Re: [lojban] Re: ji'i

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 8/9/05, Adam COOPER <adamgarrigus@gmail.com> wrote:
> Although this thread is about the use of {ji'i}, IMHO there are a couple of
> better ways to render "... once or twice she had peeped into the book her
> sister was reading".
> 
> 1) i a bu boi pa roi jo nai re roi sutra zgana li'o sa'a
> This seems to be the literal rendering of "once or twice"; indeed there's
> not really a range operating here, as you can't peep into a book 1.38 times.
> Right?

Ugh! If you are going to go the literal way, at least use {ja} 
instead of {jo nai}. Since {pa roi} and {re roi} are mutually 
exclusive by themselves, there is no need to exclude 
their co-ocurrence again with the connective. Of course
"one or two" does not normally mean literally one or two,
but some small number, that's why {ji'i} works, "some number
that is approximately like one or two". {roi} normally takes 
an integer, so 1.38 is not a possibility here. 

> 2) i a bu boi so'u roi sutra zgana li'o sa'a
> I reckon "once or twice" is an idiom not common to all languages. A German
> translation, e.g., translated back, has "The book her sister was reading did
> not appeal to her." A Spanish one has "un par de ojeadas". So {so'u roi}
> might suffice.

Yes, I might change it to {so'u roi} just to avoid the issue,
(as soon as I figure out where the master copy is) but I 
don't think "approximately one or two" is odd even if not all
languages say it that way. (BTW, in Spanish one can say 
"una o dos veces" too with the same sense, even if that 
was not the chosen translation. The change in wording in 
this case was probably not because of the "once or twice" 
but because there is no obvious equivalent of "peeped".)

mu'o mi'e xorxes