Subject: Re: [lojban] Logical translation request

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 21:54:24 EST

In a message dated 12/7/2001 7:14:06 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> > "At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do."
> 
> ca lenu co'e kei lenu gasnu kei pu simlu le ka lojdra 
> 

"At the time of some event, the event of being an agent seemed to have the 
property of being valid" Maybe "doing something seemed valid"?

In any case, I'll focus on {lojdra} and suggest that that is almost certainly 
not what is meant (I know it is what is said, more or less, in English). 
This seems to be a practical more than a strictly logical matter, even if it 
points to a careful consideration of the outcomes of a variety of choices 
carried out by deep reasoning. The test is what result is best, not what 
follows from what -- though what result is best may be decided by what a 
deduction from a statement of goals. Of course, "seemed" suggests that there 
was no serious argumentation, rather a rough-and-ready calculation or maybe 
just intuition or even a guess -- so no logic at all in fact. "Seemed most 
likely to lead to a successful outcome" is about the sense. 

The two anaphora, "the time" and "it" require more context to flesh out: "it" 
is likely the content of some recent sentence "Why did you ...?" and so can 
be picked up with an appopriate version of prosumti for components of earlier 
sentences. The same may be the case with "the time" or it may require some 
specific filling in. Perhaps, {co'e} does work in context even.