Re: [lojban] Re: Specifying natural language ambiguity in Lojban translation?

[Craig Daniel <craigbdaniel@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
> If I understand you right, you can do this with a type-1 fu'ivla: "me la'o gy.
> dam .gy". But I'd rather make puns in Lojban than try to translate English
> puns, just as if I'm speaking French or Spanish, I make up puns in those
> languages. L'aveugle traverse la route et la voie. The difference in Lojban
> is that it doesn't have, except in cmene, two identical-sounding words with
> completely different meanings, and it doesn't have two words spelled the
> same, such as "axes", which are pronounced differently. But there are words
> that sound similar but have different meanings (in Alice, I often
> confused "noltruni'u", the Queen, and "noltroni'u", the Duchess). Speaking of
> axes:

Lojban also has phrases that sound fairly similar, which can lead to
some clever punning.

If you translate a longer text, and it has puns, you do what
translators into natlangs do - you find the nearest possible way of
conveying the feel of the original. Hence the fact that the Mock
Turtle's teacher changes his name from "Tortoise" to "ractu cafmi'a"
even though it makes even less sense - it lets you preserve the pun.
(Instead of "we called him 'Tortoise' because he taught us" it's ractu
cafmi'a because "ra ctuca mi'a".)

 - mi'e .kreig.daniyl.