From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Oct 03 18:18:17 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 03 Oct 2005 18:18:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EMbRX-0001lp-MX for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 03 Oct 2005 18:18:07 -0700 Received: from web81301.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.37.76]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.52) id 1EMbRW-0001lh-FX for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 03 Oct 2005 18:18:07 -0700 Received: (qmail 16363 invoked by uid 60001); 4 Oct 2005 01:18:00 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=sbcglobal.net; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=LpwHzJ0jDybyZoWQD6Sr4wIr8s+lnDjZ8Lwtu0eS2GQEBSIRo3K6TTdu4fLWkTCnAQMLr8otZgCmLXMeKqRAPql5KpVaSH3h0cFztL4hriTomQkwff5SUc1y4X0owVeXFVjSwkjtgtUKEoBXFrtcfJq/RtNPzIZUzfzQQ6WZ/Rc= ; Message-ID: <20051004011800.16361.qmail@web81301.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [68.88.34.50] by web81301.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 03 Oct 2005 18:18:00 PDT Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 18:18:00 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: Ocean continents To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <5b0248170510031739k602ecf0fk65a85039fe8cc515@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: -1.3 (-) X-archive-position: 10713 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --- Sanghyeon Seo wrote: > Apparently, I missed some mails regarding my > Lojban composition, "lo > tumla ne'i lo xamsi". (Or weren't they intended > for the list?) > > Is it GMail's fault? GMail seems to set(force) > Reply-To to the author, > not to the list -- it seems John replied to > Jorge only, thinking he > was replying to the list. Is this the case? No; we were talking about something else and your piece came up to make a point, so we looked at it some more. This was all intentionally on private line. > Anyway, here's the original from which I > translated: > > "Ocean continents > > That far country is lost in time, its streets > paved with gold, its > palaces roofed with gold. You could conquer it > in a month, and rule > over all its immensity, and bring back all the > treasure that it has, > endless forest and furs, turquoise and gold, > more gold than there is > yet now in the world; and yet still the > greatest treasure in that land > is already lost." > > Still, the context of the last sentence isn't > clear, I fear. It is > referring to the story element previously > presented, not translated > here. Thanks. It is a different story than what I read into the Lojban, but related to it in interesting ways. I suspect there is a better word for the more specific "contintent" than {tumla}. And, indeed, an old lujvo list offers {braplu}, "big island". {tumla} is OK but vague. "That far country" cries out for {le tu}, although again {lo tu} is OK (I think there is some doubt about whether {tu} can apply to something out of sight, as this place surely is, but I think that need not actually apply here). "lost in time" may be poetic for "far in the past." though it suggests more -- that record of it is lost, say. And this general-precise split occurs elsewhere as well: "palace" in the next line rather than "edifice." Catching the force of the English, which are just fragments, might be hard in Lojban. Your version gets the point across and, with the floating {tu} perhaps some of the loose structure as well (though a different structure). I am not sure that "can but didn't" is quite right for "could," which has more hypothetical force. But that is a matter of taste, perhaps. The point is made. the "battle-gain" for "conquer" is not clear; we get the right sort of idea but not quite the target (a constant problem with lujvo -- and even more, tanru). the old list offers no suggestions and this works pretty well once you know what it means. I missed badly on some vocabulary (a not at all uncommon event that). I am less clear about the structure of that whole last long bit, from "bring back." I got the gist, but how it was to emerge from the pieces is not at all clear. And, if I now understand the original (well, the source for the Lojban trat anyhow), that greatest treasure is something very specific (I don't know what) and so a {le} again would be useful for directing our atrtention from the general to the specific. A very nice job; keep up the good work. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.