities in use, and see who likes them. It is cool, not evil, for Jorge to own a text; that's why I avoided getting involved in collaborative translation --- because I know my ego. And it's because I know my ego that I forced myself to undertake my two major projects --- my forthcoming mediaeval Greek book and Khamlet --- collaboratively. But it's easier to collaborate on a scholarly book than on a translation, and easier a translation than original literature. And with Khamlet, it was two people, clearly dividing up the work (me verse, Andrew prose), with two or three other Klingonists making email comments. Btw, the review for Khamlet did not go smoothly. (No disrespect to Mark, who was the main reviewer.) Major stylistic reforms did get proposed and accepted (I did what John, I think, said once I did in Lojban in the early '90s: if someone pointed out I was making a mistake when posting my mountains of text, I would simply reset a switch, and keep posting mountains of text.) However, one reviewer is still not on speaking terms with Andrew because he thought he was being ignored. The review took two years to get 3 acts done; we then rushed through the rest, because a rival version of Khamlet got published unbeknownst to us. And when I revised Khamlet for the second, commercial edition last year, it was just me. Much Ado went much smoother in its revision; but it was me and one reviewer, and me on my own doing the revision for publication. So my experience has been that collaboration works for two people on a translation, and maybe one reviewer, but not more. Now, I don't want to naysay, and it's not like we had wikis back then (we had cvs, but it hadn't occurred to us.) Nor do I wish to pooh-pooh the initiatives Robin set up. But I do believe one person should take final responsibility for text. Until and unless there is a commonly accepted Standard Lojban, but you know, I don't see how there will ever be one that legislated for the entire language. Including style. Which I think *is* too much to expect. I think the reasonable thing to do is what we've done in Klingon for my stuff, and what Esperantists sometimes do, and should do more often: one person authors, one person reviews, and the author bears responsibility for accepting or rejecting comments. This isn't a massive prob for collaborative translations of the Alice type. We can easily make it: one person does a given chapter; nothing gets published unless every chapter gets reviewed by one other person; the original person vetts the proposed changed; and one person goes through the entire text and unifies it stylistically. That last person gets called the editor of the whole thing. And, if they have any sense, the stylistic guidelines they impose on the whole text get negotiated with all the collaborators beforehand. One more thing. The Bible is a hodgepodge of authors --- four levels of authorship in the Pentateuch, for example. So there's no intrinsic problem with it being stylistically inconsistent. :-) -- **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** * Dr Nick Nicholas, Linguistics/French & Italian nickn@unimelb.edu.au * University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net * "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the * circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson, * _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. * **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****