From theschof@cs.com Sat Dec 06 07:35:54 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: theschof@cs.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 65116 invoked from network); 6 Dec 2003 15:35:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.166) by m15.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 6 Dec 2003 15:35:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp5.ispsnet.net) (64.63.192.251) by mta5.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 Dec 2003 15:35:48 -0000 Received: from cs.com (unverified [64.63.223.32]) by smtp5.ispsnet.net (Joe1) with ESMTP id 4353313 for ; Sat, 06 Dec 2003 10:36:09 -0500 Return-Path: Message-ID: <3FD1F756.9000305@cs.com> Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2003 10:35:50 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031013 Thunderbird/0.3 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: A first attempt at translation Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 64.63.192.251 From: "P. Alexander Schofield" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=72984733 X-Yahoo-Profile: LeSchof X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 21342 I finally had enough time to go back and review more thoroughly "What is Lojban": lojban-out@lojban.org wrote: >> Are you translating from the original classical greek version? If not, you will inevitably get a worse translation. … >> The concept of writing hexameter in lojban seems almost impossible, especially since stress is part of the syntax. Given my limited abilities in Greek and even more limited abilities in Lojban, it’s going to have to be a prose translation, as literal as I can make it without it being to awkward. Lojban has machinery that English doesn’t for translating from Greek, like word-order emphasis, but it’s probably a better idea for me to limit myself in the beginning. Maybe an iterative process, first from a translation, later on with amendments made from the original text. > I would start something like this: > > doi fetcei .i ko tavla fi le nu la akiles cu fengu Once again, this should translate roughly to: Rage-- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed,... .i fengu doi fetcei .i ko sanga di'u po'e le la axile'ys. bersa be le la pele'ys. patfu ku ku goi ko'a .i ko'a cu ke catra kakne ke'e je se dapma What I think is nice about this one is that everything is referenced-- the anger the goddess has to sing about is the anger mentioned in the beginning; this same anger is the anger of achilles, who is the son of peleus (the father); hereafter achilles (who is the son of peleus) is referred to as ko'a. ko'a is capable of killing and is cursed. I think the only way to get more exact (w/out time or space tenses) is: .i fengu doi fetcei .i ko sanga di'u po'e le la axile'ys. goi ko'e ge'u bersa be le la pele'ys. patfu be ko'e ku ku goi ko'a .i ko'a cu ke catra kakne ke'e je se dapma This should specify that Peleus is not just "the father", but "the father of ko'e (achilles)". This is probably overkill. Either it means exactly this or is complete nonsense; this seems to be a condition lojban is especially prone to. phma@webjockey.net wrote: On Tuesday 02 December 2003 02:03, LeSchof wrote: >> {o'onai} is neither a sumti nor a 0-argument selbri. It's an attitudinal, which is like an interjection. Thus {go'i} is referentless. >> {le bersa} indicates a specific son, known to the author. If the son isn't named until later, that's fine. Specific in that it's not lo bersa? I think the revised translation is pretty literal, since it (hopefully correctly this time) references the last di'u (which is correct I think as opposed to le go'i-- which would reference the x1 position of fengu, "the angry one" which I don't want, I want the anger-- to attribute to achilles). BTW: the doi fetcei shouldn't make a difference being part of the first sentence here should it? >> BTW, I'd say {.axilefs}, since I (like ModernGreeks) pronounce Ancient Greek at least Attic and Koiné) and Modern Greek the same way. Probably a more valid approach than mine, given that the only spoken Greek today is modern, and spelling should be entirely phonetic in Lojban. But “What is Lojban”, mentions that with name-spellings people may be (or just are) a bit looser with the rules, often choosing a spelling closer to the original than a phonetically-correct spelling. To an average reader I think this will be more recognizable at least. Actually I was pleasantly surprised that the rising diphthongs in Lojban all have identical equivalents in Attic (in terms of spelling and pronunciation), at least going off of Mastronarde and “What is Lojban”-- saves me the trouble of memorization, also x is identical to chi, even down to the example given (loch).