[lojban-beginners] Re: Translation of folk tale

["Adam D. Lopresto" <adam@pubcrawler.org>]

On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 melissa@fastanimals.com wrote:

>
> I'm trying to translate these Chinese folk tales from Lojban to English:
>
> http://www.lojban.org/files/texts/maxwell_tales
>
> Since it's short, here's the first one in its entirity:
>
> *************************
> ko'a goi lo tolcitno nanmu ge'ujo'u ko'e goi lo xasli po ko'a cu dzukla fo
> lo dargu .i lo tolsi'a citno goi ko'i viska lu'a ko'a ce ko'e lu'u
> nemo'izo'i .i ko'i ba'usku fi ko'a fe lu coidoi patfu ru'a be le xasli
> .ionai li'u .i ko'a spuda ko'i lu coidoi seni'i bersa .io.ianai be mi li'u
> *************************
>
> My loose translation of the first three sentences:
>
> An old man mounted a donkey and travelled down the road.

I'd say more that the old man and the donkey were walking down the road
together.

> A disrespectful young man saw the man and donkey approach.  The young man
> said to the old man "Hey Pops, your donkey sucks" (i.e., he does not respect
> the donkey).

Ahhh, but you're missing the "be".  It's more "Hello, father (I assume) of the
donkey (whom I disrespect)."  The old man's response, then, is "In that case,
hello, my son (whom I respect but disbelief)."

> I'm having trouble making sense of the last line, in which the old man
> responds.  He says something to the effect of "Son, therefore you
> respect/disbelieve me."  But since this does not make much sense, I assume
> I am missing something.  Perhaps he is saying the equivalent of "I don't
> believe you respect me," but that doesn't fit with my current
> understanding of how attitudinal indicators work.
>
> I'm guessing that the attitudinal indicator is the sticking point.  But
> possibly I'm not fully understanding the role of be or the correct
> application of seni'i.  Or perhaps it's something else entirely.
>
> How would others translate the old man's response?
>
>

-- 
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who
had also never met. (Russell Beland, Springfield)