Re: [lojban] What Texts Would You Like To Read In Lojban?

["Matt Arnold" <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>]

> Le Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:09:53 +0200, Yanis Batura <ybatura@mail.ru> a écrit:
>
> > coi jbonei
> >
> > Suppose you have a weighty amount of time and desire to learn Lojban by
> > reading texts in it. What texts would you like to use for this purpose?
> > Would they be sci-fi, detectives, or scientific articles? What authors
> > would you like to read in Lojban?
> >
> > mi'e .ianis.
On 8/16/06, David KOCH <dkoch@9online.fr> wrote:
> Very shortly, I'd like to read this masterpiece in Lojban :
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/829
> http://lee.jaffebros.com/gulliver/
>
> --
> KOCH David aka Kochise

No, you probably wouldn't invest the time and effort to read such a
lengthy work in Lojban. Even if you did, the "very shortly" timeframe
is too small to learn enough expertise to understand a text like
Gulliver's Travels if it were in Lojban. Here are some arguments from
Lojbab about why it's better to translate short stories and articles
instead of novel-length works:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"a) the number of people who are competent to translate a given text
to any arbitrary degree of skill is significantly smaller than the
number who are sufficiently competent to try to read the resulting
level of text (assuming that the results are readable at all)

b) the number of people who are both competent and willing to
translate texts of book length in a timeframe shorter than many months
or even years are vanishingly small

c) probably by the time you finished a mediocre translation of a
novel, your Lojban skills would be sufficiently improved that you want
to throw it out and start over, realizing just how bad you were when
you started. I think Nick Nicholas suffered from this effect, even
with much shorter translations.

d) the time that any potential translator spends on said long book
takes time away from all other Lojbanic activities, including reading
what others are writing, which reduces the market for the translations
that are done and chokes the community by denying others the time
spent on short term activities that are more interactive.  And
arguably, anyone
competent enough to translate a novel into Lojban should be being
co-opted into the byfy work (that is my own excuse - I cannot justify
spending my too-limited Lojban time on even a short translation while
the byfy work is stagnating and I haven't done anything on it in a
long time)

e) the byfy work, even if it results in only minor changes, will to
some extent render all prior translations at best "quaint".  Not that
many people read Athelstan's Saki, and Nick's early translations,
these days, even though they were the best thing that existed for a
long time.  They are probably not the best examples of Lojban these
days, though they were at the time.  This rapid aging detracts from
the motivation people have in spending the necessary long time on a
long translation.

Put another way, while you were reading "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"
in French, you probably weren't at the same time translating "Around the
World in 80 Days" or any other similar length work into French
(especially French that someone else would read), and probably you
haven't tried to translate anything even a fraction as long into French
since you finished.  And you had no reason to believe that the French
language would evolve enough to make your translation in need of
revision within a short time."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think it was during a similar discussion last year that he sent
this. I agree. Short stories and articles are a better way to spend
our time right now.

-epkat