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Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 11:51:34 -0300
From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?=" <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: fanva
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On 5/26/07, Vid Sintef <picos.picos@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The point is that, when translating a natlang expression into Lojban we may
> re-communicate a possible implicit idea of the text (rooted within the
> author's epistemology) which has been obscured by the sentence's
> (language-specific) prescriptive aspect.

That is certainly true. And in this particular instance, given the nature
of the text being translated you don't even need to be very faithful to the way
that the author (probably anonymous) said whatever it was that they wanted
to say. You are free to re-write and make the point you think is more
important. (And, BTW, you may want to add your translation to the
Lojban wikipedia, so that it's not just an exercise for you but it can also
serve as more Lojban text available for others in the future.)

> Consider the following sentences:
>
> 1) It is a class that consists of 20 children.
>
> 2) It is a "class" that consists of 20 children.
>
> 3) It is a class of classes that consists of 3 smaller classes.
>
> 4) It is a "class of classes" that consists of 3 smaller classes.
>
> 1 & 3 are simply reporting a fact. But 2 & 4 happens to imply, with the
> quotation marks, something different in nature.

Yes. It's interesting that 2 & 4 are difficult to read aloud so that they
sound different from 1 & 3, though. In speech, the function of the quotes
can probably be achieved by adding an "as it were": "It is a class of
classes, as it were, that consists of 3 smaller classes".

> The existence of the double
> quotes here indicates that there is something more intentional or
> interpretative in the phrase, or, more precisely, in the way by which the
> phrase has been conceived. 2 & 4 are respectively proposing an intentional
> conception, while 1 & 3 are more like to be reporting a fact. 'that consists
> of ...' in 1 & 3 is simply a grammatical part of the statement, while in 2 &
> 4 it appears to have stronger explicative adhesion to the previous
> conceptional phrase, adding the logical evidence by which the phrase can be
> proposed.
>
> In short,
> while 1 & 3 simply say that '... is ... that (which) ...',
> 2 & 4 imply, in addition to its grammatical statement, that '... can be
> viewed/conceptualized as what I quote as "..." because ...' or 'It should be
> noted that ... looks like "..." because ...'.
>
> So, 'that consists ...' in 2 & 4 is more like a reasoning for the introduced
> conception, the epistemological causality of which can easily be obscured by
> the sentence's prescriptive appearance itself.

OK. To me {ni'i} is much too strong to reflect what I read in the English, so
I wouldn't use it if the idea was to make a faithful translation. But there is
nothing wrong with the ni'i-version in itself if that's what you read in the
English or if that is a point you want to make in the Lojban text.

mu'o mi'e xorxes