Re: pe'a

[Scott Brickner <sjb@UNIVERSE.DIGEX.NET>]

Andrew Smith writes:
>coi.
>
>cu'u la .andruc.:
>>What on earth is a 'brain fart' in English !!
>
>cu'u la djan:
>>A temporary and unaccountable error in belief, judgment, or reasoning;
>>e.g. the notion that "dir" is a reasonable command on a Unix system, or that
>>you have locked your door when in fact you have not.
>
>Thanks very much for explaining this to me. It illustrates one of the main
>problems with using pe'a to mark something as 'figurative'
>The phrase 'besna kafke', even marked as figurative meant absolutely nothing
>to me, as it is not used in English slang, or certainly at least not by me
>and my acquaintances.

Perhaps not, but, with adequate context, I understood (and was heartily
amused by) the term upon first hearing it used.  I suspect you would have
understood it quite easily in context.  As I recall, the exchange went
something like:

    Me:  I understand that A and B differ in the depleter.

    Don: Depleter? What the heck does that mean.

    Me:  Oops.  Brain fart.  I meant "I understand that A and B differ
        in usage." "Depleter" (xaksu) and "usage" (pilno) both have
        "use" in the gloss, and I grabbed the wrong one.

I think the metaphor is obvious --- and mostly culturally neutral, as
it only expects the culture to consider farting impolite.

>The same problem occurs with 'brain cough'. We have, in earlier posts,
>established that it is a bad tanru because it is not a real kafke. But, I
>would argue, neither is it a metaphorical brain cough, UNLESS you have heard
>that expression in American English. From Cowan's explanation above, it
>sounds to me like 'a momentary lapse of reason', or an 'intelligence
>interruption' or some such.

Hold on.  First, I disagree that we've established that it's a bad
tanru.  I can give several examples of "good tanru" ("good" because
they appear in official LLG papers) where {broda brode} isn't a real
{brode}.  How about {rokcu cinfo}?  What species (selcinfo) is a stone
lion?  Given that the notion of species has to do with genetic
compatibility, I'd argue that any "species" one might claim for a stone
lion is purely metaphorical.

How about {xunre kerfa}?  Cultures typically describe hair colors as
red, yellow, brown, and black, because these are color terms that
develop early enough.  Such usage becomes standardized while "orange"
is still developing.  So what color is {xunre kerfa}?  Literally, it's
some flavor of {narju}, but it can also be accurately described as
{kerfa xunre}, even though it isn't really a flavor of {xunre}.
Likewise, the relative size of a {cmalu plini} may be described as
{plini cmalu}, though one would hardly say a {plini} could be {cmalu}.

Second, I'd say you have an odd notion of "metaphorical".  True,
"temporary reason failure" or "intelligence interruption" would be
accurate translations of the notion, but they *aren't* metaphors for
the concept, they're the concept itself.  Webster's defines metaphor as
"a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one
kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a
likeness or analogy between them (as in the ship plows the sea)".

A metaphor is a word or phrase which indirectly represents another.
"The blues" is a metaphor, though strongly culture-biased, for
"sadness" because the color blue is associated with sadness.
"Heartburn" is a metaphor for "indigestion" because indigestion is
often accompanied by a burning sensation in the chest.  "Brain fart" is
a metaphor for "intelligence interruption" because the brain is
associated with intelligence, and farting is both a faux pas and
typically interrupts social activity.

Third, as I said above, one needn't have heard the expression before
to understand it.  One simply needs enough context to interpret it.
Sure, a brain can't fart, but the context in which the expression
appeared left little room for the metaphor to mean anything else
that an "intelligence interruption".

>What about the other examples (2 and 3) above? I suspect that 2) is easy to
>understand, if strange, but that 3) is very specific to one particular
>culture x, and crucially, NOT UNDERSTANDABLE to many, if not all  non-x
>speakers.
>
>We should, therefore, be very careful when using pe'a to translate metaphors
>from our mother tongues, to make sure that they are understandable by a
>person from a different culture/language.
>In my opinion, example 2) above is possibly OK, but that 1) and 3)  [and
>besna kafke] should be avoided.

I agree that cultural metaphors are dangerous, but I think that one needs
to examine the relationship between the metaphor and the represented concept.
"Raining cats and dogs" is probably difficult to follow, but "athlete's foot"
might be easier.  With sufficient context, "big iron" as a reference to
mainframe computers is probably fine.