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Re: [lojban] Re: "1000 hours of grief for one of happiness"



On 1/3/06, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.hn.org> wrote:
On Tuesday 03 January 2006 14:13, Adam COOPER wrote:
> coi ro do
>
> I'm working on a translation of Mark Twain's "The five boons of life".
> Here's a sentence I've been working on for several days:
>
> "For each hour of happiness the treacherous trader, Love, has sold me I
> have paid a thousand hours of grief."
>
> {ro nungei cacra be li 1 cu se vecnu la nunpa'i noi tcica canja ku mi le
> nunbadri cacra be li 1000}
>
> Or maybe a prenex construction?
>
> {da poi nungei cacra be li 1 zo'u la nunpa'i noi tcica canja cu vecnu ro da
> mi le nunbadri cacra be li 1000}
>
> Your thoughts? ki'e i mu'o mi'e komfo,amonan

{la nunpa'i noi tcica canja cu vecnu} has to go in the prenex. Without doing
that, what you wrote means "For each hour of happiness, the treacherous
trader, Love, has sold it to me for a thousand hours of grief". Which isn't
right, since not every hour of happiness is one Love sold you.

Ah. So, erm,
{da poi la nunpa'i noi tcica canja cu vecnu ke'a mi ku'o zi'e noi nungei cacra be li 1 zo'u ro da selve'u fi mi le nunbadri cacra be li 1000}?


On 1/4/06, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
A more direct translation would be something like:

fo ro nungei cacra poi le tcica canja no'u la nunpa'i ke'a mi vecnu
cu pleji fa mi lo nunbadri cacra be li ki'o

but of course you may not want to be so faithful to the original
sentence structure.

For whatever reason I reckoned {vecnu} was robust enough that I could translate the sentence into one bridi -- something like "Love has sold me hours of happiness at the price of 1000 hours of grief apiece." In any event, ki'e sai .i mu'o mi'e komfo,amonan