[lojban-beginners] Re: So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 6/17/05, Ben Cook <psylight@gmail.com> wrote:
> rotaerk_ spontaneously came up with a translation of the title of the
> Douglas Adams novel listed in the subject, and it was thus:
> 
> co'o .i ckire fi ro le finpe
> 
>  From my readings of xorlo, it seems as though we'd want to use lo
> instead of le here, but rotaerk_ believes that would translate to "all
> fish on earth", rather than "all the fish". 

Ouch! Why? That would be {lo ro finpe pe la terdi} or something
like that. There is nothing in {lo} or in {finpe} that brings in the
earth. {ro lo finpe} is "each thing that is a fish", and what counts
as a fish can vary from context to context.

If I recall correctly, the Earth has already been destroyed to 
build the freeway by then, so there would be no fish left on 
earth to thank for, but then in that story there certainly are
fish (in people's ears for example) that are not on earth.

I suspect there's some
> English quasi-idiomatic use going on here, but I'm at a loss. I've no
> idea how to properly translate that concept. The title implies not that
> "all the fish on earth" are being thanked-for, but rather that "all the
> fish that have been given" are being thanked for.

I don't see a problem with using {le} there, but I would
say {le ro finpe} rather than {ro le finpe}. With the latter it would
mean "thanks for each of the fish", which although not wrong
it is somewhat overdoing it. I would say the fish in question 
are all being thanked for together, and not each of them 
individually. 

> The alternate translation I devised was:
> 
> co'o .i ckire fi lo nu dunda lo finpe
> 
> I feel mine is more semantically accurate, yet that translation loses
> the sense of "all". Finally, I came up with this kluge to convey the
> sense of "all".
> 
> co'o .i ckire fi lo nu dunda da'a no finpe

How would {da'a no} differ from {ro}? I would say they are 
equivalent.

> As we increase semantic accuracy, we lose the brevity of the English,
> like usual.

I would say {mi do ckire le ro finpe}, but if you don't like
objects in the x3 of ckire, you can say {tu'a le ro finpe}
for an implicit event involving the fish.
 
mu'o mi'e xorxes