From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Thu Apr 11 06:32:40 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_3_1); 11 Apr 2002 13:32:40 -0000 Received: (qmail 45774 invoked from network); 11 Apr 2002 13:32:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m8.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 11 Apr 2002 13:32:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 11 Apr 2002 13:32:39 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Thu, 11 Apr 2002 14:04:44 +0100 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Thu, 11 Apr 2002 14:32:21 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 14:31:45 +0100 To: lojban Subject: brevity metrics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810630 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Robin Turner: #A lot of extra words are itty-bitty cmavo which don't add much to the rea= l=20 #length (conversely, translating English into Turkish results in fewer word= s,=20 #but some of them can be very long!). Another point is that Lojban _can_ #= make distinctions explicit, and we tend to make it do so because we can,=20 #but it doesn't need to do so - sometimes Lojban can be amazingly terse.=20 A good way of measuring brevity is to compare translations, e.g. by comparing the Lojban translation of _Alice_ with translations into other languages, measuring by bytes or pages. If anyone can be bothered to do this, I'm sure lots of us would be interested in the results. --And.