On 8/23/2014 12:33 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
Probably. I'm not sure that I could do it, and actually be able to
communicate.
There are enough speakers in IRC who can at least produce Lojban
sentences if not in real time but at least with the help of a dictionary.
But the suggestion specified meetings by email, not on IRC.
I don't even think of IRC most of the time, even when I have dead time, and certainly not when I am actively running a meeting. (And this presumes that one of those speakers on IRC is actually there when someone has a question; my experience has been something like a 50% rate of even getting a single response when I get on IRC, and usually that is merely a greeting. Only once in many years have I found a conversation going on at all, and it was in English.
Any conclusion about Lojban reached based on the voting membership, many of whom date from when Lojban was NOT a working language, would be bound to be erroneous. Then bear in mind that the primary focus of the membership is on organizational matters rather than Lojban matters.
You response surprises me.
Non-Lojbanists might conclude that Lojban is not even a working language.
One might question the fact that almost all discussions of byfy matters has been in English rather than in Lojban (even when conducted by people who have demonstrated the ability to write voluminously in Lojban). But of course if they were in Lojban, there would be zero chance that I would read them, for example.
I could do so, but it hasn't been my priority given the lack of time I have been spending in recent years. I could wish it were otherwise, but it isn't.
No, but the purpose of LLG meetings is to get LLG business done (and do so as quickly as possible, since business matters aren't the highest lojban-related priority for much of anyone in the community except possibly me), not demonstrate cultural neutrality.
However, is it culturally neutral to continue using non-Lojban for that?
We aren't getting a set of meeting minutes in English. Do you think
Robin will be able to more easily produce them in Lojban? And he is
presumably as fluent a Lojbanist as we have.
I didn't know he couldn't. I thought only a lack of his time could
prevent him from doing so.
Lack of time is precisely the reason. And for most of us, dealing with Lojban text (either writing it or reading it) takes a lot more time than dealing with English.
No one produces minutes in English, so you have nothing to translate.
But even then assign other people for that. E.g. I can do initial
translation and you can check them afterwards (since not I will be
signing them anyway).
And I personally wouldn't likely have the time to check and substantial amount of text written in Lojban for validity, much less correctness of translation.
But the people who originally proposed doing meetings in Lojban 10+ years ago. never even produced a set of Lojban bylaws, which would undoubtedly be the first required official document.
Indeed I just checked and the whole effort to do meetings in Lojban appears to have been approved in 2002 but was removed and/or tabled indefinitely in 2003. The one remaining motion approved in 2002 and never superseded, was that official stuff on the web be translated into Lojban. So far as I know, absolutely nothing was ever done on this by the people advocating it.
We would have to start by having a translation of the Bylaws into
Lojban (and agreeing on that translation). I would then suggest
translating whichever book of parliamentary procedure that John
Cowan specifies into Lojban. Otherwise we lack the terminology for
a parliamentary meeting.
Terminology can be made on the flow during translations with adding them
to jbovlaste.
They can be, but they aren't. And it has been noted that there are active people nowadays who don't know how to add to jbovlaste even though there are instructions.
(I don't claim to be active in this sense, and I also do not know how because I haven't bothered to figure it out, never having wanted to add a word.)
Remember, BTW, that jbovlaste is an official project, but its contents are not automatically "official" merely by being added. We'd need some sort of formally published dictionary, approved by byfy and/or LLG (depending on the conditions specified in the 2002 statement).
There is an official project to come up with Lojban parliamentary terms, but the one report (anonymously submitted, possibly Mark Shoulson) said that it was "being worked on" by the submitter, who was apparently the only one involved.
I also suggest translating existing documents into a code with
members
of the LLG (or at least by le jatna) signing them as official ones.
Not sure what this means. Code kia? Which existing documents? Any
translation of the Bylaws that was going to supplant the current
English ones would probably have to be approved as a Bylaw amendment
in order to be treated as "official".
Your replies showed that the Bylaws can be superseded by other bylaws
that weren't even published.
So far as I know, no Bylaws have been superseded, and there are no unpublished bylaws. So I have no idea what you are referring to.
It shouldn't. There is absolutely no mention of "projects" in the bylaws.
This hampers the development of the existing and new projects.
If someone wants a new project, then per 2002 minutes:
John Cowan proposed that we institute official LLG projects as follows:
Leader of project presents it to President.
President consults Board.
If Board approves, transmit information to Webmaster to post on official project list.
Webmaster to poll project leaders at least every 3 months.
Project leaders must then report to Board.
Board may decide to not continue project as official.
the following amendment was incorporated before approval (amendments a and b from the minutes)
That the initiators mail the request to both webmaster and president,
and if there is no response from the Board in an agreed-upon time
frame it will mean it's automatically added to the official project
list as "no objection"
I haven't seen any proposed projects submitted to the Board since then. I can accept that people may not know the above procedure, which probably should be added to the project page. What Robin appears to have implemented was a more informal method that hasn't gone to the Board, but it looks like the reporting scheme completely broke down by 2006 and most projects never had a single report submitted.
It's a nice idea, but no one wants to do the necessary paperwork, as is true for most LLG efforts.http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Bylaws+of+The+Logical+Language+Group%2C+Inc.
If there was an official list of bylaws that are not superseded then we
would be able to translate them to Lojban.
no changes since 2007.
The Lojban license was put up by Robin and not modified since 2005.
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+Web+Copyright+License
The 1997 and 2002 statements haven't been modified since they were produced.Bylaws cannot be superseded without a vote that meets the criteria specified in the Bylaws themselves.
People would be able to rely on them knowing that those bylaws are not
superseded.
If someone official ignores a bylaw, any member (and probably any non-member as well) can object, most easily via point of order during a meeting. It then must be dealt with under the rules for parliamentary procedure.
If any bylaw can be ignored/superseded at any time and no one in the
world (except members of the LLG) knows about them then
why do we have those bylaws?
I'm not sure how much non-members are likely to be affected by changes to the Bylaws, without any specific examples.
Of course, given that CLL is one of the baseline documents, you may
be calling for a translation of CLL into Lojban. That would be an
interesting challenge, and a rather voluminous one. We'd need
all-Lojban dictionary-quality gismu and cmavo lists too, and I never
did accomplish the dictionary-quality cmavo list in English.
This project is
1. time-consuming
2. we don't have a working platform for doing CLL 1.1 even in English
Correct. Hence, nothing gets done.It is a book, one of those things that appears in print, and it is the norm in such books that examples are numbered and referred to by number in the text.
My personal view is that linking to examples using numbers is a bad
practice in CLL but since it is the official refgram and not a tutorial
Hypertext can avoid such inconveniences, but at least so far, we are dealing with print as well as on-line. That would likely be true of a Lojban version as well. I certainly wouldn't ever try to read 600 pages in Lojban on a computer screen (or on a Kindle for that matter - I haven't read that much text yet on a Kindle in English)Nothing explains itself. And the purpose would be to meet the standard that all of our official documents be produced in Lojban (whether or not they would be used much in the Lojban form isn't the primary consideration)
Anyway CLL partially works as a good tutorial too (as others are
criticized by many people coming to IRC channel). This means that
translating CLL into Lojban itself is partially useless since many
concepts and parts of grammar in Lojban explain themselves.
Official documents initially written in Lojban can be translated to
English later.
Which ones are those?
You decide. I imagine the full code including all documents that
describe how LLG and BPFK works.
None of them were originally written in Lojban, and as yet, none have been translated, so your response doesn't answer your original statement about said initially written ones.
Most people knowing that the documents were initially written in English would read them in English UNLESS a) they were seeking the experience of reading the Lojban text or b) the Lojban text officially superseded the English original, which would be replaced by a back-translation.Yep.
This all looks strange. It sound like all members say "Yeah, I support
Lojban but I'm not going to learn it".
Why so?
In some cases, because they got involved when there wasn't a language to learn. In others like myself, I learned it but haven't recently spent enough time to maintain my skill (and for me, I have never learned a language other than English to the point of being able to think in that language - I came close with 6-year-old Russian but couldn't understand adults, but Lojban in my mind is always glossed to English before being interpreted.)LLG pretty much takes anyone who wants to join and is committed to the goals and responsibilities of membership (which are primarily organizational - see the Bylaws).
Why not add people to LLG and BPFK that can produce correct Lojban
sentences at least in written form?
BPFK takes people under whatever conditions the jatna sets.
I suspect right now merely being willing to DO something is the primary requirement. Actual skill in Lojban is secondary to that.
Your suggestion might be ideal, but beggars can't be choosers.
At one time Pierre was leading a project to come up with a means of certifying various sorts of Lojban skill levels. That project, like almost all others, seems to have produced very little beyond intentions.