Subject: Lir > Malzgan > Evil Eye

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 01:42:13 +0100

On the whole I was astounded at how little garbling there was,
but one thing that srikes me from the ensuing discussion is this:

I think that Malzgan is a poor translation of "Lir" (even had it
been "Leer"), and "Evil Eye" a poor translation of "Malzgan". 
Had the name been "Leer", the translation should have been
"la mabla zgana". "la mabla zgana" would then rightly have
been translated as "Evil Eye". But whereas "la + selbri" is
the proper mechanism for meaningful names, "la + cmevla" is
the proper mechanism for names that are mere phonological
strings (even if their etymologies remain descriable).

--And.

ps. Here's what I sent to Jorge, translated from Pierre:

#Shmendrick made Princess Alison Jocelin's hollow from the hands 
#that crept tiredly towards the saddle. Shmendrick turned the 
#horse and said "Indeed, in time you will surpass them easily 
#and therefore they're riding slowly calculatedly. How proud I 
#am! -- they're good men, and great too, in that they are brave 
#and, furthermore, braver than anything worth fighting about. I 
#gave each of my princesslings to them. Malzgan is their name.
#
#[I have approached the translation by trying to balance not adding 
#or altering the original, against coming up with a natural-sounding 
#rendition. It is also 5 a.m. so in my tiredness I may have misread 
#the original.]

from Pierre I received this:

#ni'o la cmendrik. zbasu le kevna be sera'a la .Alison .DJAselin noi 
#noltruti'u be'o le xance .i ri tatpi cpare fi le xirli'ustizu .i la 
#cmendrik. cargau le xirma gi'e cusku lu ju'o do baza backla co frili 
#ko'a .ini'ibo ko'a ca'o logji ke masno xirkla .i.o'a ko'a xamgu nanmu 
#.ije ko'a banli leka virnu gi'esa'unai vrizma le vamji be piro terda'a 
#.i mi dunda ro le naltce turni tixnu be mi be'o ko'a .i ko'a se cmene 
#zo malzgan.

Oddly, the final English version is in some ways closer to the original 
than my intermediate version.