Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: non-core translations

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 01:55:50 -0400

At 06:14 PM 8/4/02 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
I suspect (and hope) that the current gi'uste translations will the first 
steps of a bootstrapping operation (to use one of JCB's favorite words). 
They will attract a few people to learn Lojban and who will eventually say 
(in the appropriate languages) "But that isn't what the translation means!" 
or "Ohoh, so this word really means ..." and who will correct the 
translations. I think something like this should have happened -- and be 
happening -- with the English list over the year, but, alas, has not 
generally, although we have glosses enough to allow some rewriting, even 
(especially) of the key words.

The reason it hasn't is of course the fact that the English gismu list 
constitutes the baseline, and any substantive change could cause problems 
with people respecting the baseline.

Now that I am again working on the dictionary file, I should note again 
that I HAVE made very minor changes to the text of my "working copy" of the 
English gismu list, but nothing substantive like a change in keyword - 
usually adding in a word or two to the definition or explanatory text to 
clarify things that arise in the process of writing dictionary entries.

If there is an English word that is NOT in the long-text gismu definition, 
that would be a better definition than the keyword, then by all means let 
me know. The gismu portion of the dictionary will so de-emphasize keywords 
that they will no longer be a serious issue.

The bulk of the work I am doing is on the English-to-Lojban entries of the 
sort found in ENGDICT.GIS on the web site. The Lojban-to-English 
definitions of the gismu are frozen, and that is the form that should 
appear in the dictionary, except for the minor wording changes I've 
mentioned (which will be posted when I have a new ENGDICT.GIS to go with 
it). If people would like to see added explanatory text for a few words, 
we can consider these on a case by case basis. I would suggest that the 
wiki discussion of gismu definition gripes is probably the best place to 
collect these, but in order to be used, people need to write what they 
would like to appear in the definition, and not merely complaints about 
what IS there.

But no baseline change proposals, please. I would have to dismiss them out 
of hand, because opening the door to such changes would likely lead to more 
proposals than we could tolerate under the baseline freeze.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org