[lojban] Re: Userfriendly Translation

[Pierre Abbat <phma@webjockey.net>]

On Friday 13 June 2003 01:13, Eric Sumner wrote:
> I have attempted to translate part of today's User Friendly comic strip
> (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030612&mode) to lojban.  I
> unfortunately did not get very far, but perhaps I will do better on
> tomorrow's strip.  Anyway, I would like to check my work.
>
> For the first sentence: "Are you worried about going to jail, Martha?"
> I came up with two different translations: {doi martas. iipeida'i do klama
> le pifvasru} and {xu do terpa nu do klama le pifvasru}.  The second
> one seems to be more accurate to the original text, but I believe the first
> one may mor accurately convey the intended meaning.  Having no exposure to
> lojban, I don't know which of these is more appropriate.

{pifvasru} is an invalid form. You want {pifyvau} or {pifyvasru} (which are 
equivalent, except in scansion). Btw, lo pifcpi is a hornbill - without 
looking at the taxonomy chart or jbovlaste, can you figure out why?

{iipeidai} (not {da'i}; that marks the subjunctive) asks Martha about *someone 
else's* feelings about going to jail. {iipei} is enough. {xu do terpa nu do 
klama} means "Are you an afraid event of you going?"

{iipei do klama le pifyvau} assumes that Martha is going to jail, or at least 
thinking about it, and asks her fear about it. {xu do terpa le nu do klama le 
pifyvau} makes no such assumption. If Martha is not going to jail, or even 
possibly going or thinking about it, the answer to the first is {na'i}, to 
the second {nago'i}.

> The other thing I translated from this comic was the first sentence of
> the second panel: "Prison is a terrifying journey through the concrete
> jungle of anger, with all of your liberties stripped from you."
> My translation of this is {le pifvasru cu simsa lenu .ii litru le .o'onai
> runrokci cicrictu'a poi ke'a vimcu lenu zifre le prenu ku'o}.  I am fairly
> certain that the {o.onai} is not correct, because the speaker is not angry
> in this case.  Unfortunately, I do not know how to correct this.

I would say {pe lo kamfe'u ge'u} (without {ge'u}, the anger, not the jungle, 
strips liberties (which should be {kamzi'e} or {zazyzi'e} or {lizyzi'e})).

phma

-- 
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.