Re: [lojban] Re: Translation Help

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Lindar <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Despite all of the semantic confusion, it seems we have further
> confusion.
>
> Literally 'eternity' is "time-eternal" {temcimni}, so it doesn't
> really make sense to say "a time-ish forever-thing is not measured in
> time.", because that's like saying, "A red house was not painted that
> way." or something.

I would go with "vitno".

>My best guess anyway follows:
>
> Eternity is not measured by time.
> .i le temcimni ku na nikei lo temci
> 'The time-eternal is not an amount (of something) measured in a time-
> duration.'

"ni kei" is ungrammatical. You need a full bridi inside a NU ... KEI.
It's also probably not a good idea to make it grammatical, because it
would require lots of currently elidable KEIs to suddenly become no
longer elidable.

Maybe something like:

  lo vitno na klani da lo temci

> Time does not dream with moments.
> .i le temci ku na senva sepi'o lo mokca
> 'The time-duration does not dream using tool 0-dimensional-form.'
>
> Alternately:
> .i le temci ku na kansa lo mokca lo nu senva
> 'The time-duration does not accompany a 0-dimensional-form in an event
> of dreaming.'

There are some indications that the original poster is not a native
English speaker, and my guess is that "dream with" was meant to be
"dream of/about". For example in Spanish, "con" (="with") is the
proposition that goes with "soñar": "soñar con" = "dream about". If
so, then:

   lo temci na senva lo mokca

But I don't really understand this metaphor at all. In what way is
time supposed to dream, be it with or about moments? I can understand
what the first sentence conveys, but not this one. Is it supposed to
mean that time is not a succession of moments, or what?

> The moments are written with eternity.
> .i le mokca ku se ciska fo le temcimni
> 'The 0-dimensional-form is written with writing tool the time-
> eternal.'

It would make more sense to me to say that eternity is written with
moments  rather than the other way around (the moments being the ink
rather than the pen), but I don't know. Or maybe the moments are
written *on* eternity.

> Would most say I've hit the mark?

It's just too hard to translate without context, and I'm not even
certain it's idiomatic English.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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