[lojban-beginners] Re: My first work of translation

[Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>]

coi epcat
> If I should say:
> i do dasni du'i lo nu finpe cu dasni lo djacu fepri kei ti
> You wear (as much as the event of [fish wear gill]) it.
> So far so good, but the major objective of speaking this clause is to
> describe the two "dasni" as equally effortless. I only included "du'i" to
> apply to "secau troci." (Instead of "le secau troci," should I say "toicau"?)

{secau lo nu troci}

{secau}, like all BAIs, takes a sumti as its complement. You 
could say, for example:
i do secau lo nu troci cu dasni ti du'i lo nu lo finpe 
cu dasni lo djacu fepri

(Using a word order that doesn't need terminators.) 

> Can I say this?
> i do toicau dasni du'i lo nu finpe cu toicau dasni lo djacu fepri kei ti

Yes, except {toicau} should be {toircau}, otherwise it is
just the two cmavo toi cau. (And there's also a {lo} in front 
of {finpe} missing.)

> Why "lo djacu fepri," which seems to be just one gill, instead of "loi djacu
> fenpi"? I thought it was a way to pluralize things.

{lo} does not say anything about number. You can use {loi} though.

> Why "lo" instead of "le"? Does "the really is" serve to accomodate dogmatic
> philosophical assertions of absolute and unquestionable Truth from the
> perspective of an omniscient narrator? Am I allowed to forgo use of "the
> really is" entirely, to acknowledge the limitations of my senses? Or have I
> misunderstood this?

{lo} has no metaphysical baggage attached to it. All the "really is"
is meant to do is that if you refer to something as {lo broda} then 
you would claim that it brodas. That's all. In other words, your only 
commitment is that lo djacu fepri cu djacu fepri. 

{le} is used to refer to _specific_ objects. In this case, I doubt 
the author has some specific gills in mind that the fish is wearing. 
It just wears gills.

> Would "prenrludu" be as easy to figure out as "prenrludaitu"? 

For me they would both be equally _hard_ to figure out. 

Borrowing words into Lojban is not a straightforward issue,
and surely there is a lot of scope for opinion. In my opinion,
basing a borrowing from Luddite on something like "ludait"
does not make sense. For example, in Spanish Luddite is 
translated as "ludita", because the English suffix -ite
corresponds to the Spanish suffix -ita. It wouldn't make any
sense to translate it as "ludait" to match the English
pronounciation, because -ite in English has a meaning of its 
own, and we are not borrowing that meaning. Obviously Lojban 
is not Spanish, the rules for borrowing are different, in 
Lojban there isn't really anything that corresponds directly 
to English -ite so the translation is not so straightforward, 
but "ludait", _to me_, just sounds very wrong.

> Or should I
> just use "fapmi'ipli" or even "minji fapro prenu"?

I think either option would be better, yes.

> You're right that the poem turns his "connectedness" in the sense of
> well-informed into a metaphoric image of "connectedness" in the sense of
> synthesis between man and machine. But "contemplating your connectedness" is
> the transition point in the poem. I specified the well-infomed connectedness
> "ka tavla jorne" (the property of talking type of joinedness) because the
> poet was thinking about this innocuous thing when it transformed into a
> spooky thing. The fear is explained in the rest of the poem.

je'e

mu'o mi'e xorxes




		
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