On Apr 20, 2007, at 2:34 PM, Turniansky, Michael wrote:
Gee, *I* read Alice in Wonderland as a child. It was made for
children. It's full of adventure. It made me wonder what was coming
next. How is not a children's book? (And for the record, is much
shorter then Harry Potter, Artemis, Fowler, etc. that Colin seems to
prefer).
--gejyspa
Well, from my point of view, the Lojban translation is just too darn hard to read. I can't get through the first paragraph without consulting jbovlaste a dozen times, and then dipping back into CLL because I don't understand the cmavo that the translator's using.
A children's book (or a beginner's book) needs to have just enough challenge to send me hunting for the dictionary every so often, but the majority of the vocab should be already within reach. This was my frustration that motivated me to start writing the Lojban Reader ( http://umich.edu/~alexjm/reader0.html ) although I haven't had the time/motivation to work on it recently.
In my view, Alice in Wonderland in it's Lojban version, is really more like adult books -- once you understand how to read the language well enough do it without thinking much there's a lot of great story to be told. But if you're reading it in jbofi'e line-by-line translation anyhow, you're not really getting much.
mu'o mi'e .aleks.