[lojban] Re: Borges translations

["Arika Okrent" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

Sorry for the re-post, but that last one didn't have a subject line, leaving it floating around without categorization...


Yeah, I made a few errors typing that in.  It should have been "no da poi" and 
mutsce is really mutce.

My goal was to be as faithful to the original meaning while at the same time 
being as unambiguous as possible.  That's why I wanted the sentences to be 
linked somehow (le krinu cu...  the reason for what?, thence the da poi krinu).  
ckaji did come up in the discussion for "full".  Other gismu issues were whether 
cunso really captures  "arbitrary".  I was never happy with that choice.  It 
doesn't capture the idea of "chosen at someone's whim" (the argument structure 
includes x3 "with probability distribution") but it's good enough I guess.

This quote is about an early invented language by John Wilkins.  (I have 
translated it into his language as well) but I think it applies to lojban 
insofar as it aspires to be a 'culturally neutral' language.  lojban has to have 
a lexion that allows it to interface with the real world, which means it has to 
make some assumptions about the organization of the world.  This isn't 
necessarily a problem -- all languages do that -- but it calls the neutrality of 
lojban into question.  We touched on this a little in the discussion.  I don't 
think everyone agreed with me.

Some other things I forgot to ask about:

Why was Logfest first advertised as jbonunsla, then jboselsla, and then back to 
jbonunsla?  What happened there?

Could Pierre write out for me some of the rhymes he did?  One was something like 
'the male cow is reddish brown' and the other had something to do with a turkey.

Thanks,
arika
************
Arika Okrent
arika@okrent.com
http://www.wickedoasis.org/arika



To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.