[lojban-beginners] Re: Translate phrase from the Portal song

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Dmitry Shintyakov<shintyakov@gmail.com> wrote:
> coi rodo mi'e dmitris .i mi ze'u cnino jbocli
> Hello everybody, I am Dmitry, and I am probably the oldest Lojban beginner here.
>
> I was trying to translate a phrase from the Portal game song: "There's
> no sense crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying till you
> run out of cake".
>
> Here is the result of an almost hour of extensive dictionary search
> and reading the CLL:
>
> na krinu lonu klaku badri le ro selsre
> .i ko tolsti lonu troci ca'o lonu ralte le nabrkeiki
>
> There is what I don't like in this translation:
> - "le ro selsre" is "all mistakes", not "every". Maybe it would be
> better to say something like "every time you make a mistake", but how?
> - "selsre" or "nulsre", what would be better for the "mistake"?
> - I failed to find an adequate translation for the "cake". Maybe,
> cilmo titla bo nanba (cimtitnanba)? Are there any better translations?
> Also, is "nabrkeiki" a valid fu'ivla?
> - The whole sentence "keep on trying till you run out of cake", as far
> as I understand it correctly, means something like "Do not stop the
> process of trying, until you meet the event of {there is no cake}",
> and my translation is quite different from it.
>
> Any suggestions or corrections?
>

  Actually, this is a pretty good translation, although it isn't
exactly the way I'd translate it.
Actually ro selsre does mean "each mistake". "ro" refers to the
members of that class individually.  But If you did want to say every
time a mistake is made, then yes, you could use "ro lo nu srera kei"
(equivalenty, ro nunsre (which is what I assume you meant rather than
"nulsre" which means something  making a neutral mistake (not too bad,
not too good?)).  "selsre" is the right word to use when you are
focusing on what the actual mistaken was, which you are doing here.
Since it's already an event, no further action is required.  "nunsre"
is approximately equivalent, but since we already have the event in
the x2 piece, why not use it?
"titnanba" is basically used for any pastry (cake, cookie, donut,
etc.), but there is nothing wrong with nabrkeiki.  It is a valid
fu'ivla.  As far as "keep on trying till you run out of cake", try "ko
ru'i troci va'o lo za'i le nabrkeiki cu zvati" (You! continuously try
under conditions of the cake existing")

            --gejyspa