[lojban] Re: A first attempt at translation

["P. Alexander Schofield" <theschof@cs.com>]

I finally had enough time to go back and review more thoroughly "What is 
Lojban":

lojban-out@lojban.org wrote:

 >> Are you translating from the original classical greek version? If 
not, you will inevitably get a worse translation.
…
 >> The concept of writing hexameter in lojban seems almost impossible, 
especially since stress is part of the syntax.

Given my limited abilities in Greek and even more limited abilities in 
Lojban, it’s going to have to be a prose translation, as literal as I 
can make it without it being to awkward. Lojban has machinery that 
English doesn’t for translating from Greek, like word-order emphasis, 
but it’s probably a better idea for me to limit myself in the beginning. 
Maybe an iterative process, first from a translation, later on with 
amendments made from the original text.

 > I would start something like this:
 >
 > doi fetcei .i ko tavla fi le nu la akiles cu fengu

Once again, this should translate roughly to:
Rage-- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed,...

.i fengu doi fetcei .i ko sanga di'u po'e le la axile'ys. bersa be le la 
pele'ys. patfu ku ku goi ko'a .i ko'a cu ke catra kakne ke'e je se dapma

What I think is nice about this one is that everything is referenced-- 
the anger the goddess has to sing about is the anger mentioned in the 
beginning; this same anger is the anger of achilles, who is the son of 
peleus (the father); hereafter achilles (who is the son of peleus) is 
referred to as ko'a. ko'a is capable of killing and is cursed. I think 
the only way to get more exact (w/out time or space tenses) is:

.i fengu doi fetcei .i ko sanga di'u po'e le la axile'ys. goi ko'e ge'u 
bersa be le la pele'ys. patfu be ko'e ku ku goi ko'a .i ko'a cu ke catra 
kakne ke'e je se dapma

This should specify that Peleus is not just "the father", but "the 
father of ko'e (achilles)". This is probably overkill.

Either it means exactly this or is complete nonsense; this seems to be a 
condition lojban is especially prone to.

phma@webjockey.net wrote:
On Tuesday 02 December 2003 02:03, LeSchof wrote:

 >> {o'onai} is neither a sumti nor a 0-argument selbri. It's an 
attitudinal,
which is like an interjection. Thus {go'i} is referentless.

 >> {le bersa} indicates a specific son, known to the author. If the son 
isn't
named until later, that's fine.

Specific in that it's not lo bersa? I think the revised translation is 
pretty literal, since it (hopefully correctly this time) references the 
last di'u (which is correct I think as opposed to le go'i-- which would 
reference the x1 position of fengu, "the angry one" which I don't want, 
I want the anger-- to attribute to achilles). BTW: the doi fetcei 
shouldn't make a difference being part of the first sentence here should it?

 >> BTW, I'd say {.axilefs}, since I (like ModernGreeks) pronounce 
Ancient Greek at least Attic and Koiné) and Modern Greek the same way.

Probably a more valid approach than mine, given that the only spoken 
Greek today is modern, and spelling should be entirely phonetic in 
Lojban. But “What is Lojban”, mentions that with name-spellings people 
may be (or just are) a bit looser with the rules, often choosing a 
spelling closer to the original than a phonetically-correct spelling. To 
an average reader I think this will be more recognizable at least. 
Actually I was pleasantly surprised that the rising diphthongs in Lojban 
all have identical equivalents in Attic (in terms of spelling and 
pronunciation), at least going off of Mastronarde and “What is Lojban”-- 
saves me the trouble of memorization, also x is identical to chi, even 
down to the example given (loch).




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